The headphones buzz with a single notification on the monitor screen, and it overwhelms the thrum of the rain outside his window. Username Dalton wants to voice-chat. The two barely exchanged a few words before the game. As Dalton is the only one yet to block him, Rando anticipates some choice words from the team for his behaviour. He hesitates, but accepts the call.

And a wave of cackles hit him immediately, causing him to peel his headset away from his ears and turn the volume down a tad.

“I was right to invite you. You’re a gem!” Dalton laughs like a kid who just saw a clown’s performance at the circus.

“At least one guy gets me,” Rando laughs along, pleasantly surprised. “The rest of team kill joy faster than the enemy.”

“I know,” Dalton complained, without levity leaving his struggling throat. “I’ve played with them long enough to tell you that they’re stuffy pro-gamer wannabes who neither have skill nor a sense of fun. Meta this, meta that… If they were this serious with their social life, they could probably meta their way to bitches.”

“So that’s why you invited me.”

“Knowing your reputation, yes, and I regret nothing,” Dalton, in his thick American accent, assures Rando. “This was the most fun I’ve had in a while.”

“Thanks,” he smiles, overcome with pride.

“But you’re a terrible team-player.”

“Tha–… huh?”

“You have any idea how easy this match was? The team I was playing alongside were a joke. Even if I clipped Shorty from the back, the sniper and the team could have still taken everyone out and found me. We gave it all up for what? For some lulz?”

“Well, sorry, Mr Two-Faced Turncoat. Maybe if your team-mates did not mute me to start with, I would’ve–”

“Would’ve…?”

“–played this game solo either way,” Rando chuckles to himself. “There’s just no fun in playing too seriously. At some point getting perfect kills and perfect rounds consistently becomes such a chore that I end up doing my laundry and college thesis for leisure. Gaming is the only opportunity I have to let loose, like a wolf ditching a woolen guise to savor its prey. Bro, you feel me, right?”

“Nah.”

“Right…”

“I guess I’m not as good as you, so I have more fun in a team than as an online troll,” Dalton explains sympathetically. “Though, sounds to me like you need some change of pace. If you like going solo anyway, why not try adventure games, or RPGs?”

“I’ll pass. They’re nowhere as fun as playing with real people. Some RPGs are just dull; no matter what choices you pick the result is the same. If a developer is ambitious, maybe you will have two-to-fourteen different outcomes, but there’s only so much one can script. People, on the other hand… You slap them with a fish, and depending on the time, their mood and life-experiences, each would have a different reaction. Those, in turn, lead to nearly infinite outcomes in life. People are by default more complex and interesting than a script.”

“So the real games are the friends we’ve slapped with a fish along the way.”

“Yeah.”

“Hence you have none.”

“Shut up.”

Both of them laugh in sync, as if despite the banter there is no animosity between them. They instinctively treat each other like friends they’ve never known.

“Seriously, though, considering how far AI has come in general, I believe game-devs can now use it for NPCs and other interactions. The possibilities are…” Dalton hesitates before continuing, “endless, I hope.”

“Yeah, right. Give me one game that isn’t scripted with its choices. One game that doesn’t have rigid paths towards a limited pool of routes or endings. There’s none. Nobody can perfectly imitate life, otherwise it’d be a development nightmare for–”

“Symphony of Rancor.”

“Come again?”

“Nevermind, I–”

“No, tell me. What is this symphony of rando thing about?”

The pause on the other end signals Dalton’s hesitation. That alone intrigues Rando, who anticipates the next words to come.

“Symphony of Rancor… is a cursed game of sorts… but it’s the one game that fits your criteria. Just like life, there are infinite paths you can take, and your choices lead to unpredictable situations. The world is vast with no restrictions on where to go and how you finish your quests. Even the NPCs… are lifelike, as if they have a will of their own.”

“Whoa! Now that sounds like what I’m talking–”

“But I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“…Huh?” Rando raises his eyebrow, unable to keep up with such whiplash in this conversation.

“Maybe you’re right. Gaming solo is boring after–”

“Yo, hold up. You can’t just drop a bombshell like that and move on like it’s nothing,” Rando’s mouse-clicks and keyboard-taps pierce the call like needles into wool, the frequency of which unnerves Dalton. “Symphony of Rancor, aye? I can’t find the game on any platforms, though there are pages written about it. Some sites are even dunking on it, giving it a rotten-fish out of ten.”

