Invasion of the Worm Men

 

I’ve created an adventure game on paras.id/fictionspawn.near. This is the introduction to the story. These images are of reduced quality, click the link to see the original NFT cards. To play the game, click the image above or keep reading.

“You, The Gate Keeper, look up at the sky. It is red tonight, red like blood. You haven’t seen this colour in the skies for decades. It can’t be good.

It is getting darker, and you light your lantern. You are the one who guards the gate, who makes sure people get through safely. Your profession has deep roots, back to the days when you would have guarded the gate against enemies. Monsters and people with bad intentions. Those days are gone. Now you live happily in peace, and you have for generations. You are at peace with all your neighbours, there are no monsters and crime is almost unheard of. These are golden ages, and you don’t want it to change.

You don’t like the colour in the sky.

A lady comes by with her little son.

“Goo’evening!” You nod politely.

“Good evening, sir.” She turns around, looks up towards the horizon. “Doesn’t it have a strange glow today, sir?” She looks worried.

“It does.” You try to find some way to comfort her, but you can’t. “Did you see anything strange out there, Ma’m?”

“I heard strange sounds from the forest, sir.” She looked into the darkness of the trees in front of the castle. “You don’t think there’s danger around, do you?”

“I sure hope not… Now, hop along, it is getting dark.”

“Good night, sir. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

You stand there, by yourself now. You are worried.

You go inside, close the gate. You hardly ever close the gate, but today things are different. The stables are unquiet as well, the animals making noises.

Someone slams their hands on the gate.

“Please! Please let us in! Please help us!”

“Who’s there?”

“Everybody’s dead, sir! We need somewhere to hide! The higher forces protect us, they are coming!”

You open the door. Several people are standing there, terrified, traumatized. One is badly hurt. You let them in. Behind them you see something move in the shadows between the trees. Worm men. A lot of them. And they’re coming your way…”

This is where the game starts. You get two choices. Run into the castle, or go out and confront the worm men. From now on it’s all up to you. You will walk through dark sewers, abandoned dungeons, forests full of monsters and death. Rare cards and treasures hide in dark places, and weapons to fight the enemy when you most need it.

On the initial choice you will survive, which ever path you choose. From there on you are in danger. There are four cards in the initial round with choices. Six are end cards, where you either die or escape. Two of them has a possibility to be saved if you are in possession of a usable card as the Pickaxe and the Dark Dagger. That’s when you start getting the really rare cards.

The transit cards have high editions, the end cards are rarer. In the first round the end cards have editions between 24 and 29 copies. If you get to further levels you will start finding rarer cards, from fifteen down to three copies per card. The spendable cards I have given a particularly high number of copies because they will have to be burned for you to get to further levels of the game. There is a total of fifteen cards reachable in the first round of the game, and you will get a total of four to five cards, one of which will be one of the rarer end cads, the others will have higher editions. The second round, if played right, you might be able to get up to six cards, two of which has the low number of fifteen copies.

In the third and the fourth round you will be able to find the really rare cards, of editions of twelve, six and three copies per card. Cards have been burned and probably will be again, and new cards might still be minted.

The game mechanics are quite simple. You buy the first card, and only the first card. Then you put the card out for sale for an odd or even number to tell me which of two choices you want to make. Then I send you a new card, until you’ve either escaped or died.

There are three usable items: A Pickaxe, a Dark Dagger and a Rusty Old Key. They will have to be used in certain places, in combination with other cards, and they are lost when used (you’ll have to burn them). They are found at the end of paths, and must be used in other rounds of the game, or in rounds you’ve already played and ended up in the place where the item can be used. They can also be sold and used by other players.

Rarer cards will now arrive in your account.

So, in the end, there are eight possible endings to the game, the cards becoming rarer the more times you play. That’s pretty much the dynamic, and I hope I haven’t said too much. All the cards have their place, and nothing is up to coincidence. All I do is to send the cards in the path the player has chosen.

The game was meant to be a lot shorter, just four cards where luck would decide your faith. Then it just kept growing and growing, and right now it has ended up with over twenty cards. When a story needs to be longer, it needs to be longer.

So, that’s pretty much how my first game works. The first four people to comment with their Paras.id (name.near) account, and say a few words of course, will get one free game. And if you don’t have a Paras account, or are too late, please tell me what you think of the game.