So when I was a kid, in elementary school at I had some friends and we were talking about how, in just a few years, we would go our separate ways in middle school and not really have a way to contacting each other, and also during that time, because it was the 2010's, Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were super popular. My friend introduced me to the game Clash of Clans, but at first I thought he was saying Classic Lands, so I was confused. And my other friend, best friend at the time because I had favorites, played Clash Royale, and I thought that if I joined her clan, we would be able to stay connected, because we didn't have social media accounts back then, because we were kids. It wasn't really my favorite games, but it was okay, I guess (I preferred games where I only had to control 1 main character) So I got the game, and my brother was also playing it too, and I was too afraid to battle , because I was afraid of losing trophies, and also I didn't lie that we can't both win, so I got my brother to battle for me, like once after I join my friend's clan and my friend requested to friendly battle me, and since I didn't want my friend to think I was bad at the game, I asked my brother to battle for me to impress her. Also once, my dad had to go to China for a trip, but his phone broke, so I told him that he could use my phone, and also to battle for me to boost my trophy count, and he got me to arena 7, and then I refused to ever battle because these people are all so much better than I am, and when 2v2 came out, I just exclusively played that mode, because there is no risk if you lose, and you still get chests out of it. Also, once when we had a friend over at our house, one of my friends accidentally used up some of my resources in my Clash of Clans base and instead if coming clean for it, he made up this story about 2 ugly creatures who are siblings, who ran away from home because their mom is abusive, who live in a cave steal peoples gold, gems, and elixir to buy candy to survive, buying skittles and m&m's, and he said that they visited him at school he had to give them candy do they wouldn't bother him. This spawned a lot of lore and my brother and I had fun writing stories about these 2 characters and I even illustrated some of them, along with the hackers that helped them steal their loot. It was a lot of fun, and I even wrote about this story in my english class creative writing unit, and got a decent score. My brother would go to that friend's house to play on Fridays, and I would also want to go with them, but I would have my writing tutor class during that time, so I never got a chance to go to their house. As a kid, I imagined that they had this very cool gaming setup where he could play games with my brother and his brother. Also, I watched all the Clash-o-Rama series, which I really enjoyed, and also thought the songs in the ads about the characters were catchy. Also, during my middle school years, Fortnite was becoming really popular, and I've also saw these articles about how that game is addictive, with clickbait titles like Fortnite is as addictive as heroin, which I actually believed at that age, and even though I thought the game was really cool, I was also really scared of it, but of course I played all the rip-off versions, such as 1v1.lol, and justbuild.lo, where I built my castle. I also was afraid of playing Among us because it might teach kids how to lie better, but of course, I also played all of the rip-off games from that too, such as disc-us, where the imposter could turn into a disc. Also, my risk-assessment was pretty off as a kid, like I refused to go to my friend's birthday party at the trampoline park because I had to agree to a waiver, and the safety video scared me, but I would still do risky stuff, like jump off the swings and regularly get in trouble for it at school. Anyways, in the argumentative essay unit, I even wrote an essay about how I believed that Fortnite is an addictive game. But nonetheless I would still watch so much Fortnite on Youtube back in the day, with my favorite Youtuber being Tomato - Fortnite, because of his funny trolling roleplay-type videos, and i was just also amazed that people can build so fast in Fortnite, and of course, I also learned all of the dances and I acted like I was in Fortnite in real life, pretending to glide down, chop trees and walls, build structures, shoot people, and revive people. Once a kid asked me what I was doing, and I reply "Playing Fortnite" and he said "She's playing Fortnite (not to be confused with Fortinet)! She's acting like a gorilla!" And of recourse, I wanted to go to the Fortnite concerts, after the Marshmallow one and the Travis Scott one, that's how I found out about those artists and their music, which I think was really good, but I was able to get in, like the :arty Royale mode is fun, but once we get there, the [performers are on the screens instead of in 3d space, and their songs were okay, but definitely not my favorite. And also, of course I love the fan songs, such as Fortnite Rap Battle, and Fortnite Rap Battle Royale, and don't forget about Chug Jug with You. * * * * * * * * *So trigger warning here: autistic meltdowns (if you don't want to read this, skip to the end of this part with the stars) video games have always been a very big part of my life and my childhood, and this is the story on how, during a pretty bad period of my life, video games saved me from potentially doing drugs (okay fine, this is clickbait, but it did felt real at the time.) So I was in 8th grade, and the pandemic was just starting, so we had this rule where we needed to wash our hands before we entered the classroom. Sounds like a reasonable rule, and this has never been a problem for me before. So my first class was English class, and the teacher was really strict on this policy, and it's been a few years, so my memory's kinda fuzzy, but iirc, she was scary, and she would not let me in the class, shout at me, drag me to the bathroom, and make me wash my hands with soap and water, and I think that all of this buildup of tension, of being forced to do something I don't really want to do, would send me into a meltdown for hours, crying as the adults watch me, jumping and screaming, and hitting my body on the floor, trying to not get my hands dirty so I wouldn't have to do it again. Also, they had this rule where I was also supposed to wash my hands after I go use the bathroom, so a staff member would follow me everywhere from a distance (so I couldn't tell due to being near-sighted) to make sure I was doing that, and I didn't really like that either, so I would try to shake them off my tail, which didn't really work, and then I was thinking about either trying to hold it for the whole entire day like I did back in elementary school because I was afraid of the auto-flush toilets jump-scaring me (still am, except now I just put toilet paper over the sensors-and leave them there), or I was going to go during