The Demo Disc

Hello, I’m making this blog to report on my experiences with an odd disc I got at my local gaming store, it’s a demo disc for a weird game called “Sunlit Nights”, I’ll get more in detail as we go on.

= March 19th, Tuesday = I am Adam, a 19 year old college student, I am really into video games and I collect a magazine that always has the news on the latest games to come out for any console. I saw an ad for a PS4 game named “Sunlit Nights” it claimed to be the biggest game ever, literally, it supposedly had an infinite procedurally generated medieval world where you fought monsters, explored dungeons and completed quests. I was reading a slightly older issue of the magazine, so I went to my local gaming store to see if it was in stock, to my luck, it was, I picked up a copy and took it to the cashier.

“This game is really good, I heard that most of the systems they tested it on caught on fire from how much stuff it had” The cashier said, his name was James and he was a good friend of mine, as much as he was a bit weird and random.

“Cool, how much is it?” I curiously asked.

“This game is 80 dollars,” James replied. I almost had a sort of heart attack when he said it was so expensive.

“I’m kinda short on money right now, James,” I said, worried that I wouldn’t be able to try out this, seemingly, amazing game. I added that I had, at most, 30 bucks to spend.

“I know what we can do,” James went into the storage room in the back and came back with a blank CD-Rom disc.

“You can have this demo disc of Sunlit Nights for now and for free, if you manage to beat it, I think we can work out a discount for the full version,” He said, I wanted to bounce around like a lunatic for basically getting a game for free, sure, it wasn’t the full version and it could have a few bugs here and there, but I was still getting it for free.

James placed the disc inside of a plastic bag and handed it to me, I ran back to my apartment with a dumb smile on my face, it was getting darker and I honestly wanted to sleep, so I left the gameplay and notes for the next day.

= March 20th, Wednesday = I woke up, went to my classes and got back home to play my new demo disc, I put it into my PS4 and selected it in the main menu.

The game started with a warning saying that the demo only had a pre-made world with two quests and a free roam mode with nothing major to do, I didn’t care much, I closed my eyes for a second and when I opened them again, a small red pile thing appeared in the corner of the warning screen, it just looked like jumbled pixels, I couldn’t tell that well since it was just up for, what, a split second or two?

The proper title screen showed up and it had no music, I had no clue if it was normal or just one of the glitches I expected to see in this demo, but I selected the quest mode and my hero began fully armored in front of a beautiful white castle, I stepped in and the king (I presumed) stepped up to me and offered me a mission: To go to a cave and collect as much treasure as possible. Seemed simple enough, but he warned me that there was a huge dragon in the cave and that it was far away from the castle. I accepted and walked outside to see why the game was titled “Sunlit Nights”, the sky black and covered in stars, but instead of a moon up there, there was a sun. I assumed it was part of the main game’s plot, like, an evil wizard cursed the earth to constantly have the sun shining upon them, even at night, or something stupid like that.

After a while of walking, I reached a cave that was marked with a light blue arrow in the sky.

“I guess this is the dragon’s cave” I said to myself before entering the cave to get the treasure.

I was slightly unnerved by the fact that there was no dragon, per se, where it should probably have been, there was instead just a huge, low polygon, untextured, immobile mass in the general shape of a generic dragon.

“Okay, to hell with that glitch idea” I quietly said to myself, I proceeded to collect all of the dragon’s treasure and leave the cave ASAP. The game gave me the option to save, I did it and went to sleep, not before noticing that it was 23:56, far past my usual sleeping time, as childish as that sounds.

= March 21st, Thursday = I did my usual morning and afternoon stuff, woke up, ate, went to class, almost got kicked out of the classroom for being slightly late (Note: That’s not part of my usual routine) and came back to continue this game, I was slowly regretting taking it for free just like that.

Mid gameplay, James called me and said that he got in trouble for giving me that demo disc, not because the store shouldn’t offer demo discs, but because it was an extremely buggy version, I said I’d hand it back the next day, after all, I wouldn’t want my best friend to get fired.

I reloaded the save and I was already at the castle, but everything was off, the graphics went from being absolutely amazing to looking like a Nintendo 64 game, the “dragon” was flying around and breathing fire, he was still in the same sleeping pose as in the cave.

I was very confused, The king, in a T pose, slid over to me and said “You must defeat this ev” followed by glitched text and sounds that sounded like distorted chiptune screams, the game softlocked, with an infinite wall of white letters covering the screen, some of them seemed to flash red, like that pile of pixels I saw for a split second during the warning screen. I reset the console and tried the game again, it was past midnight by now, so I just left the TV and console on during the night to not lose anything, I also set my alarm for 4 AM instead of 7, so I’d have some extra time to play this demo in the morning.

While trying to sleep, I heard the game’s proper title screen music, a soothing orchestral melody combined with peaceful ambience such as birds chirping and wind blowing, I easily fell asleep with those sounds.

= March 22nd, Friday = I woke up extremely early and very tired, I instantly picked up the controller and started playing the free roam mode of the demo, Everything was back to the N64 graphics and there were hundreds of those freaky dragons flying above me, bumping into each other and spitting fire at the ground.

I took a few steps and my character instantly died, only to come back instantly, I guess, this repeated over and over until a tower loaded right in front of me and I entered, the “walk, die, repeat” cycle stopped when I stepped in. The inside of the tower looked like an average modern apartment with a gaming set up in the middle of the room, a TV, a PS4 and a controller, I got my character to play it and the game on the TV was Sunlit Nights, the exact demo I was playing.

I entered the free roam mode and everything went the same as my version, except the graphics were the original, realistic PS4 graphics, the land looked dead and there were no dragons. I made my way to the tower and it was another apartment with a console in it, I played it and you can guess what happened, it was the same as my demo except more morbid.

This cycle repeated about two or three other times, the last time, the once beautiful open landscape was a tight corridor with walls resembling intestines with blood and green liquid dripping out of them, the only sound was a high-pitched scream that I could just barely hear but that was making me feel nauseous, I turned off the game, took out the disc, got dressed and rushed to the store.

I got there and the store was completely different, it looked more like a small old house with its windows and doors all boarded up, except for the front door, James came over and he looked much older, I asked what happened and he ignored my questions, simply being happy that I got him the demo disc back and that his boss will stop being cruel to him. Only after he stepped back inside of the house, did I noticed the small pentagram drawn just above the door.

= March 24th, Sunday = I haven’t been able to sleep since that day, but I’ve tried, I had the entire day to think about what happened last Friday, the entire day I had a look that, I feel, could only be described as “I just witnessed a murder and am to scared to tell anyone about it” I heard a knock at my door and froze up in fear, someone spoke and it was just the mailman, I opened the door and he gave me a package I didn’t order, he said it was a gift from James, “for being a good friend”.

I opened the box and inside of it was a goat skull, a pentagram necklace and a small statue of the untextured dragon creature.

Story written by Lollama13

Author's Note: This is my first story here, so if it's awful, that's why, send your hate messages directly my way.