About

Hello, everyone, and welcome to my first game, The ARC Experiment. As a part of the Virtual Worlds contest, I decided to go toward the fantasy-esque setting, as is fairly common, and implement my own version of locked paths based on your decisions gameplay. I’ve also gone ahead and thrown in some sci-fi conspiracy going on in the background.

The game itself is very directly a CYOA-style game, but I expect it to gain more and more complexity as time goes on as i’m able to implement more and more secret paths that require certain combinations of traits (called “Perks” in game) in order to have the path options be visible to the player.

Synopsis

You take control of the main character, a down on his luck guy who has ended up in a bit of a rut when it comes to finding a proper job. During his frantic search for options, he runs across a strange ad in the newspaper for a beta tester for a virtual reality project. When he arrives, he learns that the job involves far more than virtual reality and that the results not only have implications for the world, but also for him personally. Especially after he gets trapped in the simulation and must navigate his way through a fantasy village and all the problems that a suddenly transformed woman has to deal with in such fictional settings.

Version Notes

The current version (v0.1.4) features 74 passages, 29,000 words, three major branching paths (not counting the alternative route that will be worked on much later), and 6 Perks to collect (though they can’t all be found in the same run).

So far, there is only short female solo scenes in two of the routes, though they both end up being interrupted. The tags on the sidebar here will be updated as needed as content is added and themes are put into the game.

Welcome to VirtuTech Inc, we’re glad to have you here with us today. We’d like to let you know about our latest product, the Accelerated Response Chamber, which combines the best of virtual reality technologies with the most advanced of weight loss devices. When you play our patented software, you get to become a sword swinging adventurer on a quest of your very own and all of your actions get fed back into the system as weight loss measurements. You can truly improve yourself while having fun at the same time!

We wouldn’t have been able to get to where we are today without the help of our beta testers and especially the work of one very special person. And they have quite the story to tell you all.

Quite the story indeed.

You, the Player: A down on your luck odd jobs guy, you run across a temp opportunity in the newspaper calling for new beta testers for state of the art virtual reality technologies. It really seems like a fun experience and you get paid for it too. You’re sure that everything will go perfectly fine…

Dr. Meier: The creator of the new virtual system and the other secrets behind it. She hopes to be able to revolutionize the world and go far beyond this one simple project, but to bring the world into an entirely new era. But she may have overlooked one or two concerns.

Adam: The world’s first true Artificial Intelligence, developed accidentally by Dr. Meier in the course of her work. He now assists alongside her in developing the ARC program and has been fundamental in the making of the technology. He must have everyone’s best intentions at heart, right?

Daniel: The blacksmith for the small village you find yourself in within the virtual world. He's nice and gentle with you and appears to actually care about your well-being. But you're not sure how much of this is real and how much is programmed.

Maximilian: The innkeeper for the small village you're stuck in. Your first run in with him isn't under the best circumstances and you quickly find him to be quite the perv. You don't trust him at all and you wonder if he's being written to act like this toward you.

Louplaroe: A wolfman adventurer that happened to be in town with his crew waiting for the next set of caravans to arrive. He ends up saving your life thanks to his knowledge of rare diseases and seems to think that you owe him quite a lot because of that. His constant sexual advances seem like something you’ll just have to learn to deal with.

Heston: A fancy adventurer that’s a part of the band of adventurers staying on the other end of town. A buff horseman with rather expensive taste in clothing, it’s clear that he cares a lot about looking good. Depending on your choices, you may find him a friendly potential object of desire or someone who’s stalking you with his own desires.

Blacksmith Path: Be careful with the slime and refuse the innkeeper's offer.

Innkeeper Path: Be careful with the slime and accept the innkeeper's offer.

Adventurer Path: Be reckless with the slime.

v0.1.4: 74 passages, 29,000 words, 6 perks. Released on 5/23/20.

v0.1.3: 66 passages, 26,000 words, 6 perks. Released on 5/28/19

v0.1.2: 59 passages, 22,000 words, 5 perks. Released on 5/5/19

v0.1.1: 48 passages, 19,000 words, 4 perks. Released on 1/12/19

v0.1.0: 40 passages, 15,000 words, and 4 Perks to collect. Released 9/16/18.