lunchtime, leave campus, and run to a store that I found on Google Maps that was within a few miles of my school, use the bathroom there, and then come back and somehow not get lost on the way-like that other time I tried to walk to school after missing my car ride, got super lost in the streets for half a day, and my parents had to call the police to try to find me. I did not actually end up doing this, but I was desperate enough/not in the right frame of mind to be considering this pretty unrealistic proposal. And after I finally calmed down, they would let me complete the rest of my day, even though one of the staff members called me a truant, because I was "skipping class", which I didn't really think was true because I couldn't really help it, and it made me feel like I was in trouble, where the other teachers didn't make me do this, thankfully (for me) so the rest of the day was rather uneventful. When I finally get home, I would be physically and emotionally exhausted from the meltdown, and I didn't really want to go to school tomorrow just to repeat the same thing every day, and I didn't think that I could keep going if I didn't find some way to decompress, or some way to escape from the pain and stress that this situation was causing me. This is so cringe to think about now, and I don't want to compare my experiences at that time with real drug addiction because that would be very disrespectful to what they had to go through, which is so much worse, but during that time, I wasn't thinking rationally, or in the right frame of mind, so I was aimlessly rifling through various kitchen cabinets trying to find "drugs", even though my rational brain knew for a fact that my house didn't have drugs, but at that time, I was just that desperate for something to take away my pain and make me feel okay, or even good, even though I knew that it would cause wayyy more pain for me later, but I can deal with that later, I thought. But I needed the relief now. Now that I think about it, I was just trying to take any control over a situation that I felt powerless in, even if it happened to wishful thinking-for that magic pill that would solve my problems and make me feel alright. Of course it didn't exist. So, I wasn't able to find any drugs, because again, we didn't have any drugs, but I did find some bottles of alcohol, but I decided to not drink it, because 1) my parents would find out and I would get in trouble 2) I don't want to deal with the hangover later (I knew it was a thing, and it was bad, but I didn't know much else about it). So I thought: okay, next best thing: instead of going to do homework tonight, because I wasn't really in any mood to do homework, I need to take a break, so I decided to go on kongregate and I find the #1 game at the time which is called Epic Battle Fantasy 5, which is a jRPG with controls and a turn-based battle system similar to Prodigy, but more complicated, and without the math problems. These 2 were my favorite jRPG games, along with Wholesome Cats, which is also a really cute game about play-fighting cats. EBF5 was a pretty long game, with memorable characters and an interesting story, and it starts out really easy, but the difficulty noticeably ramps up as you complete each area, and soon the battles would eventually become impossible for me, which is similar to wholesome cats, but that game is much shorter. Prodigy's gameplay and strategy difficulty is literally a flat line gameplay-wise with level-scaling, the level doesn't matter except in PvP and dark tower, which is members-only, and the difficulty spikes are entirely-dependent on what math problems they give you. So anyways, I would stay up really late, playing this game, because I didn't really want to go to sleep and wake up the next day, and have to deal with all that again. Well, this did help calm me down and feel better and less stressed, but however, the sleep-deprivation just made my meltdowns even worse, I guess, but that was the price I had to pay to get away from all this for as long as I could, and without gaming in my life, I would probably have resorted to something that was much more harmful as a coping mechanism. I'm just glad that this only lasted for about 2 weeks until eventually, the schools had to close down and we had to do distance learning, which was such a relief for me, because this nightmare was finally over for me, because at that point, I was basically at my breaking point. Like once I got a very-strongly worded email from my English teacher, who also cc'd my case manager, but my case manager took my side, and asked me if i got his email, and i said no, and he said "I wouldn't want to check my email either after getting such a message". And the next day, I got a note from my English teacher apologizing for sending such an emotional email and saying that she still wanted me in her class, which made me feel a little bit better. They were trying the behavior extinction treatment, which is basically to expose me to the same stressor every day and wait for it to get worse before it gets better on its own, which is bad news for me, and once they took me to a room with thin carpet on the floor and used barriers to box me into a corner of the room to try to calm me down to keep me from hurting myself as I punched the floor and threw myself onto the floor repeatedly out of frustration and anger but I didn't really like it because they didn't give me any space, and also the carpet is very thin, so it didn't really absorb any impact, and I remember it hurting more when I hit it, but I still kept hitting it out of frustration. until they finally figure out that didn't work and tried to do the gradual exposure method instead, which means first I only had to use a wet paper towel to clean my hands, and then eventually they would add more and more stuff until I was washing my hands, which meant I finally got to go to class for the last few days before all the schools closed due to covid. Thinking back, I regret being such a Karen back then, and getting so upset over important health and safety procedures against the virus, and this experience still affects me years later, and it is still hard, and makes me upset to put my hand under running water, so I haven't been washing my hands, and I really need to get over this if I want to get a job "employees must wash hands before returning to work". And I'm really glad that this game has got me through this whole ordeal, because without it, it would've been so much worse. Also, I want to share another story around the same time.