Red grins and clucks her tongue. “You’re kind of a creeper. But okay. I’ll make sure she gets it.”
I should feel embarrassed by this statement, but I can’t find it in me to care. Instead, I race back across the parking lot and get into my car just as she begins to bang on the apartment door and Audrey’s head peeks out. They exchange words and she’s handed the fedora full of stuff. Hesitantly, she steps outside and opens the letter, a laugh making her whole body shake as she reads it. Holding the envelope in her hand, she looks it over and then glances out toward the parking lot, but since I’m parked a few rows back and under those trees, she can’t see me in the dark.
When she goes back inside, I take a deep breath and start the car to drive back home. It’s only a matter of waiting now.
Tell me about Audrey. Leave nothing out.
Cline’s memories of Audrey are what shaped the game I developed for her. Starring her. It’s nothing spectacular as far as graphics go. After talking with him and finding out that the two of them used to play games on his dad’s old Atari (“The only thing he left behind before he took off with that bitch, Kendra”) I decided to keep it basic. They're the only kind of games she knows how to play, so it’s a bit of a throwback to 8-bit. Much like Minecraft or a few other games that are going back to their roots, Audrey’s game is simple.
When she puts it into her computer, it will load, and on her screen will appear the name She Dims the Stars with some music that Cline put together which sounds like some music box she used to have in her room when she was younger. I have no idea how he remembers this tune, but he says that it’s one of those things that gets stuck in your head and never really leaves … just hangs out there and suddenly pops up out of nowhere.
Game Audrey is a princess born into a land where everyone loves her. Tragedy strikes upon her birth and her mother dies, but she is so adored that the town helps to raise her. She is a wild little thing with a chubby best friend who wreaks havoc everywhere they go. They spend most of their time down by the water’s edge, playing in the woods and camping under the stars. It’s there that young Audrey discovers that she has wings and is far different from everyone else around her, so she tries to keep the wings a secret.
A wicked step-mother enters the picture, and with her comes clouds of darkness over the land that Audrey once played around and where she found so much happiness. This woman finds out about the wings and steals them, leaving Audrey helpless and grounded. Desperate and confused. Her best friend has disappeared as well.
This is the beginning of her journey.
In Level 1, she’ll be made to search for her way out of the town. Of course, I’ve provided her with exactly what she’s asked for: a unicorn. Though, to be fair, it’s an alicorn because it has wings to fly like a Pegasus, but it’s a unicorn, too. Cline and I agreed that if a unicorn was going to shit cookies as a defense, then it should be from great heights so that the most damage could be caused—hence the addition of the wings.
I don’t know how much time it will take her to find her alicorn, but once she does, she has to earn its trust, and only after they bond can she move on to the next level.
Level 2 is finding her best friend. As promised, I made Cline completely mute. He has no mouth, which I think she’ll appreciate on so many levels. He, of course, has been banished to another land by the wicked step-mother and is being held prisoner by “that bitch, Kelsey” who Audrey has to defeat in order to save him. I have included the option for her to give him back his ability to speak or not, though I assume she’ll opt to keep him silent. Wouldn’t we all?
Once Kelsey is defeated, in whichever manner Audrey so chooses to take her down, and Cline is freed, he will lead her to a cave where his weapon is hidden: a fedora wearing dragon. Now, it’s not my fault that this dragon exists. It’s also not my fault that the dragon can talk instead of Cline. What is my fault is that the dragon mostly talks in innuendo and bad pick-up lines. So when they first meet, he definitely asks her, “Do you like dragons?”
She can choose to slay him or let Cline have something to ride. I, once again, assume she will let him keep his dragon, even if he’s a major douche. The two of them, at this point, can continue on to the next level.
Level 3 involves the two of them working together to overcome the wicked step-mother. This part of the game is a little harder than the others because Audrey will be faced with a Miranda-like character who has an army of bat-shit crazy followers, doing her bidding. They follow her around and do her every command, attacking Audrey from all sides. The whole town seems to turn against her, but it’s merely a mirage set up by Miranda, and if Audrey can figure that out, she can defeat her. In doing so, she can free the town, unlock her father from the spell he’s been placed under, and she’ll retrieve her wings.