Saviors of the Earth, a text adventure game

Sandra Blaine walked out of the school doors, her shoulders weighed down by all of the homework she will inevitably have to complete at some point over the coming weekend. As she walked toward the bus, she heard her friend David Lang running up to her, huffing and puffing as he caught up and began talking excitedly.

"Ah, weekends! Nice to get a bit of time to relax."

"Sure, it's great. Even if we just got out of winter break anyway" said Sandra, chuckling a little.

"Yeah, for sure. I'll take any breaks I can get" said David, giving a big smile as he looked up a little, and began to grin wildly. "Hey, Sandra, today is the day we get to play it! I can't believe it's finally here! The wait is over, Sandra! Finally!"

"Haha, yeah, I can't believe it either" said Sandra. "Even more unbelievable is the fact that we are one of those who get to play it first. Before the reviewers, even".

"This is just unreal. What are the odds of us both being selected for it? I guess our essays were just that good."

"Yeah, but I wasn't really surprised about yours, though."

He grinned sheepishly, running his hand through his blond hair. "Anyway, see ya soon!".

David walked off and disappeared around a street corner. He lived nearby. Sandra, much to her chagrin, did not. She had to suffer through the same dull bus ride twice every day. She got on the bus and collapsed into her seat, and waited while the bus slowly filled and then departed. She stared out the window as she passed the same, sleepy suburban towns that lined State Route 24: Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda. She passed through the Caldecott tunnel and emerged on the other side, where the San Francisco Bay stretched before her. It was a nice view, she reluctantly admitted to herself. The skyscrapers of San Francisco stood tall on the horizon, while the nearby hills were tinged with green and the sky was a quiet gray color, as it often was around this time of year. The bus stopped in suburban Oakland, where she lived, and she got off the bus and walked the few blocks to her house. She walked through the door, quickly greeted her mother while making a beeline for her room.

She set her bag down on the floor, nearly dislodging her impressive stack of National Geographic and sat on her bed. After a couple of minutes, she took out her laptop. It was January 6, 2017, the day the long-awaited game Saviors of the Earth would finally be available to her. The game was touted by its creator, Redwood Corporation, as a groundbreaking adventure game unlike any other, a highly intricate virtual reality where players would feel exactly like they were really there, on epic quests to save planet Earth. Surprisingly few details were given on the nature of these adventures. This only excited Sandra even more, as she was one of the 35 teenagers chosen to play the game before anyone else besides the devs themselves. To do this she entered a contest that involved writing an essay describing why she wanted to save the Earth. She wrote a heartfelt text on the beauty of nature and the incredibly diversity of life, which she had fallen in love with during her Biology class the previous year. David had written something to that effect, but in far more poetic terms and vivid language and metaphors. She was very shocked when she saw both of their names on the list of winners, and they received their copies a few weeks after, but the VR headset wouldn't function until this day, January 6. She wanted to play immediately, but she had promised David that she would wait for him to be done with his daily freewrite session.

What will Sandra do in the meantime?

(Author's note:Any feedback is appreciated, because not much is set in stone plot or characterwise at this point)

edited 2nd Jan '16 12:19:56 AM by LinkToTheFuture

>Ponder the meaning of her existence
>Or go get a snack or something, idk

edited 2nd Jan '16 12:23:58 AM by Daydre

Screw Dave, just play the game.

>Talk to David
>Ask about his freewrite session

edited 2nd Jan '16 12:25:14 AM by DarkDestruction

>Go to tvtropes.org

>Disregard my previous post, do this one instead.

Ponder the meaning of her existence

She has thought about this sorta thing a few times. She still hasn't really come to any conclusions, though she knows she wants to do something with her life. It is so short, after all, compared to, say, a volcano.

Go get a snack or something

She walks to the kitchen and grabs a bag of her favorite potato chips. She makes a show of eating it, like that guy from that anime which she hadn't actually seen but heard was quite good. She needs to getting around to seeing that.

Go to tvtropes.org

Sandra love that website. She spends hours there every day, whether she wants to or not.

Screw Dave and just play the game

She briefly considers that, but she realizes that she can just...

Talk to David

Ask him about his freewrite

She whips out her phone and texts her friend. After a few seconds, he replies.