* * * * * * * * *So I was in middle school, during this huge transitional time in my life, turning from a kid into a teenager, which means I can no longer play my favorite games, such as Grounders and Bridge Tag, on the playground, with my friends anymore. And I basically aged out of the playgrounds completely since they were all (with few exceptions) designed for kids 5-12 years of age, and I was 13, so no more playgrounds for me. So, around that time, my friends introduced this game to me, called Roblox, which means I got to play similar types of games with my friends on virtual playgrounds, and everyone was so friendly, and the game was a lot of fun, and I loved the game, and the community, and all the new friends I made. The first game we ever played together was Flee the Facility, which I first saw Preston play on Youtube, and it looked so fun and I wanted to try it, and it was fun to run from the monsters and try to hack computers! Some of the other games that I really enjoyed playing were Growing Up Simulator, Ice Breaker! and Natural Disaster survival, and Roblox was my favorite game, and it still is. Until one day, I stumbled across this Roblox group, and in this group someone sent a link to a world. And when I clicked on that link, it took me to a simple obby, with everybody rushing to the end and at the end, it was something like free robux. Obvious scam, I thought, but I still went there anyway, where it asked for your username and password. Of course I knew it was a scam, so I didn't put my username and password in there, so I exited the game, and then I went back in. I saw in the chats, how it was flooded with messages from everyone about how much robux they got from this generator-an absurd amount, and against my better judgment, because I was so desperate to fit into the group, I also said in the chat "OMG! I got robux!" That was all it took. I logged out, and continued my life on as normal. But a few days later, my brother said "You have been banned from Roblox" At first, I was in shock and in denial of this-like that couldn't have happened-I couldn't have been banned from roblox. So I tried to log into my account, and it said Your account has been suspended. Scamming on Roblox is not allowed. Offending item "OMG! I got robux!" It said some warnings that I needed to reread the terms and conditions (which I did do the first time, so I knew the rules, I was just tricked into saying this) and what could happen to my account if I keep breaking the terms and conditions. And then it gave me the choice to log out or reactivate account. I remember in the first 5 days or first week, it felt terrible, and I regretted what i did so much and felt absolutely heartbroken that I can no longer play my favorite game anymore because I was banned, and all of the friends that I made on there, irl and online, is just gone, and all of the progress that I had made on Flee the Facility, and unlocking the trade and parkour area, all of my favorite games, just gone just like that. And also, I felt so bad for the scammer who made that game, that guy probably also got banned, and I didn't want to give them the same sort of pain that I was feeling at the time, and even though I do not want to compare what I was going through with someone who actually lost someone important to them, or something very significant to them, because losing a video game account really isn't that important in the grand scheme of things in a person's life, but at that time, I was legit grieving over the fact that I got banned from Roblox. They said I could appeal within 30 days of getting banned, but I could only appeal once, and there is absolutely no way that I could be in a stable-enough state of mind within 1 month of me getting banned to write a decent appeal to them, so I passed that deadline. Also, I didn't want to reactivate because before this, I legit thought I was immune to peer pressure, and now, I didn't trust myself to not get myself banned again, and I only get like 7 chances total before I get banned forever, and I didn't want to risk having to go through the pain of getting banned again. So afterwards, for years later, whenever I saw anything related to Roblox, I would feel nostalgia, and also said what what could've been for me, it was very bittersweet, and even though it did get better over time, even 5 years later now, I still wan't early over it, because I want to be a game developer now, and make games on roblox, because they made it feel that my dream was doable, except I'm still banned, so that will have to stay a dream, but at least I don't really feel sad about it now anymore, and I can look back at all of the beautiful memories that I've had made , and all the friends I used to have, and just appreciate them, since I don't really have that much friends anymore. Also,after I was banned, it was during covid, which just made my shelter-in-place a whole lot worse, since I refused to go outside until I got a vaccine, because I was so scared of getting the virus, and during those times, I was very lonely and bored, being stuck at home, while my brother played Minecraft with his friends on Discord (at least it wasn't Roblox, or that would've stung even more and led to even more paid and jealousy) and I wanted to be a part of their SMP, but to bad, because we only paid for 1 Minecraft account, and also I wasn't a Minecraft youtuber or content creator, so too bad. I didn't really have anyone to talk to, or play with, or hang out with, which just made my loneliness so much worse, as I imagined how much fun I could've been having playing with people on Roblox, and feeling free, even if it's just in a digital world. This loneliness lasted even into high school when we were back in in-person learning because I was a loner-I wanted to be because I just couldn't let go of the past,a dn the life I used to have, where I could run around with all of my friends on the playground after school for hours, and have time for fun extracurriculars, like my dance class, or my art class, but at least I did have a creative writing class with some of my friends once a week or so on zoom, and that was fun. I didn't want to adapt to the current reality of high school, I'd rather run to fantasy and relive my best days there, and to nostalgia and to fantasy worlds which I created, even though it is not really helping things, and is just making things worse for me, because I still barely had any friends-I still had a few neighbors who would come to visit me every once in a while, mostly just to use the ipad to play Roblox, while I watched (like I went with him to the Roblox 21 Pilots concert because I coudln't go on my account-I didn't touch anything, and I just afk'ed through the whole thing, so I didn't break the ban evasion/account sharing rules, but he's a good friend of mine, and sometimes he comes and visits every once in a while, and that's cool, because I didn't really have anybody except this one other school friend of mine, which we talk about life and our views, and his struggles and stuff. So I was just feeling bored and lonely, ad sorry for myself, until one day, I got invited to this party with my other group of friends who all live pretty far away, so we would only hang out once every few months or so, and I would skip every other one because I got a bit of a thrill out of it, and also my hygiene was really bad during that time, I wasn't really taking showers, and when I go there, I had