(Continuing from the previous page…)

I continued my school life diligently. I met new people, made friends, and joined reading discussion groups befitting my concept as a political science and diplomacy student.

Perhaps reflecting the times, groups discussing socialism and communism were quite active.

(Surprisingly, 1929 was indeed a period when communism was seriously discussed as a viable alternative to capitalism. The same logic was applied to fascism as well. Of course, this was only possible before the two dictators, Stalin and Hitler, triggered World War II.)

It was a challenging situation. I had only about 10 days left, and I needed to complete the summoning ritual before Mars, where Fulsoom slept, moved too far from Earth.

During this time, I met a female student. Marie Shelley, a folklore student at Miskatonic University.

I met her at a communist reading discussion group, where she was worried about her midterm replacement report. She needed to collect folk tales from Arkham and its surroundings but hadn’t decided on a topic yet.

I conversed with Marie Shelley and through her, I was able to <partially acquire> knowledge about Fulsoom, raising my progress to 2.

This triggered a new quest: offer sacrifices to Fulsoom and accumulate power.

A quest that makes logical sense. The next linked quest was to use this accumulated power to summon Fulsoom to Earth. However, summoning Fulsoom required sacrificing over 100,000 people.

An absurd quest? One might think so.

But a hint had been provided earlier. In the intro video, soldiers intercepting Soviet spy radio transmissions were shown falling victim to Fulsoom’s attack.

In other words, I concluded that to complete the final quest, I would need to use ‘radio broadcasting’ to sacrifice listeners (I was mistaken).

With the final goal and the method to achieve it presented, the next steps were straightforward.

First, I absolutely could not be discovered. To ensure this, I chose to create ‘chaos.’

As mentioned earlier, the setting was 1929, and military and government agents were stationed on campus under the pretext of catching communist spies.

Since the school faction and the military-government faction were marked as hostile to each other, I believed that maximizing this conflict was the key to success.

But the game wasn’t entirely smooth. Anne Molly, the protagonist from the previous game, John Crayfield, arrived at the hotel where I was staying.

Based on his character and personality shown in the previous game, he didn’t seem likely to become a follower of outer gods. Therefore, I needed to keep him at a distance somehow.

To do this, I seduced and threatened Marie Shelley with Fulsoom’s power (albeit weakly) to obtain her report, gaining complete knowledge (raising my progress to 3).

I then exerted stronger control over her, took her to Crayfield’s room, and sacrificed her.

This raised my progress to 4 and tied up Crayfield, killing two birds with one stone.

Although my attempt to frame Crayfield failed, I succeeded in hindering his activities.

With Crayfield restrained, nothing stood in my way.

Next, I seduced a soldier and sacrificed him. (This raised my progress to 5.)

I specifically chose a soldier because it was exam period and students were moving around in groups, making it difficult to find sacrifice victims.

Also, I calculated that killing one soldier would worsen relations between the school and military factions.

As expected, the soldiers believed that the “school communists” were attacking them using special means, and they cracked down on the students.

The students didn’t remain passive either.

I incited the students, arguing that they needed to arm themselves, and reminded them that resisting unjust power was a right specified in the Declaration of Independence.

With my political science background combined with Fulsoom’s powers—strong persuasiveness and hallucination effects—I could manipulate the school’s students without even needing dice checks.

The only obstacles were those who knew how to operate radio broadcasting facilities.

The broadcasting club’s faculty advisor, his graduate student, and the club members all had enough potential to interfere with my radio broadcast.

Therefore, I needed to eliminate them all or sacrifice them to silence them. So I first seduced the graduate student, assassinated him, and sacrificed him (progress 6).

After raising my progress to 6, I was granted the power to control Fulsoom’s plants.

With this power, I could control the difficult broadcasting club advisor, Mark Bravery, like a puppet. (Progress 7)

Since I had no radio-related technical skills, controlling Bravery was inevitable.

However, Bravery still had some rationality left, and his persistent resistance made the process progress very slowly.

So I left him in the broadcasting room and went outside to incite the students.

The military, police, government agents, and Crayfield had gathered to stop me and were converging on the broadcasting room.

Among them was Gordon Waitley, Marie Shelley’s advisor. Looking back, I think Gordon Waitley might have provided certain information that allowed them to notice what was happening.

I used Fulsoom’s power to send the students to the second floor, telling them we would all die if we stayed here, that the military was trying to kill us.

