Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1) (3 page)

“…Tss! You’ll wake him up! Hold onto me! Alright, leave him here—someone’ll pick him up in the morning…Wanna come over to my place?”

“WHAT?! I am a respectable woman!…It’s my place or no place!”

I can’t see a thing—I hope this is it…At last, my own palatial chamber…”

“Orders, Master?” asked my smart home upon my return.

“Block all calls. For the next several days, I don’t exist. Make me dinner for tomorrow, the standard plate. And look up everything that has anything to do with the game
Galactogon
.”

“It shall be done. Please note that you have missed your morning workout, which may negatively—”

“Turn off nagging-wife mode,” I interrupted the program. “Get to work.”

The specialized
Galactogon
cocoon—delivered as promised by the Masters—both stunned me and inspired my curiosity. The humongous box, stylized to look like a spaceship, occupied basically half of the room I dedicated to my gaming bells and whistles. Furthermore, the cocoon was a 2-in-1 monster of a device, including not only the gaming capsule but also the VR headset. Knowing that I simply wouldn’t forgive myself later for starting the game in Third Person mode, I got into the spaceship cabin and closed the lid. A wonderful design! Regardless of how the experiment turned out, I would be asking them to let me keep this wonder.

A screen unfurled before my eyes and images began to flash upon it, submerging the player in a specific state—full immersion…

Welcome to
Galactogon
!

Character generation complete! Starting empire selected! Please choose your starting occupation …

Okay…If I understand correctly, my character, just like the Empire, has already been chosen for me. Alright, that just means I’ll have less to fret over. As I understand it, I’ve been assigned to the Qualian Empire. At the moment, I don’t know what this means, so no point in bashing my head against it. Onwards—name. I’ve already been assigned one…Mmmkay…From here on out, I will be called “Surgeon.” I’ll have to see how many Surgeons there are running around this game already—as I understand it, in
Galactogon
, names don’t have to be unique…But surely, someone else has picked this one already? Weird, I wonder how the mail and notification system works then…I mean, there must be some unique identifier!

Fine, I’ll figure that out later too. Since it’s asking me to pick an occupation, let’s do that. What do we have?

…Marine, Engineer, Navigator, Gunner, Harvester, Scientist, Ship Commander…

I’ll be damned! More than fifty classes, each of which has its own rank and skill-tree! Now I see why those two dear fogeys didn’t want to give us a chance to study the FAQs. I hate doing it, but it looks like I’ll have to choose randomly—the strengths and weaknesses of this or that class are utterly unknown to me. I always thought that
Galactogon
was just about some kids flying around in spaceships, but here I see that a commander is just one of many possible jobs! Tough choice this…

Not wanting to be too smart for my own good, I chose the one that I’d heard the most about.

You have chosen to develop as a Ship Commander.

Please note that you may change your character’s occupation after you have graduated from basic training.

Have a good game!

A flash of light and I merged with my character…Hello, Surgeon!

Chapter 1

Getting to know
Galactogon

Welcome, recruit!

The Qualian Empire has entrusted you with a great responsibility! Strive to be the best, purchase upgrades for your ship and…

A huge, semitransparent sheet appeared before my eyes, telling me how wonderful and carefree life for players in the empire was; however, I instantly waved it away. I hadn’t the slightest interest in working for the Qualians and the word “purchase” made me instantly lose any and all interest in the text. The main thing for me at the moment was to play through the tutorial and then flee back to reality—where my educational resources awaited me.

The starting point for new players in
Galactogon
was not particularly astounding—a landing platform with a spaceship, from which the new recruits emerged. Who we were and how we appeared in this world wasn’t important. A player stepping out onto the training planet of any empire became any ordinary recruit without any specific allegiance. At least that’s what the helpful notification bobbing before my eyes told me. Kind of dumb, that…About two hundred yards ahead of me stood a large building in the direction of which, along sun-soaked pavement, trudged a stream of new recruits. Hardly had I gotten a good look at this building when a window popped up titled “Allocation Center.”

And this window provided me with my first few tips about the game:

First—that each in-game item has its own attributes. For example, the allocation center had a Durability stat expressed as a percentage. There was probably some setting to show the absolute value in units, but for now this would do for me. And, it should be said that Durability was not the most interesting attribute of the building. More than anything else, I was happy to see among the attributes the line: “Building class: N/A.” From this first window ran a line to point number two:

Objects in the game have their own levels, which meant that, logically, players did too. To make sure, I opened my character menu and…Oh boy. This was just getting better and better…What stood out most was the utter lack of stats and slots for clothes. In fact, the menu had nothing at all in it besides a brief description of the character’s history (dating from my emergence from the spaceship) and a separate tab for inventory. That’s all! Aside from that, this little panel, which to a Runlustian was the end-all-be-all, contained nothing at all! Though that’s not true—there was also a 3-D projection of the character, which I could rotate from side to side and even use to correct my default posture—as well as a line which read 0.0 GC. Unless I was mistaken, this was an image of myself and a counter for how many Galactogon Credits I had.