to change my clothes, which didn't even remove all of my odor, and I didn't want to inconvenience them with my body odor and bad smells, so after hearing my parents say every day how badly I smelled, I internalized that and just tried to avoid getting too close to people, which didn't help with my loneliness at all. So one day, they had this party and they invited me so I decided to go, and in that party, we had a concert, and everybody prepared a piece to play except me and my brother, who were not told this, so I didn't really have time to prepare for it, and the party was pretty decent. and one of my friends at that party, showed me this game that really changed my life for the better: that game was Valorant. I've seen it before on Youtube, as the background footage as I lived vicariously through the stories of my favorite Youtubers, and the amazingly-interesting life that they had, and the things that they would do with their friends, that I wished I could be in their world. First, my brother made an account, and I would really also want to play but I couldn't, so I would just stand behind him and try to copy every single movement like the shooting, turning, and the peaking actually felt quite real when you try to sync up what you are doing with the screen , even though it's also quite tiring, definitely. So I eventually also made an account, and this is both of our first fps game that we played, and once, my brother had a 1v1 with his friend, and he let me play for a round, and some of the commentary my brother made was "You're wandering around like a lost puppy" me: "Does that mean I'm cute, because puppies are cute" my brother: "no, you're not cute. You're trying to go through a door that is obviously a window" and best of all "you lost to an afk person because you didn't plant the spike in time" me "Plant the what? What am I supposed to do? Where am I?" brother: "It's on your map, go to A or B" me: "no, I don't see it "wow, you can't even read a map" I had no idea what I was doing So I decided to make an account, read all the terms and conditions just in case, because I didn't want to get banned again! So, I played my first session, 4 game sin a row, and at the end, I was really tired, but also felt really light and happy, because for the first time in a long time, I get to talk to and interact with real people again, and hear their voices, and feel less alone in this world. Also, I had this fantasy to find a group of other cool teenagers and just hang out together in our gamer base and run the streets at night doing cool stuff, and Valorant sorta let be do that irl? Also, me and my brother used to be quite close, like we would spend so long playing Terraria together, for example, but we have grown so far apart, with our own friend groups, and him having so many more friends than I do now, and playing different games, and I think that having a similar game like this would help us reconnect again. So anyways, sometime later, my brother's already got a rank, I haven't yet, and his first rank was iron 3, which means he gets to queue with one of our friends who also plays, and i get left out, because I wasn't level 20 yet, and grinding takes so long, because this game is so tiring for me to play. So eventually, we go on a vacation to Alaska, and when we come back from our vacation, I had like 2 2/1 days, technically since we came back so late, to make level 20 to play i the premier, because I've always wanted to have the experience of playing on a gaming or esports team, and have friend like that, and the premier is finally letting me do that. So I grinded for 2 days, first day playing something like 9 hours or val, and the second day playing about 5 hours, trying to finish it out and get ranked, and I was able to finally get ranked at night that day with some other people who invited me to their party and we played team-deathmatch together and also they invited me to a custom game with infinite abilities mode activated, and then a game of tag, which we didn't get to finish, which was fun to watch, and also with just the way they interacted with each other and joked around, or even playfully fought over who got to sit in this virtual bench, it reminds me so much of when I was a kid, running around with my friends playing tag or having imaginary superpower battles with each other-I'm just glad that this kid culture I grew up with is still alive and well and thriving with today's generation, and not too much has changed. It did make me miss my childhood, though. Playing valorant allowed me to have a glimpse into other peoples' lives even if it is just for a game or one day, and then I likely won't see them again, but it's okay, because at least I belong to a community now. In my first competitive match, I was actually panicking, and my friend, who was iron 2, had to calm me down, and also I figured that since i was iron 1, queueing for comp took forever, like 10-15 minutes, but much shorter, like 5 minutes when I was queueing with my party member because I guess I suck at the game so much, it was hard to balance a game with me in it Comp for me, was different from unrated, because the people on there are even worse at the game, so there's no one to carry me to victory, so it might be a bit easier to get some kills against these players (though, admittedly, not by much at all.) Also remember how I said that initially I thought this would be a bonding experience between me and my brother? That's wrong because when we try to queue together in unrated, I would literally get 0 kills and get destroyed, while my brother would carry the team, so It wasn’t really fun for me, so we stopped queueing together. Once, my brother asked if I would rather be the best one on the losing team, or the worse one on the winning team. I picked the worst on the winning team, because that means I won! And if I was the best performing one on the losing team, then we really got issues (like maybe they all afk'ed or something.)And anyways, I did get ranked, I was iron 1, but then I realized I did't have a phone number to do the SMS verification, and also maybe I was gonna do premier with the people I have partied with, or maybe with the people who my brother initially said would accept em at any rank, even iron 1, because he's got connections on valorant and Discord and whatnot, and I don't, because I didn't really want to get social media accounts because I thought it would be too addictive or something. And anyways, I didn't actually end up getting on a team, because even though I got my rank on the correct date, I missed the cutoff time. I haven't really been playing the game anymore, and I've been getting the majority of my social interaction from playing torn, it is just so much easier when you don't have to be doing some thing else at the same time as talking that requires your focus and energy, they are just different games, the community here is more unfiltered and... interesting. If i didn't get banned from roblox, I probably wouldn't