The Game That Never Was

This is the story of Kyosu and his dream of creating a game. This game was supposed to take a dark turn midway through, but it was Kyosu's life that took the turn.

Kyosu had been programming small games for years, but his most recent project was going to be an entire game. He began with art and created a character who the player would name. This character had brown hair and blue eyes. (We will refer to this character as Kyo) Every action you took, from the ammount of time spent to the characters you helped out was supposed to affect the game world in some way. The game was getting along nicely, until the water dungeon was made. This was the point of the dark turn.

A shadow was to be introduced into the game and hunt the character until the end. depending on how much the character waited, "The end" would come early and in the form of a game over. The water dungeon was also going to be complex, with mechanics to raise and lower the water level, changing the location of rooms, and even a secret method of changing the difficulty of the boss. The water level mechanic was created just before disaster struck. Kyosu began a test run of the game. The first dungeon was in a forest and depending how long it took a player to get there, (Which wasnt implimented yet) the forest would have more enemies. This was where the problem became apparent to Kyosu. the screen flashed black, which was a signal that the shadow was closing in. Kyosu shut down the game and searched the code for what was wrong. He quickly isolated the error and fixed it, or so he thought. He began playing again, and as he entered the dungeon, the main character was looking a bit paranoid; which was another sign that the shadow was near. Once again, Kyosu shut down the test and checked the code. Once again, it was a simple error in the coding. As he fixed it, he erased a section of the code without noticing. Testing the game once again, it played as it was supposed to, but the screen flashed black at the entrance to every room. Kyosu realized his mistake and fixed it.

As Kyosu started up the test for what seemed like the millionth time and began playing, a picture flashed on screen. It was a picture of the shadow with his sword in Kyo's chest, Demon like wings extending from the shadow's back. This was meant to be the game over screenshot if the shadow caught the player, So Kyosu, irritated by his numerous mistakes, shut down the game, fixed the code, and went to sleep. his dreams were haunted by his game. He wandered through the water dungeon, paranoid at the shadow of himself he saw. He kept solving puzzles and finishing rooms at a irritatingly slow pace. In an instant, his shadow appeared in front of him, demonic wings flared, and stabbed him.

Kyosu woke up with a scream. He lived alone, so no one wold hear him. Unable to get back to sleep, he walked over to his computer to see that the game test was on and the picture of the shadow killing Kyo was still there. Kyosu decided at this time to give a name to the demon that was to chase the player in the game. He named it Jisu, which, in japanese, is the opposite of Kyosu. Kyosu closed the test and continued programming from early in the morning to late that night. he had fixed many of the errors, but some continued to persist. The program with the most errors was Jisu himself. he would either activate too early and would either cause the game to crash or cause an instant game over. Once Kyosu got most of the bugs out of the way, he decided to remove Jisu from the game temporarily while he finished the rest.

The following night, his dreams were filled with what would be future dungeons and bosses. One such boss was to be a replacement for Jisu in a graveyard setting, forcing you to flee into the depths of the darkness to find the only item that could allow you to see through this nightmare of a creature. This creature couldn't die, but didnt cause a game over if the player had a revival orb. It also had an infinite ammount of hands that would rise up and catch the player when they least expected it. These hands would hold the player in place unless they managed to cut the hands down. Kyosu went through hell thinking up a name for this boss until he simply settled with infinity grip.

The very next day Kyosu was about to make another dungeon when he remembered Jisu. This hellish copy had to be in the game, but with the darker dungeon now implemented, it would be even harder to get Jisu's programming right. As Kyosu worked on Jisu's programming, he began to feel paranoid. His vision flashed black for a moment and he felt something was after him. It was late, so he blamed it on exhaustion. even so, he could swear he saw a shadow move at the window. His house felt unsafe, as did everything. He began experiencing what Kyo would go through any time Jisu was nearby. He quickly highlighted the coding for Jisu and deleted it, replacing it with a simple midboss that would just be a shadow of the player. As he did, he heard something behind him. Turning around revealed that nothing was there, but when he looked back to his computer, there was his face, as a shadow, staring back at him.

"Scared yet?" it asked as it drew a sword.

Kyosu was found dead a few days later. It was an impossible criminal to catch, as everything was missing, including the weapon. The only thing anyone found strange was his shadow, which resembled the picture on his screen, clearly showing a demon stabbing a sword through his chest. The gaming company Kyosu had been developing for at the time mourned his loss, and vowed to make sure his game wasnt lost to time. Serious edits were made here and there, the dark dungeon boss became less scary and didnt hunt the player through the dungeon. The water dungeon's gimick was used, but the other little gimmicks never came to fruition, and the shadow's name was removed, as were it's text bubbles. I remember the day I killed that man. I had been messing with him for weeks while looking for a way to escape my prison. Once I got out, I stabbed him through the chest, making sure the shadow showed how he died. I watched as the game I was once a part of was released under the new name "Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time". I actually feel bad for the death of my creator now. If he had been able to continue, he may have even made a game worthy of having me as the enemy.

Author note

Wow, I never thought I'd make one like this. This goes a little bit into the past of ocarina of time as it was supposed to be on the 64 disk drive which never happened. Most of this stuff was made up, but the part about the world being changed by the player's actons was real. If you like this, comment and I'll try to make more like this. Now, I feel like i may have gone into too much detail, so if that took out of the experience for anyone, comment and I'll try to make it better next time. Also, comment on what you thought of the AI of Infinity Grip and Jisu.