“Yeah, the developer retracted the final working-version of the game. Now there’s no way to find it.”

“No kidding. It’s not even on piracy sites.”

“Imagine a game so bad it’s not even worth pirating,” Dalton laughs. “I shit you not. In its last month before it got taken off, there were only a dozen or so people playing it.”

“Why, because it’s a glitchy mess? If it’s so scuffed it’s entertaining, maybe–”

“You sound like you wanna play the damn thing.”

“You sound like you don’t want me to. If you don’t tell me, I might as well find it out myself, aye?”

“Ok,” Dalton sighs in acquiescence, then sends Rando a link to a lengthy video documentary. As Rando watches, Dalton provides the gist that he needs to know.

“Symphony of Rancor was developed by this weird chick called Rancor-Dev, and that wasn’t even the name of the project at first. She approached an image-board one day, announcing she left her programming job to focus on a dream-project, a game she called Backslider Tales. It was meant to be a run-of-the-mill stealth-game where your goal is to assassinate targets that the Holy Order brands as heretics. The game’s low-scope and fun game-design appealed to a lot of people, and the project received an astounding amount of support and donations.”

“So what happened?” Rando interjects. “Why are people trashing the game and its developer harder than a chewed gum?”

“Well… A game like Backslider Tales wouldn’t have taken long to make. Yet, Rancor-Dev’s pedestal-position as genius indie-developer, as well as the donation money she made, got her living so comfy she spent most of it on body-pillows and expensive anime merchandises. Then she complains that she is too poor to eat. This terrible bad habit annoyed some folks, but it wasn’t too big of a spark. So she had this bright idea on how motivate herself and get more dough: Add more features that nobody asked for but sounded cool in her head. The project’s scope ballooned unchecked and became unmanageable, even by programmers who volunteered to help.”

Rando listens to his new friend intently as he watches Rancor-Dev’s live-stream clips on the screen. She appears to be a zombie; more specifically, slovenly woman with bags under her eyes and bangs covering one of them, sitting in front a cluttered library of anime merchandises and talking about her video-game in slow movements and sudden loud outbursts. Her mannerisms and speech, along with the wreckage broken keyboards and mice on the floor, gave Rando the impression she seldom leaves her house or communicates with real people.

“That’s a shame,” Rando mumbles to himself. “If she bathed once in a while she would actually look pretty cute.”

“Sorry, what?” Dalton asks, confused.

“Oh, nothing. So what were you saying?”

Rando hears a deliberate cough on the other end before the summary continues.

“As I was saying, the project’s scope-creep was absurd. First, she added online mode so that players could assassinate each other, but the nature of the game meant that friendly fire was permissible. Then she felt the need to make it open-world, so the players aren’t restricted to single maps. This meant far too much code-rewrite for, well, everything. Because the initial idea was to allow creative ways to assassinate your target using anything you can find, even a pen, expanding the scope to an entire open-world created a mountain of work that basically paralyzed her with stress she brought upon herself. So what did she do? Procrastinate and play video-games all day. This went on for almost ten years, and even those that supported her with their own money and art lost faith in the game ever being complete.”

“Hmm, if the original project was successful with its crowd-funding, surely a hired team or a company could help her make this happen.”

“She drove away everyone that tried to help.”

“Oh…”

“And it gets worse.”

“Oh, no…”

“Man, this chick would rather spend days of her life fighting online trolls insulting her work than go back to code. When she did snap back to her senses, her dumb-high IQ apparently compelled her to take advantage of the upcoming AI technologies to rapidly develop and change her game. This game went from stealth-action to a full-blown online Role-Playing Game allowing you to choose between multiple job-classes, of which Assassin was just one. She added cutting-edge graphics so that the game seems indistinguishable from reality. She added a morality mechanic to make indiscriminate killing punishable, but that was once again replaced by a more causality mechanic driven by the AI itself. Anything goes in this version of the game, anything could be done and the consequences of your actions are seemingly infinite. This became its truest selling-point. You’d think this isn’t the same game she started with. The vision of the project was no longer the same as it was in its inception, so she changed its name to Symphony of Rancor, like she is patting herself on the back. Eventually, she pushed this out to the market, declaring it complete.”