have even joined Torn to begin with, searching for a new community and somewhere where I could talk to people and call my home. Anyways, I can't really queue premier right now, because my account is restricted after trying to play a tdm on the bad computer and not even loading in, so I got comp banned and premier restricted, and also because i have no friends who are as bad as me, and also play this game. Also, an honorable mention here is a game that I really wanted to play, but I coudn't play is Untrusted: Web of Cybercrime (not Adventures of Dr. Eval-I've played that one, but I had to cheat because it was too hard, and I didn't know how to code) but this game was a hacking social deduction game and the manual and all the roles and everything seem so cool to pretend to be this elite group of hackers with government spies in the mix, I've played through the tutorial so many times , but I read the terms and conditions,and it says that you need to be an adult to play this game, so when I finally turned 18, I was gonna make an account, but the game was broken on itch.io (I loved using itch.io as a kid-so many fun free games, and I also want to participate in a game jam 1 day), the free version anyways, but I'm not paying 15 bucks for the steam version for a game that's pretty dead and the reddit community barely has any people, but at least I was able to get Town of Salem 2 for free, which I think is also a really cool social deduction game. And also, when my family goes to China, they love playing this game called 40 points or 80 points (which has 2 decks in it) where it is 2v2 and you are supposed to team up with your partner to either earn 40 points through 5's, 10's, and K's (also worth 10 points) if you are attacking, or keep the other team from earning the 40 points, with advantage, if you are defending, and the most powerful cards change as you go up the levels, and man do I suck at this game so badly, I never really learned how to play, and my parents didn't really teach me well either, so in those games, if I Was anyone's partner, they would just look at my cards (which was against the rules) and tell me what to do,and I don't even know why, so it was very boring, and if I tried to do something else, they would yell at me and complain about my mistakes, and sometimes it gets heated, and sorta toxic, with everybody being very competitive, sometimes flipping all the cards over and arguing about... something. I don't really know, complaining about the cards or something. I didn't really like playing with them, because if I take a risk and it goes wrong, my teammates would be upset at me, which makes it not fun to learn, and once I even cried during one of the games. So, instead of doing that, during their games, I would just go on my grandma's computer and log into Prodigy Math Game, and keep level grinding, and at the later stages, each level takes about 1 hour to achieve so I have spent over 100 hours in that game at that point, but once I finally got it, it was the happiest day in my entire gaming life-all of my hard work-it all paid off! And also like once, much later, my brother was getting into Celeste, because of my his friends convinced him to play Celeste, and he was eventually able to climb the whole mountain, so on that day, he decided to let me play the first level, and man it was hard, it took me more than an hour to finally beat it, with my brother helping me with a few of the more-difficult sections. Then we dared our mom to play, and she is not a gamer, I don't know how many times she has told me that own story about how she missed that jump on the rope swing and fell into the water in that game, and how that is proof that she sucks at gaming, so we dared her to beat the tutorial level after I completed my challenge, and after initially refusing, she took over an hour just to beat that part, after falling over and over again. Pretty impressive for a person who doesn't play video games. Also, inspired by her willingness to try something that she is not good at, I eventually decided to also try to learn the rules of 40 points and play a game with my family, just my mom dad, me and my brother, in a safe, non-competitive environment without all that toxicity, and surprisingly, it didn't go too bad, and I was able to actually complete the game decently (or at least I think I did) and score some points for my team, even though everybody was just probably not beating me for my mistakes and going easy on me. It was, surprisingly, a bit of fun, but still not really my thing. Also, I had an interesting history with chess. I liked going on the Chess.com forums, especially the forum game KOTL (stands for King of the Ladder, it is called this because in each game, you compete for points to move up on the leaderboard, calculated through stuff like participation, style points, completing actions for the win objective, getting things, etc, and you are trying to get to the top, to become the king of the ladder), created by the legendary HorribleTomato, which I first discovered while using the middle school library computers, because I was a bit of a loner in middle school, and on that computer, we were only allowed to a limited amount of sites, and chess.com (aka schoolschoolschool.com) was 1 of them. I enjoyed reading through the hundreds of pages of forum posts that a game would take, with each player role playing and describing their actions to the game master, who ran minigames like murder mystery, pvp, pve, islands battle royale, rob the museum, (literally one of them was based on the map of Roblox Jailbreak! ) escape detention was always a rather short and good one, it was a lot to keep track of in my head-i don't know how the gamemaster was able to do that, and i actually thought of starting a youtube channel to real all of these posts out to an audience while illustrating what each player is doing on a map, to make KOTL more popular, or maybe even make some of those games in Roblox or another game engine, but I'm still banned on Roblox, and I still haven't figured out how to code. I wanted to call it Forum Crusader at first to sound cool, but my dad says that that name is offensive to people, but the word crusader literally has 2 meanings, so. So anyways about chess: my brother is also much better than me at that game, like in most games, except in Geometry Dash probably, just because I put more hours into that game than he has, but I only really play it on long car rides, where we would grind levels together because there is no wifi, and not much we could do, and when I play that game, I can sometimes enter a relaxed, trance-like state of focus and losing myself in the music, and not trying too hard to let the muscle memory do its thing, because if I try too hard, I mess up. So I think our skill levels in that game are pretty close, I just beat a few more of the aim levels than him. Also, we used to actually talk in the car, and roleplay fantasy adventures, but we don't really anymore. So anyways, back