The flayed man awoke in terror, gasping for breath at the bottom of a pit of skinless bodies. With his bony fingers he grasped his way out of the grimy blood-strewn hole of bared flesh and broken things. When he breached up above the corpses and pulled himself onto the stone platform overlooking the oubliette, he collapsed upon the ground and heaved in pain. He put his fingers to his breast, and inside found a crescent knife of obsidian that had splintered under his ribs, just below his heart.

With great difficulty, the flayed man lifted himself onto his feet. He looked out upon a vast expanse of golden dunes and black pyramids, underneath a crimson horizon of crackling lightning and churning winds.

The game's title appeared on the lcd monitor in bold red letters:

Cannibal Hymn

I hadn't done much gaming in a while, but my friends had been bugging me to pick up Cannibal Hymn. Everybody said it was a really hard game, but the best thing since sliced bread once you get into it.

Normally I'm really not somebody who likes to challenge myself much with videogames. I use them to relax from all the other pressures in life or to vent my frustrations. Sometimes I'll turn shooters onto the easiest settings just for the catharsis of blowing something away.

On the other hand I'm also very interested in how some games have taken innovative approaches to storytelling, and on that front I'd been told Cannibal Hymn was brilliant. It was on the cutting edge of the seamless marriage of narrative and gameplay, telling its story through environmental details and the player's choices rather than through cut-scenes and dry exposition.

The game even looked like something from out of my teenage daydreams. Cannibal Hymn's story, world, and aesthetic was all refreshingly strange and exotic, inspired by the ancient cultures and mythology of Central and South America, with a generous sprinkling of occult deep-cuts and Lovecraftian cosmic horror.

We'd just passed the winter solstice. The nights were long, dark, and cold, and I had nothing to do for the next few months but hole up and wait to hear back from my grad school applications anyways.

Well, maybe I did have something better to do.

I looked down at my phone to see some more texts from The_Red_Queen.

Jess 17:05:04(EST): Hey, just got off work! Still down for coffee tonight?

Matt 17:07:02(EST): Yup! Still down! Can't wait to meet you. :)

Jess 17:07:55(EST): Okay, so what time are we meeting downtown?

Matt 17:08:44(EST): How about 7 PM?

Jess 17:09:20(EST): Perfect! Gives me some time to hop in the shower. :P

'Gives me some time to crack this thing open!' I thought, returning my attention to the game.

I hit triangle and took a look at my puny starting character stats.

LVL - 1 Blood-drops to next LVL - 673 STR - 8 VIT - 8 DEX - 8 END- 8 INT - 8 RES -8

From the item menu I equipped the Broken Obsidian Knife and took a look at its stats...

LVL 1 DAGGER WEIGHT - 1.5 DURABILITY - 16 PHY-DMG - 40 MAG-DMG - 0 FIR-DMG - 0 LIG-DMG - 0 STR-BON - D DEX-BON - D INT-BON - NA FAI-BON - NA PHY-DEF - 20 MAG-DEF - 5 FIR-DEF - 15 LIG-DEF - 15

The item description read: 'This black blade failed to meet its mark, and so, by its own heartache, was split in twain.'

I couldn't imagine a broken stone knife was going to get me very far in this brutal world... I'd need to go forward and forage for at least some basic equipment and something to wear.

Before the skinless man stretched a long mudbrick bridge, suspended over the sands and leading to the walls of what appeared to be a massive temple complex. The path led out towards a long monumental building lined with a row of gargantuan columns. Atop its red thatched roof, visible from the far-side of the bridge, was a forest of spikes topped with heads and impaled corpses, laid out to curdle in the scorching desert sun.

Sitting along the high and narrow path was a group of three skeletal alms-seekers, bundled in funerary sacks which they seemed to wear as cloaks. Dazed and disgruntled, they shook out their skull-top offering bowls aimlessly with a futile sense of entitlement and indignation.

As the flayed man began his venturing steps across the threshold, the first of the beggars, who lay splayed on the ground, seized at my feet, holding me back from passing while the other beggars drew close and cloying.

In a frantic panic, I mashed the square button and beat away at the wretches. Slashing my ensnarer once -13 dmg, twice -21 dmg, thrice -34 dmg, and four times for -42 dmg.

The beggar grit his teeth and hissed the life from his lungs as he collapsed onto his stomach. Dead.

I continued forward across the bridge, eliminating the other two wretches who lay along the way in three and five strikes respectively. If it already took this many attacks, just to get rid of these scrubs at this early a level, I knew the game wasn't going to let me frolic around on easy. Still, it certainly didn't feel like it was going to be as hard as everybody said it was.

Now facing the entrance of the great temple, the flayed man warily pried open the immense wooden doors of the gargantuan sanctuary and walked inside.

Location Discovered: "Memorial for the Dessicated"

The sanctuary was almost pitch black, its interior coated in the long shadows which draped down from the massive pillars, decorated in murals of dancing skeletons. The only illumination throughout the long hall was an opening in the ceiling from which spilled white hot sunlight.

As the flayed man stumbled through the darkness, the echo of his steps were interrupted by the growls and snarls of some frightful thing. I could see a large shape looming out beneath the shadows. As it grew closer I saw it was a some kind of big cat, like a tiger or a lion.

By the time it had come into full view it was too late to run. An HP bar loomed over the screen next to the boss's name.

"Lunar Rak"

The massive black-and-white spotted jaguar lunged at me, its thick and heavy claws outstretched in one heaving swipe. Still unfamiliar with the controls, I tried to dive away too late as the lunar beast tore a sizable chunk from the flayed man’s chest, splattering blood and wrenching his exposed rib cage.

Its fatal strike mauled me for a devastating -375 dmg.

My health plunged down to 10%. The attack had been just short of a one-hit kill. I desperately jabbed at the right stick as the flayed man, in a display of pitiable futility, attempted to hobble past the blood-crazed predator. My character's movement, already stunted, had now slowed to a crawl after taking so much damage. I lost control of the game’s camera, as the great beast took hold of the flayed man and crushed his skull between its long sabre-teeth.

“ALL IS LOST” bled onto the screen in cruel red letters.

Holy shit. This thing does not fuck around.