Third—an object’s or item’s attributes will automatically pop up when you look at the object long enough. This was a bad thing. Looking closely at the players marching dutifully to the allocation center, I managed to confirm my hunch—extended attention indeed showed me the stats of nine recruits, utterly obscuring my field of view. What was worse was that none of the players’ stats told me anything useful—just their names and occupations. And yet, this one panel took up a vast amount of space. Opening my notebook, I made a note to myself to look in the game settings for a way to turn off the attributes pop-ups. When I needed them, I would open the attributes panel myself.

Fourth—when in the somatic interface…

“What’s the holdup?” someone yelled behind me and—rudely interrupting my contemplation of life, the universe and everything—landed a vicious kick to the small of my back, sending me flying several yards forward…

Damage taken: 5%. Health remaining: 95%.

Fourth—unlike
Runlustia
, the player is allowed to do damage to another player using nothing but their own body. And again, in this case, the damage is reflected in percentages…Somewhere, there’s got to be a setting for this as well. But that isn’t the main thing. The main thing is that I managed to stay on my feet, keeping my balance. This gave rise to a new tip:

Fifth—absent any character stats, the player’s in-game capabilities are replaced with his capabilities in real life. So if I can do 200 pull-ups IRL, then that’s how many pull-ups I can do in
Galactogon
…Or…If I know a martial art IRL, then I can use it just as well in the game…Let’s see how the developers have implemented this feature. Who wants to be my first victim?

The victim turned out to be a 6’5” bozo looking down at me from his great height. He had quite a body on him—I could see his six-pack through his shirt…Hmm…

Sixth—players wear clothes and clothes are effectively items, so they have their own specific attributes like all items. Considering that there weren’t any slots to be seen, it followed the player could put on as much clothes as he could carry..? I need to make sure to figure that one out…

Recruit’s Jersey. Durability: 20. Item class: F-1. Use: 0. Penetration Resistance: 0.1. Slashing Resistance: 0.2. Radiation Resistance: 0. Fire Resistance…

Seventh—items have their own levels which, logically, can also be increased. I was especially happy to see the long list of resistance stats that the jersey had. And yet there seemed to be no buffs to Dexterity, Strength, Intellect, etc. Only…

Damage taken: 25%. Health remaining: 70%.

Eighth (there are a lot of numbers in this game!)—tactile feedback is turned on in
Galactogon
. It’s not very strong and feels like a light touch, but it’s there. That’s nothing to be happy about though! I shuddered, recalling the time and effort sunk into implementing this feature in
Runlustia
—the developers had resisted until the bitter end.

“Halt immediately!” one of the security guards shouted and—stripping me of the opportunity to respond to the bozo’s blow with one of my own to his jaw—the bozo was suddenly lifted a dozen or so feet into the air by what seemed like a tractor beam. “Recruit! For assaulting another recruit you have been deemed unfit for service as Ship Commander!”

There was a flash and the big dude vanished. Oh boy!

Ninth—under no circumstances fight anyone during training. Although, wait! Why is it that I have the option to fight at all, if I’m not supposed to? Opening the settings menu, I found the replay tab and watched as, in a window right in front of me, a video of the past few minutes showed me emerging from the spaceship, stepping aside and standing quietly on my own, not bothering anyone. And here came that big bozo. Unlike all the other players, he made a beeline for me, yelled and kicked me. And here was I, preserving my balance, followed by another kick that forced me down to one knee. Then the big dude flew up and vanished and that was it—the video ended. So then, he had gone for me on purpose? Why?

Literally a minute later I received an answer to this question. I watched as another player emerged, took a deep breath and stopped in place as if thinking about where he’d go next.

“What’s the holdup?” The familiar bozo dude appeared once more from the ship and sent the tarrying player flying. Several moments later, this bozo (or his clone or whatever) was again sent to Kingdom Come by the guard, with no mention of his name. So this was simply a script in the game?! A way to set any players loitering at the entrance onto the one true path? Not bad. Something tells me that
Galactogon
will be a fun game…

Sign out.

“Master, I have not yet processed all of the information you requested. The job is 15% complete. Estimated time until completion is three hours.” No sooner had the cocoon’s lid moved aside, than Stan (as I sometimes referred to my smart home system) began reporting the work he had done over the past ten minutes. As the betting Masters had requested, I entered the game and set up my character without any further information. Now, however, I wouldn’t be taking another step forward without first having learned all there was to know about
Galactogon
.