to chess. we my brother took classes and can go to competitions that I don't qualify for, and earn trophies from these competitions (yeah, this becoming quite a trend, I know) and also he took classes, and is in the intermediate class, when I also joined the chess extracurricular at my school, during lessons, my brother and a few other more skilled chess players would go to a different room in the back, and the coaches called it the top-secret base for real, and what are they learning that is forbidden knowledge to the rest of us? What are they doing there? Nobody knows. We were probably always intrigued. So anyways, when I was in 6th grade, we were testing into intermediate by doing a within a certain amount of moves, with the king being controlled by the intermediate students, designed to make it take as long as possible, because the king not giving up without a fight, and I was trying my best to pass, but I ran out of moves, but they also let me into the secret base anyways, because I was a few moves away from completing the challenge, so I was able to go there for a few more classes before the program ended, and it was actually very boring in there, and the teacher wasn't as funny as the other one, and honestly, I would rather just stayed in the beginner area, until I got too bored, that is, Also when we were in China, me and my brother signed up to take some chess classes there, and since I wanted to be n the same class as him, I decided to spend my spare time studying up on chess.com, and it worked! I was in the same class as my more advanced brother!! Also, we were the only people who signed up Anyways, the teacher's a good teacher, and sometimes he would make us stand up as punishment just like our dad sometimes also did. Also, when the classes ended I asked him if I could join a chess app with him, and he actually told us about this app, which also has a shop that lets you buy expensive cool-looking chess sets using points in their in-app purchases, which makes sense, I guess, as well as cans of tomato sauce(?) for some reason?? They must have some interesting sponsors, I guess. Anyways we added him, and once he invited us to a match, and I was panicking at that point, so I handed it to my brother (see a pattern here??) Also, we also friended some other people, and after once, because the connection is bad I messed up a text, and accidentally sent the same message over and over again, that other person started spamming us with gibberish, so we started spamming them with more gibberish, and it was really funny, just to type 1 chinese character over and over again and have autocomplete do the rest of the work. One of them that they sent us was like tying wfffffffffffffg and it roughly translated to I repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat (in) style repeat repeat repeat repeat... you get it, they know. Also, when we were still young kids, we had some fun with the autocomplete on our tablet, which broke and we don't have it anymore, and our best was getting clash of kings avatar on sterio madness (I loved crossovers as a kid, and I still do), repeating, as well as: and soccer and soccer and soccer and soccer and basketball and soccer..., and that was peak humor for us, we laughed so hard at the word salad we created. Also, when we were kids, we had email addresses while underage, and when my mom or my brother would email me something I didn't like, I would just respond with a thumbs down or mad face with smoke coming out of my nose emoji. I wouldn't dare do that today. Also, the first game that really scared me if you could even call it a game, was a game which let you speak to the ghost of beyonce and you would type, and it would respond with one of the pre-generated responses, and the music sounded spooky, and it scared me as a kid, and then i would play Big Tower, tiny square, to calm my nerves It is a platformer game that progressively gets harder, and so basically, you have to climb the power and save your pineapple, and it's a fun game. Also as a kid, I enjoyed playing games from pointlesssites.com as well as boredbutton.com, and one of the games that I found on pointless sites, that isn’t there anymore is called a quiet forest, or the enchanted forest or something, and it is a point and click text based adventure game with cool background visuals, and in this game you start in the forest, greeted my a fairy that tells you how to play, as well as the rules of the game, and one important rule was you can find creatures hidden away in this forest, but you cannot make them your pets ( cannot save these images) and I'm like okay, I'm ready to explore this forest. There are paths you can take, one of them leads to a river and then a lake, you can find a singer here in the flowers, and if you wait for her, she would first hesitate and and say her name is a----, before saying her full name ,which is appleblossom, and the river leads to a lake, which has a coin in the water, and if you hold your breath for too long trying to find it, you will drown, so be careful, you can fill up your water where to go across the desert, otherwise you would die of thirst, there is also a bottle here with a message in it, as well as a pirate ship you can expire. The ground is sandy. (like its not letting me copy anymore, so I would need to post the rest in a separate post.)
Okay, so here is the second part: Also there is a mountain which you could climb or go around it, and if you climb the mountain and look around on the rocks, you could find one of the creatures there, and also once you cross the mountain there is the desert, which take a long time, I don't know if it lasts forever-it probably doesn’t I remember getting to part 15, and eventually making it through. There's also a cottage with an old woman in it tat would give you some porridge, and also another building with a different lady in it as well as a poisoned gingerbread house that knocks you out that is also trapped so you could die if the witch catches you, and also there are 3 caves, one of them has 2 paths, a the gently sloped one and the other one has a very steep path-if you take that path, you would fall to your death. Also there is an ice cave with a waterfall , and behind that waterfall, you would find an ice dragon And another cave with a bunch of paths, and if you choose rig, you would get lots of colorful jewels as a reward. And that path also connects to the dungeon of a castle, which has 2 prisoners, one of the is an old man who you can talk to and ask questions there, and also if you go up you will see a castle with a lot of rooms and a library in the back, which has a lot of books, some of them are links to other sites, some tell the lore of the ancient kings and rulers, or the types of creatures and dragons that live there, and n of them takes you to the secret forest which is a forest inside the book-there is a very tall tree you can climb in the middle (and I remember trying to get to that spot because I thought it wold be a