Those who find this missive will think it the scribblings of a madman. The great mass of humanity exists within comfortable ignorance, sheltered from the vast horrors of the unknown. Those who have looked into the abyss are shunned, labelled as madmen, and packed off into asylums. Though I know my words will be dismissed as the ravings of a lunatic, still I must warn the world of these horrors.
It all began that fateful day. My archaelogical-historical investigations had taken me toI a shop of disreputable character, in a rough and grimy section of the city. The shopkeeper, a swarthy fellow with a leering grin, brought out a package from the back--a set of floppy disks with strange writing on the labels. "A game from the ancient realms of DOS" he claimed. As a man of science, I was interested, yet skeptical. I bought the "game"; the man's clammy handshake as we settled the deal brings chills to my spine even today.
I went back to my laboratory, warmed up a glass of tea, and began to play the game. As soon as I had installed it, I was aware that this was programmed in a language that was not known to man. While it seemed to be a first-person shooter in the mold of the classics from the 90s, my scientific eye began to discern the markings that showed that it could only be from an alien civilization rather than built by human hands.
It became clear that the game was built on the principles of non-Euclidean geometry. The dark environments were completely in three dimensions, while enemies existed only in the second dimension. Enemies did not even have animations for turning or facing away from the player; I was forced to look these eldritch horrors in the face, constantly. This interdimensional existence created in me dissonant thoughts, as my mortal mind could often not reconcile the difference between these horrors and their environment. Moreover, there seemed to be no consistency in the design of these eldritch entities, as some were absolutely terrifying, while others seemed to be created in the spirit of some morbid jest. The worst were the "bosses," as they appeared to be giant pieces of paper, perhaps illustrating the thin veil that separates our perceived reality from the horrors of the void.
The behavior of the enemies was often more primitive than the demons in Doom, consisting of moving aimlessly from side to side or mindlessly walking towards the player. They fired projectiles so fast that it was oft impossible to dodge. I began to spend much of the game moving in and out of cover. As I trudged through corridor after corridor, a horrid thought crossed my mind, and I checked the cover of the disks to make sure that the title of the game was not "The Call of Cthduty." As I began to make my way through the game, the areas became more expansive, but I realized there was an enemy behind every corner--quite literally. The diabolic mind who designed the game deployed a series of cheap and tawdry tricks and traps in every level, as if the purpose of the game was to drive the player mad. As I completed the forced precision platforming sections in the final world, my conscious mind began to disassociate with reality.
But these were not the worst horrors to be seen. Nor were the bullet hell sequences near the end of the game, the flying enemies who could turn on a dime (making it impossible the player to lead his shots), the bizarre and esoteric difficulty spikes, the lackluster final boss, or the voice-acting that sounded like a failed attempt to be Duke Nukem without any wit or humor. No--the greatest horror was the fact that I enjoyed it. The game began to take over my mind, to the point where every waking hour was spent thinking about it. Through some eldritch spell I was unable to pull myself away from the screen until I completed it. Be warned, reader, that you too might suffer this terrible fate should you play this game.