"Just doing a quick poem. So pumped for the game, I'll be finished right...about...now."

Sandra texts back that she is ready when he is.

"OK just gonna boot up the game and power up the headset".

This takes a few minutes, so she plugs in the headset to charge it, and boots up the client on her laptop. It takes a while to load. she is shown a screen, and is told to enter her name, which she does. A computerized voice announces "Accepted. Welcome, Sandra. Please power the headset and activate it".

It will still take a few minutes to charge, so she decides to text David to pass the time. What will she say to him?

edited 2nd Jan '16 1:00:39 AM by LinkToTheFuture

YOUr cute,

> Swiggity Swooty, show me that booty

>"So, you excited?"

>"What are you going to do in-game?"

Wait, is this in second or third person? Because I'm seeing a few "you"s and a few "she"s referring to Sandra. It's your first text adventure, but please be consistent.

I've made some mistakes I guess. I'm trying to go third person but I made a couple slip ups.

Sandra texts her friend lazily, just to pass the time.

"You're cute"

"Thanks . Do you really mean it?"

"Maybe"

"Haha"

"You excited?"

"lol of course why do you even ask? This is like the game of the decade!"

" What are you gonna do in-game"

"I don't know Sandra. They haven't really said much about what exactly it is that you do in the game. Can't wait tho!".

—- A few minutes passed. Sandra got another text from David, saying that he was finally ready to start. Sandra's headset vibrated for a second, indicating that it was powered up and ready. She jumped up from the bed, grabbed the headset, and put it on her head. The world turned black for a second, before a tall, stylized redwood tree appeared in front of her face and a loading bar below it. It filled up surprisingly fast, pleasing Sandra to no end. She had no time to take in this feeling when she was overwhelmed by a sudden floating sensation, as the world once again turned black around her. She felt a rapid spinning motion before stabilizing. An eerie silence surrounded her as text materialized in front of her face:

PLAYER NAME:SANDRA BLAINE
TEAM:??? MEMBERS: SANDRA BLAINE ??? ??? ??? ???
ELEMENT:???
PRESENT LOCATION:???
NUMBER OF EMBLEMS ACQUIRED:0/10

The text faded away. She found herself on a floor, but not the floor of her room. She stood up and saw that she was standing on a massive map of the United States, without any state borders, roads, or cities marked on the map: just the features of the land itself. She noticed she was at the location on the map where her home, Oakland, California, was. She saw thirty-four little yellow lights at various places on the map, and ten red lights in seemingly random places around the country. The sky, if it was a sky, was a night sky, studded with stars. A large, brightly glowing sphere hovered at the center on the map. Sandra decides to take a look around this strange place.

>Check your inventory
>Then check for anything unusual on the ground

edited 2nd Jan '16 1:42:05 AM by DarkDestruction

>Poke the sphere

>Try to move the sphere in some way >Investigate the lights also

edited 2nd Jan '16 12:12:30 PM by Daydre

Check your inventory

To Sandra's dismay, she did not posses an INVENTORY. The author assures everyone that you will have one soon though.

Check the floor

Sandra checked the floor. It was a pretty impressive relief map of the country, including Alaska and Hawaii. She saw 35 lights on the ground, one of which, she noticed, was where she had been standing a moment ago.

Check the lights also

Sandra took a good long look at the lights on the floor. The 35 lights were spread across the map, including one where she lived and a couple of clusters around major cities. She saw that one of the other lights was right next to hers.

Poke the sphere

Try to move the sphere

The instant Sandra's fingers touched the sphere there was a blinding flash of light. When it faded, she saw that she was standing in a large room. The walls had many pictures of natural scenes from around the country:The Grand Canyon, great forests, icy mountains, vast plains, and more. At the front of the room there was a podium with a microphone on top and the Redwood Corporation logo. There were three doors at the back of the room, two very large and obvious and one much smaller one hidden in a back corner. Behind her was another glowing sphere, similar the one she used to come here, but this had a barrier around it. There was a large crowd of people around her age in this room, about 25 in all, walking around and murmuring to themselves. She recognized one of them as her friend David. She stepped toward the crowd.

>Call to David