July 13, 2018

I walked down the center aisle of the church for what felt like an eternity. Everything seemed to point out that I needed to be as minimally disruptive as possible and not make a sound - so I did as was suggested. When I finally got to the mall, I was exhausted and could no longer walk. I found myself passing out on the floor.

I got a Game Over screen and was penalized for swearing. I continued the game and found myself starting in the same spot. Once again, I followed all of the directions to the T and ended up with the same result.

Frustrated, I restarted the game once again but this time I purposefully ignored all the signs and tried to interact with everything. I started shouting and kicking everything and it didn’t take long before I realized that none of my actions were affecting the game state. I couldn’t believe I was so stupid that it took me three loops to figure out that there was literally no player input for the game world. All of the things that happened on the first playthrough still occurred normally despite the fact that I went off the script. “Fuck the lord!” I shouted repeatedly.

Even the Game Over screen failed to change.