cool lookout place for a sniper, because I was sorta obsessed with shooter games, and especially snipers as a kid, and I remember feeling kinda embarrassed about it because it was not a "girly" thing, and I like watching people pull off insane snipes in fortnite - something about it was just really satisfying, and I wanted to beat the puzzle game scope: first blood, but I couldn't even beat the first level of it, until I was much old, and I had more experience, and then I completed one other ones too, later, like sniper assassin, it was fun. here was also this store with a poster that was an advertisement painted on the flor, and as kid, I would try to jump over it to "skip" an ad irl, but I would jump just short of it, until I got older, and then I could do it. And also when we would go to stores as a kid, I would look down at the ground, with the reflection of the rows of lights up above, and I tried to run and jump on the lights-did anyone else do that as a kid? And also, once, when I was playing betrayal.io, I met a real hacker in the game, who could turn the background black at will, as well as other colors, such as pink, and so we could only see the objects in the foreground, and I remember everyone freaking out about it and I definitely enjoyed the chaos. And also once, I was playing a drawing game, and I joined a group, who were using cheats to print out the images (this wasn't too uncommon) except in this group, they were posting xome inappropriate drawings-no I am not talking about the among us crewmate with 8 penises that people drew as a joke, because that was somehow popular-I remember seeing them draw a picture of a naked woman, nothing too bad, and I would still try to play the game normally, but I eventually got kicked for being afk on my turn, I guess, which is fair enough), but a lot of the forest is burned up or disappeared, I think , and also it;s a pretty small area, and you can exit that area if you successfully solve the riddle in the book and open it backwards, you would be back at the library. So outside of the castle there is a hedge maze if you want to make it through to enter the castle, and on the other side there is a tower which has a lock of hair and a rope ladder, and if you try to climb the loci of hair, it would not hold your weight, and you would fall to your death. And also i n the middle of the forest there is also this giant tree and you can try to escape the forest by climbing up that tree and answering questions by typing the answer into the link and it would take you to the next part, and these links are not found linked to anything else in the game. The first answer is apple blossom, the singer's name, the second question is the ice dragon's name (which I forgot) and the third question i don;t know, because I never completed the game, and I can't find it anymore. If any of you can still find it, I'd be glad. Also, when we were kids, some of the games I enjoyed playing with my neighbors included the fantom game, which is a game where we each had roles such as one person having a weapon they could use, one person can throw balls, one person is on their ripstik, and we are all trying to run away from the person with the baby stroller, who is trying to ram ,s as well, as the neighborhood game, which is where one person is it would have to count to 20 while the rest of us have to leave on opposite sides and find each other before the it-person finds you to win, and I like that game because it is very suspenseful (also even just circling a tree to avoid the other person can build up a lot of suspense, but I;d rather do that in surviv.io, if that was still around). We also played stuff like noodle tag and dodgeball, and those were still fun, but less fun than these games.m and also. Also with anotehr group of friends, I remember having a meeting at their house with a print-out map of our neighborhood to negotiate and decide the boundaries of this game. Also, when we were very young, we would have massive playdates in the park where we would all play tag together, and they would always end up forming alliances and teaming up against me, but I would never do that, because taht's cheating to me, because alliances are unfair, and my parents would say that these kids were always chasing me. Also, me rules-lawyering with those people who would all team against me because compared to them, I run kinda slow and I would try to put in rules like no tag-backs, but they still manage to bypass them like: A tags me, I tag B, A lets B tag A, and A comes after me again, and it keeps going like that. But still, it was fun times and good exercise, and we would play for about 2 hours with some water breaks, before I would get too tired of playing reform being chased and teamed up by them, and after they moved away, I wish I could still do this with them today. I still have their chats, but it is not really active today. When I was younger, I still enjoyed going to arcades, but sometimes , I did find them to be too loud and uncomfortable, but my favorite games were probably the air hockey table I can play with my family, and also the DDR machine. and recently,for my friend's birthday party, i did visit an arcade and the karaoke place, and I did have a lot of fun singing and dancing with the other kids, and even though it was hard to sing and dance full out at the same time, and it was easy to get out-of breath, I still had a lot of fun at that party, and it was also pretty-impressive for them to make fun games, while still still keeping everything very family-friendly, except some simulated gambling with the Monopoly man, gotta hook them young, I guess. One of the first games that I've remembered watching my da play is this first person rpg where he is in a field attacking monsters, and on the screen are 2 spheres on it, one on the left is red and it stands for blood, with a carving of the silhouette of a young girl on it, and the one on right is full of blue liquid, which stand for mana, and has a silhouette of a woman carved into it. I still don;t know what that game is, and the first rpg I've played is the dinosaur key game with a corresponding plushie t-rex toy, and another game where you need a custom keyboard to plug in custom characters in, such as Clifford and the other dogs, to make them go into the game. Also, even the leap pad has tried to create simple video games to help kids learn in a fun way, and I think it is also pretty clever how they set it up with the different go-and-stop signs, and stuff. Also, as a kid I had sorta a tamagotchi toy where there are arrows where you could do stuff like take your little person to swing on the swings, and take them to different places, and it was a very small world, and I was afraid that one time, that something was going to go wrong. Also, at the dentist, as a kid, when we were waiting to get called in, I would play with the ball maze thing, and my mom eventually bought one for us at home, and I was eventually able to complete it after a lot of