“Send requests to the top Qualian guilds or clans that are in the game, asking for any proprietary information they may have about leveling a ship captain without putting in real money. Offer them, let’s say, fifty thousand dollars. I want to know everything—hidden missions, non-standard run-throughs and sequences and how to get them.”

I couldn’t invest real money into the game—the limitations of my agreement with the bettors weighed on me more than a winepress on a grape. The slightest, documented purchase of an in-game item in real life would count as grounds for disqualification. Information, however, had not been included in the list of prohibited aids. And that’s exactly what I intended on using.

“Requests sent,” Stan instantly replied. “What are your orders?”

“None. Like I told you, I’m not around until tomorrow,” I repeated and sat down in my armchair. (It may not be as dramatic as the ones in the presidential palace, but it’s mine and I love it.) “Let me see what you have at the moment—and keep updating the information every thirty minutes. It’s time I did some reading…”

What can I say? Before creating this game,
Galactogon
’s developers must have been under the influence of some controlled substances. For, never before in my gaming life have I encountered such wonders…

First of all, avatars in
Galactogon
really do not have any levels or experience points. The game designers decided that the player should not experience any discomfort upon transitioning into the game from reality. This was a famous dilemma, for in a game you could easily have a Strength of several million and could wipe out all the monsters in your path with one breath, while in the other place (real life, that is) all you had was a decently-fit body, and even that was only due to the capsule. This was especially painful for those players who spent the maximum-possible session in-game—two weeks without any connection to reality. Oh how you suffered when you had to adapt back to reality…I knew this firsthand.

The designers did not entirely give up the leveling mechanic, however. They simply transferred it to items and objects…

All the usable items in
Galactogon
have their own level, even your ordinary eating utensils. Each item type has its own form of leveling, which basically involves using the item constantly and successfully. For example, each time a spoon is used to successfully place food in your mouth, its experience level rises by a certain percentage. Once it reaches 100%, a new level is awarded and the XP counter is reset. The leveling is non-linear. Every new level requires more experience than the last, though the exact algorithm for this increment is kept secret. There is also, of course, an easier way to level up—through the in-game store. But that’s not an option available to me, as I don’t have the Galactogon Credits to buy upgrades and I’m not allowed to invest real money to do so.

Once an item reaches level 100, it either changes class or receives the “Legendary” attribute. The classes begin with “F,” like the jersey on my character, and go up to “A.” Only Legendary items, which are effectively at level 101 or higher, are better than A-class items.

Each item may have expansion slots—from none at all for F-class items to 23 for Legendary class items. You can place other items into these slots, but there are certain limitations. You cannot combine two items that have three or more levels between them. For example, you can’t equip a class-E ship with a Legendary ship cannon. But you can equip it in a ship of class-B. It’s very important to understand these nuances when operating or using any item or ship.

Getting back to our spoon, one curious thing is that almost all of them are Legendary items. According to the forums, the first thing players do is get a Legendary spoon, thereby earning the “Legend Owner” achievement. This Legendary spoon isn’t of much use—you can’t use it to shoot down a ship or mine a bunch of Raq (one of the most valuable in-game materials). However, any food eaten with this spoon will taste unforgettable: As you eat with it, nano-sensors determine your taste preferences, making even ordinary gruel taste amazing. The only requirement for this is that you play using the somatic interface.

Since I’m on the topic of nourishment, I should mention that food is not a pivotal resource in the game—with one slight condition. A player does not have to eat for the first six hours of his game session. Over the next six hours, however, the hungry player begins to feel discomfort, and after another six hours, there’s a strong buzzing and the player “dies,” heading to the respawn point. So, eating in the game is not a bad idea. Or, you could simply log-out of the game for a minute every six hours, since doing so resets the hunger counter.

The respawn point is also an interesting topic. The player cannot die until he has left the Training Sector. The allocation center, where each player must go upon first appearing in the game, is one of the facilities in this Sector. As soon as training ends—and training lasts at least one game month (that is, the player must spend one month in the game undergoing training)—the player is allocated: He gets to choose a homeworld on which he will continue playing his character. If the character is destroyed, some sort of Planetary Spirit or something (I haven’t understood exactly what this is yet) will offer to resurrect the player for free. If the player agrees, he will get all his items back upon resurrection, but the items will have lost one class-worth of experience. It’s worth noting, however, that this applies only to items on the player: Everything in the ship’s cargo holds, for example, will remain drifting at the site of the ship’s destruction.