1. The Game

Looking back at things objectively, I would say it all started because of boredom.

Have you ever felt so bored that just seeing ants working, or a fish swimming in a tiny aquarium ends up being as good entertainment as scrolling through your cell phone?

Even more so if it has been downloaded and as always there is nothing worthwhile on the television and your computer has crashed thanks to spam.

It's bad I haven't introduced myself yet, my name is Tyler Hammer, just one of the billions of humans in the world, and one of the many who leads a comfortable but terrifyingly monotonous life.

But getting back to the subject, I would say that everyone feels a great level of boredom at times, especially in the daily routine.

Me?, I feel this every second of my life, and no, I'm not exaggerating.

My life boils down to going to school, going to my part-time job, home and repeating everything in a cycle that seems to have no end, but at some point the "formal" studies end and I would have to choose a career, but that would still be exchanging yours for half a dozen. The cycle would continue the same, just with different destinations.

Of course, there are the occasional outings with friends or people at work, but the monotony still continues.

Maybe I'm exaggerating? Yes, it's quite possible but that's how things are for me and I can't change that perspective (unless I use some medication, which I'm totally against).

And like everyone with a monotonous life, my best escape is games. Since the first time I started playing computer and cell phone games, I discovered that one of the most interesting things is finding good games from unusual sources, so most of the ones I play I install from indie game sites.

Lately I ended up taking a liking to idle games. It's quite ironic, isn't it, after all in them you barely do anything but things go on without problems even with the cell phone turned off.

That said, there are differences between idle games as well as all others, there are those saturated with advertisements and those that are basically virtual aquariums. I prefer the aquarium ones to the ones loaded with advertisements, after all, at least they still need you for some actions and the effects can last a little longer so you just have to watch advertisement after advertisement.

Even though I've been interested in idle games lately, the ones I like most are still RPGs and strategies. I think that's what caught my attention about this game.

[Divine's Journey]

A free game, with an interesting description saying it is a mix of RPG with simulation and management, but also guaranteeing that it could develop on its own if given some direction, and is also idle.

From what little I could take from the description (without any images other than the cover) it would be a strategic NPC management game. But I couldn't find virtually anything about what the gameplay itself or the story would be like, except that it would have something to do with god, as the name already gives away a little.

I was intrigued by how they would make a game like this, since the description stated several times that it would not be a platform game or an automatic troop mobilization game.

Of course, as a good nerd tormented by the constant boredom of life who seemed to have a level of boredom 10x worse than an average person (almost at a clinical level but not quite so), I immediately downloaded the game and regretted it almost immediately. .

I can say with certainty that I was one of the victims of false advertising and my curiosity/hope (/pure boredom). Since you couldn't do practically anything in this game, forget about the automatic iddle games like aquarium, in these at least they have some introduction and occasionally some events to give you a direction to go.

In Divine's Journey there was none of that. You can't do virtually anything other than look at your phone screen. Well not exactly, I could click on some NPCs (who I assume are humans, since they are only represented as white figures) in the middle of the village which was strangely well defined almost at the level of a movie.

You could see that in some parts the company that made this game was dedicated, especially because of how the AI ​​guided the NPCs without any type of bug or unnecessary repetition.

Pressing on them quickly opened a tab that let me see names and occupations, but nothing beyond that, not level, sex, age or race. That's why I said that I assumed they were humans but I can't guarantee from everything I know they could be dwarves, semi-humans, Orcs, elves, etc.

Furthermore, I also discovered that if I pressed them for about 3 seconds, a -1 would appear on top of them, causing "pain" in them, which was also reflected in me for probably having broken the cell phone screen.

Because I couldn't do anything on the first day, I even found this village, I had to search to find the village, I didn't start there, I just kept clicking and dragging my finger around, I ended up getting so angry that I pressed my cell phone a little bit with too much force, which caused it to break. At least I thought that at the time.

I thought I had broken the screen or some component inside it, because my finger hurt as if I had received a shock when I took this -1 from the NPCs. Which I discovered was the effect of an initial skill I had, Punishment Lv.1.

[Punishment Lv. 1

—those who stray from the path must be brought back, even if through pain]

The description is a bit sinister but what can I do, I found out about this when I managed to open my status tab, which I in turn discovered by chance while clicking around to see if anything happened.

Apparently in this game I could only access my information tab (status) by clicking on the sun exactly at noon in the game, being a day equivalent to half an hour ago in the real world.

The strange thing was that this shock only happened when I quickly clicked on the human, animal or plant NPCs, nothing happened except for the animals dying and the plants shaking, but when I tapped longer to open the NPCs' "information" that didn't happen.

Ah!, every time I applied the punishment to the NPCs the bar at the bottom of the screen decreased, but I doubt it was magic, I think it would be something more like stamina or something, this bar being one of the few most interesting aspects of the game. game. Until I ran out of status.

One can imagine that with all this, deleting this game would be the most obvious thing to do, no, I completely agree if you thought that. After all, it was a basically empty game with several meaningless components and no explanation other than a half-good description.

But strangely, even though I can't do almost anything in the game and if I wanted to be more entertained it would be better to buy an aquarium, I simply couldn't stop watching the "villagers" living their lives, diligently, and peacefully.

Ah, but even though you can't do almost anything, you've already seen that you still have to do at least one thing. That's why I decided that when I saw someone doing something they shouldn't do, which was very rare to be honest, only then would I quickly click on the top to punish them.

At least the management part of the description was pretty accurate, but if I'm being honest, if the objective of the game was just to "guide" the villagers there would be some kind of work forced by constant pain, the only thing I would have to say to anyone made this game was that he would have a terrible personality.

Even though I didn't understand why, I continued to play it for about 3 hours every day for a week. Only by observing and occasionally clicking on the villagers and the scenery was it possible to see trying to make something different happen.

In fact, if you want to know, this is what my status would be like in the game.

[Name: Tyler Lv.0

Titles:----

Class: Unknown Wandering God

Attributes:------

Skills: Observation Lv.1, Punishment Lv. 1

Inventory: ------]

And I thought things would continue like this until I got bored with the game and finally deleted it. That is if, on a fateful start of the weekend, an excessively decorated carriage escorted by 5 mounted warriors and accompanied by two more modest carriages, had not appeared.