Chapter Text
“Terraria?”
“Yeah, it’s this…” Baku looks at the blank CD disk in his hands. “Nah, trust, it’s game of the year.”
Saiba Momoi, one of the few members of the Game Development Club, gives the disk in his hands a cursory scan.
“We specialize solely in retro games so we can definitely… B-but you’ve got to be kidding! I’ve heard of self-confidence but game of the year?!” She sounds offended.
Baku scoffs.
“Buddy, you need to get around more, spread yo roots ‘round. Your preferences are impregnable.”
“Impregnable?....what-” Baku tunes out whatever she’s spouting and gives her a look over.
Long blond hair, magenta eyes, she barely comes up to his thorax. She wears a white and pink hoodie, along with a long plaited skirt…
…
She wears a pink cat-ear headset…
…
“The depths I go to.” Baku grimaces.
“Look.” Baku says, interrupting whatever Momoi was saying. “We can figure out royalties and all that shit later, I know once you get the grips on this.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a Xbox controller. “And hop on my game? You’ll see the potential for bread.”
Baku hands the disk and controller to Momoi, then he pulls the whole Xbox console out of his pocket, that’s just how big his jacket is.
“You’re going to need this as well, I don’t know what weak ass consoles you got in this bitch but they ain’t the one.”
“Hmph. I can give it a look then.” She inserts the Terraria disk into the Xbox before looking for a free plug in the club room.
Baku stands back and leans on the doorway to this room, he takes a look around.
It is littered with many game boxes, retro consoles, stray sheets of papers, the works. If they weren’t one of the few game devs that were small enough to hear out individual requests yet big enough to have a name in the industry, he wouldn’t have gone here.
…though the recent reviews for their games have been trash…
Well, he reckons they’re desperate for something to change that, so just giving them a game of the year to publish would do that. He’ll just snatch a percentage of the bread they’ll make and he’ll be set. Literal 0.01% and he’s in a new tax bracket. Mhm.
She gets the console plugged in and Baku steps in.
“Lemme just start this up for you, the console ain’t the product we’re pushing.”
“We? I haven’t even played the game yet, no way I’d agree to anything without atleast completing it.” Momoi pauses. “Wait, how long will this game take to complete?”
“Psh.” Baku snorts while navigating through the Xbox menu and inserting the disc into the Xbox. “It’s a sandbox. You play, do a lil’ fuckin’ around, have a good time and all that jant. You’ll see.”
“Sandbox? So…” Her eyes twitches. “There’s no story?”
“Story?” Baku racks his mind as he begins to boot up Terraria. “I aint Tolkien, hop on the damn game And Play.”
“Ow!” Momoi puts her hands over her ears, dropping the controller. “Okay okay! I’ll play it! Sheesh…”
The game begins to start…
…
There’s just a black screen untill it boots up to the main menu.
Baku chuckles to himself.
“Yeah, I was busy coding ‘an shit, couldn’t find the time to make a proper intro.” A bald-faced lie comes from him.
In reality, using his surprisingly competent coding skills, he simply erased the intro credits and had it boot straight to the main menu. Matter of fact, he erased every mention of credits in the game.
“Hm…” Momoi looks over the main menu. “Nice job on the background. Did you make the art?”
“Nah. I had a lil' green freak do it on an internship.”
“Shouldn’t you have credited the- what? Internship?!”
“Look, the intro’s coming along, what’s with the expose?”
“It’s not an expose, I’m just asking some questions!” Momoi hold a hand up in mock surrender. “Besides, I’m just curious to see something like this from a new game dev. Your friend must be talented as well.” She snorts. “On an internship…”
Baku looks off to the side.
“Yeah, he is….” He nods to himself. “He is…”
Momoi proceeds to click ‘Singleplayer’
“...Expert Mode?” She hovers over a difficulty setting in the preceding character selection menu.
“I came here to show you the game, I didn’t pull up to see you fumble the bag, click normal mode cretin. You don’t got the sauce for Expert Mode.” Baku shakes his head.
“What? Is it just an unfair type of difficult?” She talks as she idly scrolls through the character options, making a character that looks close enough to her.
“The bare minimum is you getting enough wood to make yourself a lil’ weenie hut junior shack. You can’t do that if your dead, you ritz cracker.”
“...the Spirits series could take that to heart…” Momoi mutters that as she finally starts up the game, loading the world and seeing her character in the middle of a 2D forest.
