‘Hey, I liked your idea so much I decided to turn it into an actual video game.’ I read the message from Becky. ‘Here’s the link, I’m still working on it but I think you’ll like it.’

Normally I would be suspicious of such a link but I’ve had positive interactions with Becky before. So it didn’t seem like it was a scam, even though the timing was impossible. “Maybe she really is a witch,” I mused to myself.

Against my better judgement I decided to open the link Becky sent to me and sure enough there was the game with amazing graphics. I started it up and noticed that Becky had accidentally sent me over her save file. Melanie was standing in front of an evil looking tower in impressive looking gear.

I opened up the menu and clicked ‘new game’ it asked if I was sure and all save data would be lost. I figured that was okay and proceeded anyway. There wasn’t any character customisation and I could pick my class. But given the idea was to trap her friend into the game I was playing an elf version of her. Though it couldn’t be the real Melanie, that would be crazy.

As I mused about the kind of game this was, my character looked around and seemed to freak out, wondering what she was doing there. Again I figured that was a part of the charm of the game, playing someone who had been transported to a video game world. What I didn’t consider is that I just reset countless hours and torment of a real person, bringing them back to the start of the game.

I carried out the starting objectives, destroying the target dummies with ease, until I made it up to the hill with the Wizard. I went with the option to introduce myself. But the response came out harsher than I intended, making me lose relationship points with the wizard and he even turned me into a sheep.

“So it’s one of those games,” I said to myself. I saved the game then I had Melanie draw her sword and strike the wizard.

“Foolish girl!” the Wizard got angry and turned her into a fish.

‘GAME OVER’

No matter I thought as I loaded my previous save, though now I spotted a fish in a jar on the Wizard’s shelf.

“That’s cool,” I commented seeing the fish as I wanted to try something. I had Melanie draw her sword and attack the wizard again. When I reloaded there were now two fish in the jar together. “I guess this game remembers how I died,” I remarked as I continued the tutorial.

The wizard had me turned into a frog, and taught me about curses and how to undo them. It took me at least one attempt to kill the rat, eating the flies made healing easy enough. When I got a level up as the frog it gave me an interesting idea. Rather than using the fountain I decided to keep playing as the frog, grinding on the rat and eating flies to recover my health for a few hours. Then I hopped away and started fighting bigger foes.

I didn’t mind the grind as I was listening to an audiobook in the background so I kept attacking bigger and bigger creatures. Eventually I was able to take down a wolf with a single tongue attack. Satisfied, I decided to leave the starting area as a frog.

The only downside to playing as one is the villagers didn’t seem to interact with me too much. But it was fun taking out a fully armed guard in armour. I even managed to clear out a dungeon or two playing as the frog.

It was getting late and so I went to sleep. When I woke up the next day and booted the game back up, I was standing by a curse curing fountain back in elf form. I didn’t even know how this had happened but I was now back as a level one elf in a dangerous area. I had no choice but to start a new game. I made a note to tell Becky about this bug later.

This time I finished the tutorial easy enough, and being used to fighting the starting zone wolves as a frog, they were no match for me when I tried it as a truffle pig. Though I should’ve paired that quest up with Joren’s task of killing 10 of them. After both quests were done I got my first level up, increasing Melanie’s strength.

After playing for a bit more I ended up in the starting town where I was offered three quests at the quest board. At first I accepted the quest to rescue Ms Tibbins’ cat from a tree. My first task was to speak to Ms Tibbins herself, who turned out to be a kindly old witch.

“Thank you for offering to rescue Truffles, brave adventurer” she praised me. “Truffles likes chasing squirrels, that’s how he got caught up in the tree, the only way to get him down is to get him to chase one back here.”

I knew where this was going when I began playing as a squirrel. After a few near misses with a couple of dogs I managed to climb the tree and get Truffles to chase me back to Ms Tibbins. For my rewards I was turned back into an elf and gained 50xp, I also got a couple of gold.

The next quest I took was to clear the brewery of giant rats. Once again I was turned into a form better to kill them with, a black panther. It felt like I was playing a druid over a warrior but I always loved transformations so it was a cool concept. I skipped the Morph Master quest and decided to close the game down for now.

I wrote a note to Becky, giving her my feedback on the game, the bugs I encountered and things I’d like to see. I didn’t even realise I was controlling Melanie this entire time, or that I had created copies of her that remained goldfish when I got a game over. At least when I started over it removed them as well. Melanie retained her memories of the events though, she also began to realise what kind of world Becky had trapped her in.