Andy was left alone inside an impossible black void. Everything had disappeared. The only thing that existed now was him, as he was, as of a few seconds ago in his apartment. The alien suit dude was gone. His apartment was gone. Existence itself seemed to be gone.

Just him floating in the impossible void. If he had suffered from claustrophobia or agoraphobia, or whichever phobia pertained to this situation, then he would probably be in deep shit right about now. But as it were, he did not, and he wasn’t.

Well at least he didn’t feel like he was in any immediate trouble, he could still breath after all and the temperature inside this void was… he would have to say perfect.

Andy looked around and all he could see was more void. He wondered how long he would have to remain here? Perhaps while they gathered all the other contestants? But how long would that take? Weeks? Months?

Okay, now he was a little concerned. Starvation and / or sanity loss were legitimate factors to consider here you kreepy alien suit guy!

Luckily before real serious panic could set in, something happened. A bright pulsating light near his position.

After pulsing a few times, it quickly transformed into a bright rectangular surface that, if he didn’t know any better, resembled a monitor of sorts.

“Welcome player.” A professional yet sexy female voice announced. The voice seemed to have come from the screen. Both audibly and visually. He meant visually, as in the screen seemed to have a pulsating effect of its own as she spoke.

“All players have been gathered, the first round will begin shortly.”

So all the players had been collected. That meant what, he was the last to be contacted and maybe that’s why they sent him straight here? Nah. It seemed unlikely. Then what? Maybe he was in some sort of time dilation while the rest of the world moved on?

Honestly he decided to rather just not think about it, there were too many strange options to consider here and it would just tire him out mentally or straight up break his brain.

“The game will now be selected.”

Now she had his attention. The monitor suddenly started to randomly flick through a series of images several times per second. Each time the image changed it would make an audible click sound, the whole effect coming off as a type of spin the lottery wheel.

He could guess what was happening here.

Gradually the flicking slowed down and eventually Andy could actually start making out some of the options flashing across the screen. He at least recognised some of the games and it really was a broad selection of genres. Everything from RPG’s to shooters and even Turn based strategy.

What worried him a bit though was that he did not recognise most of the titles. These were games he had mostly never heard of. The covers of each game were generally elaborate so they all seemed like quality games, and yet he didn’t know most of them. That should be impossible, his knowledge of gaming was pretty extensive.

The ‘lottery’ suddenly started slowing down to a crawl.

Tick, tick, tick, tick…

Tick, tick….

Tick.

The screen seemed to rollover one last time to a game he did recognise. Andy’s breath caught in his throat and panic actually set in for the first time. The cover of the game was ‘Dark Tide’. It was a faithful souls-like clone. The kind where you expected to die hundreds of times before beating the game. The alien suit guy’s words echoed in Andy’s mind: ‘die in the game, die for real’.

Andy felt like he was going to be sick.

And then… Tick.

The screen ticked over one last time after what seemed like an unbearable eternity.

Andy doubled over in relief, trying to catch his breath. He was so flooded with relief, he forgot to look at what game was actually selected.

As Andy finally braved up enough to glance at the screen, it blinked out before he could see the title.

Wait!

Luckily the women announced it anyway. “The game selected is Landers”.

Another game he had never heard of, what was going on here?

“The difficulty for Landers will be set to Hard.”

Joy.

“Randomly selecting starter planet…”

So some kind of space game? Still not enough info to puzzle out the genre though.

“Voreo selected.”

That sounded like the kind of name you gave to something nasty.

“Randomly selecting modifier...”

“Modifier selected: ‘Uncertain victory’”.

Andy wondered what that meant, he really hoped she would explain.

“Primary objective of round one… Withheld by modifier.”

Oh shit. That’s what it means.

“Secondary object… Survive.”

Fuck so a survival game on some kind of dangerous planet in a genre I don’t know, with a victory condition I don’t know in a game I don’t know. This is bad.

“Round one - Landers, will begin in 3… 2…”

“Wait! What the fuck! Don’t I get any more info than that?!” Andy couldn’t help but cry out, as his world went dark once more, including his consciousness this time.

Andy groggily opened his eyes. It felt like he’d been woken from far too few hours of sleep, to the sound of an annoying alarm. It only took a second for the memories of the past few events to surface and for him to snap up too full alert thought.

There were flashing lights and sirens going off all around. Not the alarm clock kind, but the ‘oh shit we’re fucked’ kind. He immediately noticed how smothered he was feeling. Looking out through his visor, he appeared to be in some kind of- space suit. He suddenly had a very bad feeling about the nature of how these ‘games’ are played out. He would rather be using a mouse and keyboard!