A quaint, chiptune ambient song begins to softly play.
“Hmmm.” Momoi doesn’t even move her character, more focusing on the visuals and music of the game before actually playing, softly humming along with the music.
“...yo, mo…” Baku sounds absolutely baffled, words catching in his throat, he throws his hands up exasperatedly. “Yo, move yo character, tf you doing?”
“Why are you badmouthing how I play new games?” Momoi turns her head, only giving Baku a side eye. “Other aspects of this game have to be great to make up for the lack of a story, and…” Momoi pauses to gather her thoughts. “It does look great! Did you have help with the music as well?”
“Oh, uh, yeah. See, a lil' troglodyte was in calamity and came to me for some bread. He showed up on my doorstep in the dirt, but he had talent. So in exchange for his life's talent, I gave him a bag of chips with a fun sized bottle of polyethylyne. That’s an internship.”
“That's cool." The words are so utterly outlandish, they go in Momoi's left ear and out the other. "Any chance you could get me their contact?” So she focuses on her real goal.
“No.” He shakes his head. “His ass don’t got a phone. He’s probably in prison or something.” He thinks about Lil’ Broomstick for a second and this is the only and first possibility that comes to mind.
“Worth a shot…” She sighs as she begins to fuck around with the controller.
She doesn’t even get to cut down her first tree before…
“Oh, here’s the first enemy!” Momoi hunches forward, prime position to cause back problems later in life, in service of locking tf in.
It’s a singular blue slime.
Momoi switches to the bronze shortsword and begins to swing it in preparation.
“Take that!” She rushes in once she gets a feel for the attack speed and begins to stab the shit out of the slime.
It only takes a second for her to defeat it. Only in Normal Mode…
“Ha!” She laughs out as the slime explodes from the damage and turns into gel.
…
…
“It’s genuinely not that serious bruh.” Baku cringes before coughing into his hand.
“Huh?” Momoi turns around to look up at Baku.
“Nah, you keep playing, don’t mind me.” He crosses his arms. “I can’t be near side characters anymo’. Keep yo gimmicks to yourself.”
He shakes his head as he walks out of their room and into the hallway. Baku quickly makes his way to the bathroom, shutting the door quickly behind himself.
Baku stands in the middle of the room for a few seconds.
Few more seconds.
A few seconds.
He stares up at the ceiling and takes a deep breath.
Seconds.
“UgGgh.” A noise escapes from his mouth.
His fist clenches.
“...fuck.” He shakes his head.
Baku scratches his feathers as he steps back out into the hallway, staring longingly at the direction of the exit.
“...this shit just common with the episodic ones, huh?” Then he stares at the club door. “…” A foreign sensation is the one of being truly stumped for Baku.
A whole lot of nothing comes up in his mind.
Rubbing his forehead, he opens the club door and walks back into the room.
“Hey.” Momoi doesn’t bother to turn around to greet him. “How long did this take? You didn’t develop this all by yourself, right?”
“Bitc…” He cuts himself off, clearing his throat. “Buddy. I just told you one hundred and fourty seconds ago to be exact, that I did have help. What’re we doing here?”
“No…I mean, w-who came up with all of this? It would’ve taken you eons to make this yourself.” Momoi pointedly opens the mini map to its fullest display, showing off the immense amount of exploring she hasn’t even begun to do yet.
“That’s me.” Baku nods with far more confidence than before.
He crosses his arms and looks down at Momoi, feeling sure of his coding ability.
“Um…” She scratches her head. “This is insane but I feel like you forgot something pretty important. What am I supposed to do? There’s no tutorial or anything; this ‘Brian’ guy doesn’t tell me anything straightforward. I mean…how vague can you get!” She begins to spam tf out of the Guide’s ‘Help’ dialogue option.
“Bruh. Just look it up…” He trails off. “...I’ll get on it. Go get yo sorry self some gear from underground. Procure yourself some metal and fight some bosses. This shit on normal mode, if you can’t handle that, you trifling.”
“You could have this guy say something like that then. Like, I put anything I had that was a material in the ‘Crafting’ option and it showed me something that has to be way too far in the game. Zenith? What a tease…” She shakes her head before resuming with the game.
“There’s no need for this much talking. All I asked was for you to play my game, not give a IGN review, quit yapping and get back to it. We’ll discuss the split after you’re done.”
“Mm…” Momoi hums. “I can see the potential.”
“You better.”