Life in Odin City

[Parchment]

Hello, Mr. Virgil Wall! Your name reminds me of my favorite author and my home town.

I'm writing, though, to compliment you on your game, Creeper World. I have played it often over the years, and it is certainly my favorite video game of all time.

What amazes me most about it is the replayability. I'm amazed that each day there is a new would for me to become stranded upon, face an onslaught from a terrifying foe, and take off from triumphantly. And your programmed design for generating these boards is amazingly intelligent. I'm impressed that it can generate a variety of kinds of maps (like island-hoppers where you have to preserve every last resource, maps with large pools where you can sneak in a mortar, or landscapes with a mountain pass that you are best to defend with a lone blaster like Leonidas at Thermopylae), and never (to my knowledge) come up with one that is impossible, but also never one that is ridiculously simple.

I also love that I can vary the game myself, alter my play-style according to my mood.

Sometimes I play the game for speed. I imagine the people sleeping in Odin City. I hear the familiar rumble of Löki off in the distance, descending down some mountain, and set out to take it down with the precision of a special forces assault. I take out my map, make a quick survey of the land, and plan my approach to the totems. On auspicious days, I can see how it might work without even firing a shot, often with a well-placed relay over a will-be river-bed. (And I see it as a river, somehow. The pixels become landscapes in my mind, in a way more real than games with better graphics.) But usually, I plan out the spots for artillery, calculated both for and without the upgrade, if available). I even preplan which upgrades I will take and in which order, convinced that slightly altering the order could shave off fractions of seconds. I do all this because I can stand to think of my beloved people back there in Odin City for one extra second. I hit the totems, some still immersed in that cursed Creeper, right as a key spot is taken out by a perfectly timed first mortar shot or precisely budgeted bombing from a lone drone built upon an ungreen mountain. In some rare cases, as Odin City trails along the map toward the convergence of green lines, some encroaching bit of creeper takes out a collector, or even a blaster I've neglected to lift, and I imagine the people watching through the windows as the creeper takes over the landscape, eventually wiping out all remnants as the energy storage depletes.

A game like that will take me about a half hour, incorporating the time played on pause making my plan (which always seems like a kind of cheating, I must admit). It provides a great little escape. When I play such a game, the first order of business is to submit the score online, then quickly check by opening up the leader-board where I am in some strange competition with specters across the internet, who are of course real people who love the game as well. Usually I say to myself, "Damn you Oldsluglicker!" who always seems to beat me by a bit, even when I have played in high gear. He must be a Navy Seal or something.

But sometimes I play the game a different way. Sometimes on today's map, but often on random or some date selected because it corresponds to a historical event or personal memory, I begin first by attempting to get to stability. I imagine that we, the people of Odin City, have grown weary of all this space travel and have arrived on a planet we rather like. If we set it up right, we can stay here, raise our children, and restore some of the culture that has been lost. The game's storyline itself is such an interesting adaptation of Norse mythology that it suggests contemplation of such things.

In such a game, I set out first to secure a reasonable amount of territory, not even paying attention to the totem locations. I tend to be more geometrical with collector placement, preplanning to utilize real-estate later. A well-placed mortar or two usually staves off the main force of the incursion, and a few blasters can be deployed clear out area, allowing me to turn more of the landscape green, making it inhabitable. If spores have been detected, I try to provide double-cover to all the territory well in advance, not wanting any damage to the developing landscape. Soon, a good portion of the map is covered with green. I build a few gratuitous collectors simply to change the color of nearby pixels, as if I'm making a little patch where we might build a baseball field or a park.

And I could remain here indefinitely. Without pausing, I could leave the game and come back, the energy emitted from my weapons strikes a perfect balance with the creeper, such that the people feel safe to walk out of Odin City, and look down into the pools of Creeper that flow like rivers through the map. I imagine the Creeper becoming docile and harmless when kept in check, and soon the people are building boats.

But then, I look at the map again and re-envision how I can easily subdue more Creeper and conquer more territory. As I am now producing just enough energy to keep the current Creeper at bay, I begin by slowly building reactors, first three, then five, then eight, then thirteen, relishing in the surplus that will begin to grow when construction is complete. So, I also build storage units so I can have enough surplus for any contingency. My people are getting a bit restless, and they want to see the onslaught continue, eager to see the creeper beaten back further, and they are placed when I drop orders to make eight speed units, signaling I am preparing for war. Then, as I can stay in this position forever if I wanted, I go ahead and fill up every remaining space with extra reactors and weapons, including a healthy air force of Drones, sometimes building beyond supply and taking on a huge deficit that approaches a thousand.

I remember to turn off green packets, because I don't want to complete the map accidentally.

I launch an air strike, aimed at obliterating as much of the Creeper as possible, then rapidly fill up the openings with orders to create collectors, and send my blasters forward to retain as much territory as possible after this battle has conclude.  When I get the upgrade, I go ahead and take the move-speed increase, just for the style-points I give myself for it, for the pleasure I get when my blasters in motion suddenly assume an increased velocity. When the fray is over, after my military-industrial complex has driven forward as far as it can go, my nearly all-green screen delights me.

I prefer to cap emitters with triple redundancy if possible. I also like to keep some Creeper active but contained, just so my people can watch it being blasted as it drops from a cliff or watch mortars fling bombs into pools that quickly decrease, just so we can watch and relive the old battles when we first pushed the Creeper back. "Do you remember how hard that was on that world that had that huge cliff, clear across the map, where Creeper would pour down? I thought it would wipe out Odin City for sure! Now look at Löki fall!" And such stories would pass down through generations, as my people began to grow culturally again, finally able to settle down. They'd rediscover philosophy and literature, and they begin to contemplate things that are beyond the basic needs of survival, calculating the amount of energy needed to keep the war machine going. I fill up the screen with buildings, imagining they are parks and libraries and meeting places where people gather in peace.

About a half hour has passed, give or take, depending on how much I have paused (when I play this more leisurely way, I like to go afk). Which means my half hour break is over, and I do, after all, have other things to do than play this video game, like write a thank you note to Virgil Wall for making the game. And, after all, my culture is getting lazy anyway. There is no more danger left, except some faux danger created by all these bars popping up by the lake. Creeper isn't even creeper to them anymore, and children are now swimming in it, clinging to blow up animals. And I look at my people, still alive somehow, and realize there has to be some purpose to it all. My job is to show them that purpose. So, I initiate some final design flourishes (my favorite is movie Odin City to some idyllic place), and call all the people within its walls, send out a final salvo of drones to hit the last remnant of Creeper for us to behold as we rise, and initiate the final order, pulling my civilization into the sky.

Also great music. Five Stars.

Parch