attempts. Also, when I was really young, I went to a store with my mom, and was scared that the jack-in-the-box toy would pop up and scare me, but I also met 2 young boys who were a bit older than me, and they were playing with it and weren't scared of it at all, and I was pretty amazed as a kid.. Also,when we go then this clothing store, my brother and I used to race around trying to find as many size markers as possible that might be swept under the racks or on the floors or wherever, put them in your socks, and then count them at the end and give them to the shopkeepers, and whoever had the most would win the game. Also, as a kid used to play a bunch of life simulator games,my first one being alter ego,which is how i first found out about what cocaine is, and I was a cautions kid, and I would skip over all the scenes with warnings on them (aka the sex scenes), and also one of the only ways you could die early, is if you get kidnapped, and it scared me to click on those health (called physical) icons for a while until I figured out which one it is, and i'm pretty sure it's rng if you die or the police come to save you) and one of the side effects of playing those games as a kid at such a young age, was it made me feel like life as very short, and I started fearing for my own mortality, that I would die one day, just like these lives that I've lived as these people they all died at the end, so i would too one day-what a way to give a kid an existential crisis. Anyways, I stopped playing these games for a while, and these thoughts stopped, and soon, I was back to feeling like a normal kid again. Also,I like life sim games, which is also why I play torn, and also one of the darkest games that I've ever played in my life is a game called nend.io %%%%%% (trigger warning, fictional depictions of self-medication, suicide, poverty, homelessness), which I think is a critique of consumerism, I think and how money can;t buy you happiness. You play as a character who has needs that are always depleting,and in order to continue to live, you ah ev to work, manage your time and resources,and you get trapped in this vicious, neverending (nending) cycle that is life, work, buys stuff, eat, take care of stats,no breaks, and the whole time I was playing, it was stressful, and you always have something to do, as your clock is always ticking to death until the grim reaper shows up. For example, you need to keep your happiness up, if it reaches 0, your character will try to kill themself, taking off half of your hp and restoring some happiness, you can dance at the club to increase your happiness, but it is "preferable" to do drugs (anti--depressants) instead, because they boost your happiness more and costs less energy and time than actually having fun, which you can;t afford anymore, just like those medkits, which is just depressing. Also, you can go to college in that game, but you need money to go to college, except you need money right now to keep yourself afloat, so you can;t go to college, and since you can;t afford anything. so you have to live in a homeless shelter full of all the trash and wrappers from all the junk food you bought at the vending machine, that is not good for you and, and you have to live with other dangerous people who could kill you and your baby to keep you from being able to respawn, all the while you are unhappy as the advertisements periodically remind you that the clothes you wear aren't fancy enough, like you don't have enough problems to worry about already. And when you are old, and get the powerful calling to have kids, you go to the adoption center, choose a baby to buy, realize you don't have the money for even the cheapest baby, so you die broke and childless,and your legacy and game ends there. This game is a social commentary of the problems in our society, and it is a city survival game set in a dystopian world. It is the darkest game that I've ever played, and it's marketed towards kids. Wow. %%%%%%Or maybe I just suck at the game and it;s a game about how hard works pays off, and how anyone can get rich, and get ahead in life, and how generational wealth sets someone up for success, idk I also played some other choose your own adventure type games and one of the physical books has one of the endings was you start falling asleep being submerged in a container of warm, comfortable saltwater, while a motherly voice comforts you that everything is going to be okay, and reading those words made me feel strange, but in a weird way, really good, and also the part (maybe from a different game) where you cast a spell like fireball, and you get the feeling of ants crawling down your arms-it's amazing how texts and descriptions can do to make you feel weird things, I liked playing choice-of-game, but most of them you need to pay for the whole story, like I don;t really read fiction books anymore(I kinda wanna get back into it) , but I still read these books, if you could even call them that, because I get to roleplay and choose what happens. However, I almost never go for the date option, except for alter ego, where it is obvious that all of those characters are just randomly-generated npc's, the rest of them feel much more like real characters, and even when I as a very young kid, I've always had a hard time making decisions, like once, we were at the carnival, and I got to go on one more ride before we go home, decision paralysis sets it, and I couldn't decide on any ride, so we end up just going home without choosing. Also, once I was very sleep-deprived during distance learning and after pulling an all-nighter, I decided to listen to a 4-hour video while laying down called why games like call of duty is bad for you, and why game like runescape is good for you, and it is such an interesting story about a bunch of kids building their own empire together, scamming people and pk-ing. and going to war together (sorta like torn lol), and growing up, and learning important life lessons in a virtual world, such as how friendships work, leadership, and betrayal, and how to manage resource, and also there's some i think pretty-mild sexual content/references (also like torn), and one of the comments said it was the best ad for Runescape ever, and made me really want to play runescape (as well as call of duty), but i didn't. Also, I remember when I first turned 17, I decided to play CS:Go for the first tie, after playing a lot of Valorant, and I didn't lik it, because it was too bloody and gory for me. I guess coming of age doesn't magically mean that you can handle mature content, or you are immune to the effects of it. Also, the grenades in the range feel so powerful and "real". Also, I really enjoy Let's Game it Out's content, because it's so funny how he breaks every game, and takes stuff to the extreme, and does some very unexpected and funny stuff, or purposefully makes things as inconvenient and as painful for the npc's as possible, and it is one of the funniest things that I have ever seen in my life.