Andy tried to get up and look around, but quietly felt the restraints. He struggled to look down in his current suit and bindings, but he appeared to be strapped into a seat. Looking around for the source of the sirens, didn’t seem to help either, they were kind of everywhere.

Andy noticed he appeared to be in some kind of space shuttle, but did not seem to be moving. Looking out through the one and only window he could see, he saw a nearby planet, which he assumed to be Vorea, just going by the ominous dusty cloud cover concealing most of it.

He might have really appreciated the incredible view of space and the zero gravity and all those wonders, if the entire cabin hadn’t started violently rocking around and if incredibly loud and much more ‘local’ sirens hadn’t started going off.

“Warning critical failures aboard the Aldonis. Emergency launch initiated!” Another sexy female voice announced, not the same one as before.

And then Andy’s stomach lurched as the massive g-forces of the pod being jettisoned hit him. He came awfully close to throwing up. What’s worse, is he felt something collide with the pod moments later with a very scary ‘thunk’ sound and now the pod was also spinning, making him want to throw up even more.

Trying not to get too dizzy by looking out the window, Andy caught glimpses of an enormous spaceship, presumably the Aldonis. It was truly breathtaking, especially given the fireworks display. The Aldonis was blowing up left, right and center, with debris being flung in all directions.

Then the shuttle began to rock violently and soon after the view was obscured by dusty clouds and flames. He was entering the atmosphere now. But he was pretty sure the ship wasn’t supposed to be spinning still, that is generally not how this sort of thing is supposed to go. He had a really bad feeling about this.

The spinning had slowed down significantly by the time he finally broke out of the upper atmosphere, but he caught a glimpse of the surface of the planet approaching rapidly. The spinning finally stopped in full and he could feel the sudden massive shift in G’s as the shuttle began to burn retrograde.

He doubted this landing was going to go well. And sure enough the prophet of doom struck again. He felt every bone in his body want to snap at the force of the impact. It really, really, hurt and he almost blacked out from the pain.

Pain in this ‘game’ was too real. Fuck this shit! This can’t even be called a game anymore!

There were sparks and smoke everywhere, it seemed like the shuttle with its flickering and dying interior lighting was about to go up in flames any moment. Andy was not going to stick around for that. He immediately started trying to figure out how to release the harness.

Unfortunately the ride was not over yet. The entire shuttle started tilting over and eventually crashed again. But that was not the worst of it. Andy could feel it start rolling. He was flung around within the constraints of the harness, while he could feel the shuttle violently rolling. He could not see outside the window due to all the dust that was being kicked up, but could only assume that he had incorrectly landed on a hill of some kind and was now paying the price for it.

With one final crash the shuttle stopped once more, this time at an angle, giving Andy one final set of bruises to remember it by.

Now he proceeded to work the harness in earnest, eventually finding a lever on the side of the seat that caused the entire thing to open up and deposit him on the ground with a thud. Ow. Again.

Small fires had started cropping up and the flickering lights were barely hanging on. He needed to get out of here quick. Andy looked around and eventually found a hatch with a big read lever, reading ‘emergency release’. That would do.

He pulled it down and the entire hatch door exploded outwards. A rush of air suddenly blew into the shuttle and knocked him on his ass once more. Andy looked out the door after getting back up and witnessed a hellscape.

Black mountainous terrain as far as the eye could see. Which wasn’t far on account of the dirty brown atmosphere and fog swirling about. Veins of molten rock snaked all over the place, with an actual occasional lava pit.

“This planet sucks!” He couldn’t help but complain out loud.

He quickly looked around before he left this death trap, but could not find anything useful. There really wasn’t anything here except him, his spacesuit and the burning interior of his space shuttle. Andy decided not to linger.

He looked out the hatch of the shuttle and was alarmed to see that there was a giant crevice below him, ending in a lava river. The shuttle that seemed to be wedged in the mouth of the crevice suddenly lurched and Andy lost his balance, almost falling out of it.

Andy quickly got up. The shuttle was wedged in the crevice, but it was barely holding on. Andy did not like doing acrobatics above a fiery pit of death, but staying here was clearly not an option.

He exited the hatch and scaled over the top of the shuttle. Balancing on the top, carefully made his way over to one of the cliff faces and pulled himself up over the edge. The suit made a scraping sound against the edge of the cliff, which nearly made him shit his pants. He did not know how durable it was after all.

Andy scrambled up and finally looked around. There was nothing but hellscape in every direction. He was alone out here as best he could tell. What was he supposed to do? Survive? How?

He looked back to the shuttle when it lurched one more time and finally on the rear side of it, saw another hatch labelled: ‘Supplies’.

Oh shit.

Not a moment before he had the thought, the cliffside finally gave way and the shuttle plummeted to the lava river below.