The naive students listened to me and rushed up to the second floor, but upon seeing Fulsoom’s plants, they were startled and fled backward.

In the process, Professor Gordon Waitley died, and I sacrificed him to Fulsoom, raising my progress to 8.

The students fled in fear, and empowered by Fulsoom’s abilities, I drove away the interferers.

Fortunately, the broadcasting club advisor had completed the setup, so I only needed to execute a mini-game to find the correct frequency.

After breathing into the microphone, I just needed to adjust the panel to find the frequency where Fulsoom’s response was strongest (this value was displayed in the sidebar).

I was able to find the correct frequency, raised my progress to 9, and needed only to breathe into it once more to summon Fulsoom.

But nothing happened. Crayfield had turned off the building’s electrical circuit breaker. The quest was marked as a final failure. Even though I had clearly breathed into it!

There’s a very old joke.

It’s about a ridiculous overseas news story that criticized “the current state of society where people are so immersed in games that they can’t handle sudden changes in situations” after turning off the electricity in a PC room full of gamers enjoying their games, causing them to curse.

I felt the same level of displeasure.

It can happen. Such things certainly happen in reality.

But the fucking unfairness and injustice felt in reality

(Editor. This part violated journalistic ethics, but I’d like to say fuck ethics. A journalist has a duty to convey stupid truths stupidly and truths that seem like lies as lies. The truth I felt was fucking awful, so I have a duty to convey that it was fucking awful.)

There’s no reason to feel it in a game too.

I turned off the game and submitted the game recording anonymously to the company. After careful review, the company replied that there was no problem with the game system.

According to them, while it was true that I ‘breathed into it,’ it ‘didn’t reach the microphone’ because ‘the power went out,’ so it wasn’t the game’s fault that it was judged a final failure.

What they said next was even more absurd: they scolded me, saying ‘Fulsoom was gradually descending to Earth, and if you had used a method other than radio, it would have finally descended, but it’s your fault for not doing so.’

I declare this. This is not a game. It’s a scam disguised as a game.

If Fulsoom could have been summoned without using the radio, why emphasize the radio so much while asking for 100,000 sacrifices?

Are they suggesting that a female college student should go out on the streets and assassinate 100,000 people?

I sent another bug report, this time with my real name and affiliation. I received a response from the responsible PD, Drugstore.

It stated that it was my fault for not killing 100,000 people through assassination when that’s all that was needed. And then, “This is a game. Don’t take it too seriously. And since you played disruptively yourself, isn’t it a bit much to complain to us?” (For those who don’t believe me, I’ve attached the full email below.)

Those who still hold deep affection for this game claim that ‘it could be an excellent game if the bugs were fixed.’ It’s true that S$ummoning2 is fixing numerous bugs.

But the displeasure I felt was very complex. And most of it was focused on the game developers.

Their lazy attitude of not acknowledging that their game is flawed and trying to shift responsibility to the players.

Despite being an early access title, the fact that no one has completed it long after its release is evidence that the game was poorly made, yet Drugstore hastily covers up their mistakes by claiming that ‘it further encourages a sense of challenge.’

If they treat a professional game review journalist like this, how much stubbornness and tyranny will they show to ordinary players?

This is why I gave it a 0.5-star rating. As a warning to the developers who proudly present an unfinished game as a masterpiece.

My monitor glows,

My mouse lowers the rating.

Gladly taking revenge on the creators,

Repaying displeasure with displeasure.

Oh, subscribers of this magazine!

Please, I beg you, refund this game and run away.

May this game be elevated to the ranks of trash games not even worth looking at.

<End of Article>

Editor’s Comment >

Mike. Is this what you call an article?

Let’s overlook the grammatical errors and repetitive expressions. At the very least, you should have distinguished between facts and opinions.

Why are you suddenly doing something even a college journalist wouldn’t do? Are you too busy these days? Or did you think you could get away with this because you’ve been doing well lately?

And I clearly mentioned in our last meeting that Overeating Games is planning to spend a huge advertising budget in our magazine, so write a positive review article.

What are you doing now? Writing something that doesn’t even resemble an article, deliberately ignoring all my instructions, and saying you’ll fix it later because it’s a draft?

Rewrite it immediately. I expect a properly written article by tomorrow morning. Otherwise, I’ll transfer you to the advertising department!

– Editor-in-Chief Anne Molly