This month’s Bitmob Writing Challenge is First -person Writer.  The prompt is simple: Write an article between 500 and 800 words about playing a video game.   As creator of the challenge, it’s my responsibility to both provide an example for other Bitmobbers and to not fail at my own test.  This will give you some ideas about what you can do with this style. 

The Boots of Prowess.  It increases the wearer’s attack and defense by 30 percent.  If I make enough of these, then I might stand a chance against the secret bosses of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.

Menu. Memory Card. Load Game.

Star Ocean is an action role-playing game that bills itself as a space opera, yet most of the game takes place on a medieval planet. The story is so orthodox by RPG standards that one character even mentions that it's like "a cliche-ridden novel," but I still enjoyed it and was willing to overlook a lot of things for the battle system.

This is an action RPG that didn’t devolve into button mashing thanks to a rock-paper-scissors relationship between attacks and guarding as well as a clever stamina system.  The characters were also customizable while still maintaining unique play styles:  If I was tired of juggling harpies courtesy of Maria Traydor's gun blasts, I could switch to Albel and hack through the enemies of existence with sword and claw strikes.  

But before I could have fun in the battles, I had to have the right equipment. To have the right equipment, I had to toil in the game’s Item Creation mode.

Menu. Memory Card. Load Game.

My blue-haired hero stood in a dingy workshop like a student daydreaming with homework on the table.  My strategy guide was the textbook, flipped to the appendixes.  I enter a black menu listing my materials and the combination of workers ready to make the accessory.

I click rapidly to set the right price amount.  You can’t just make the Boots of Prowess – you have to shuffle through prices until you hit the right value. To know the right value, you have to have the strategy guide, and you don't know which item you created until after the process is over. 

Unfortunately, the end result was the Emerald Earring, costing me thousands of virtual dollars.  The developers expect me to go back and kill beasts for money and material, but I can rig the system too. 

Menu. Memory Card. Load Game.

Back to the save point. Back to the workshop. I re-started the process.  There’s no mini-game involved in Item Creation – I could only watch animations of my crew as they worked at tables and stitched things together.  This doesn’t mean that they make the product, as for realism’s sake the assembly line can fail to make anything, resulting in pictures of my employees making sad faces and me losing cash. 

Menu. Memory Card. Load Game.

This time when I got back to the workshop my team was sleeping.  Star Ocean went all out to make a convincing world: There’s even a union that designates nap time. I entered in and out of the menus until my Teamsters got back to work.

This time they finally produced the boots.  I rushed back to save the game.  Now all I had to do was create 20 more.

Menu. Memory Card. Load Game.

Once that’s done, I can take the ultimate weapons I got from
the secret dungeons and put them through another part of Item Creation called Synthesis.

Menu. Memory Card. Load Game.

The developers were kind enough to burden these weapons
you had to play 150 hours to earn with awful attributes like quintupling the enemy’s defense or reducing experience points earned by 90 percent. Fortunately, through trail and error they can be removed.

Menu. Memory Card. Load Game.

Then I can synthesize the boost from the Boots of Prowess to the weapons, also through trail and error.

Menu. Memory Card. Load Game.

With a 240 percent increase in Attack and Defense bonuses, my team will be ready.  They’re already at Level 255, but that isn’t enough for the million-HP-point bosses and their screen-covering death strikes.  To stand a chance against these gods, I had to demonstrate my mastery of this cruel side quest.

Menu. Memory Card. Load Game.