“So you’re telling me that it’s actually a triumphant story of an independent developer who, against all odds, managed to not only finish the game of her dreams but a game that nobody has ever made before.”

“Yes to the second part, but no to the first,” Dalton sighs. “Tell, me: What happens when a sole developer overshoots on their ambition beyond what they can personally manage, then rushes to complete it by any means necessary?”

Rando chuckles ruefully. “So the game is hell made of bugs and glitches…”

“That’s right. Plus, the streamers and drama-channels, who only care about creating content, jumped on this. Through them, the general public witnessed how buggy the game was in visceral details and how nonsensical causality itself was in-game. A novice-player would accidentally pass through bad collisions of a wall and be flung into the Dark Lord’s lair where he would be eaten by his minions. An assassinated NPC would get back up on their feet still covered in blood, sometimes with their face-textures glitching out, scaring the pants out of people. You can believe there’s no shortage of negative reviews. The developer used AI to–.”

“Okay, that’s enough info-dump there, Mr Encyclopedia. You mentioned the game was cursed; was it because the glitches caused jump-scares and bad-textures?”

“Oh, no, I mean literally cursed,” Dalton’s tone lowers, as if he afraid of something he isn’t certain of. “See, there’s a theory floating around why the NPCs are so life-like, because no current AI is capable of behaving in this fashion; it’s that playing the game is surrendering your soul for the game to power itself. Like it demands it. Like it’s somehow alive. Reason being, at some point, the developer herself just mysteriously disappeared, along with the game, but not without a catastrophe in her wake. I don’t know why it’s happened or what caused it… but right before the game was removed for all platforms and the main website went offline… the handful of people who continued playing the game were all hospitalized. None of them have woken up since.”

Hearing this revelation, Rando feels the cold touch his spine. He expects a thunder-clap to accompany Dalton’s words, but notices out the window that the rain has instead slowed to a drizzle. He curses the heavens for not reading the room.

“Oh, no…”

Either that, or the heavens are far too aware of his mood, because this whole sentence he heard sounded like a premise of a cheap light-novel.

“… anyway, got any idea how I can get my hands on this game?”

“Were you even listening?” Dalton yells. Rando hears a dull thud on the other end, but doesn’t bring it up.

“I did, bro. Everything you just said is super interesting, and you’re right, it’s totally right up my alley.”

“No, it’s not. My whole point is that it’s not a good game. It’s not even worth your time. Hell, it may not be worth your life.”

“How would you know? Have you even played the game?”

“Idiot!” Dalton sounds worked up, but Rando can tell he is obviously concerned about his well-being. “If I did, would I even be talking to you right now? I’m telling you this cursed game legit steals people’s souls!”

“Oh yeah? Will this curse prevent me from closing the game and touching grass?”

“I recommend that strat. Man, I’m begging–”

“See, when somebody tells me not to do something, it makes me wanna do it all the same. Also, I don’t buy this whole soul-stealing curse side of things.” Rando hears Dalton groan, so he immediately tries to assure him. “It’s not like I don’t believe you, though. I checked the articles, and even if their private information is redacted, many journalists confirm several gamers falling into coma… but somehow it did not turn into an international incident, and I have no clue why. The authorities even destroyed copies of the game for fears over public safety.”

“Trust the authorities, man. There’s obviously a reason for it.”

“But doesn’t that make you even more curious? This is the best game recommendation I’ve ever had in my life. Plus, this case begs a closure. Don’t you wanna know why all these creepy things surround this game in particular? I need answers, man, and until I get them I won’t be able to sleep at night.”

“Well, as someone I know always told me, look on the bright side,” Dalton sounds like he is forcing himself to cheer up. “If you turn into an Isekai protagonist and rest in peace, at least other gamers around the world can play in peace.”

Rando laughs. “So you agree it’s a win-win situation. Jokes aside, I have no intention to kick the bucket any time soon, not until I ace my college. Instead, I get the feeling things are about to get a hell lot more–”

“Morbid?”

“–Fun, Dalton. Fun.”