The Game - Chapter 4 – Save File Corruption

The game introduced saving on its own terms.

I noticed it when I tried to quit midway through a session. A message flashed briefly at the bottom of the screen:

PROGRESS SAVED. DO NOT INTERRUPT.

I hadn’t touched a save option. There wasn’t one.

That night, my dreams stopped feeling like dreams. They were too consistent, too structured. I walked the same pixelated streets from the game, watched the same NPCs shuffle past, their mouths opening and closing without sound. When I woke, my muscles ached as if I’d been walking for hours.

The save file screen appeared the next time I played. There was only one slot.

MARK – DAY 14

Fourteen days since I first found the cartridge.

The game began filling in gaps from my life I hadn’t consciously remembered. A level set in a hospital corridor matched the one where my father died, down to the flickering fluorescent light near Room 312. Another section recreated my high school, lockers dented exactly where I’d slammed one during a fight I’d never told anyone about.

I tested a theory.

I deliberately made a “wrong” choice—led my character into a trap the game clearly warned me about. The screen glitched violently, sprites tearing apart. For a moment, the game froze on a single image: my character lying motionless on the ground, face twisted in pain.

Then everything reset.

When I stood up from the couch, my knee buckled. A sharp pain shot through my leg. By morning, a bruise had bloomed in the exact shape of the jagged spike that had impaled my character.

The game wasn’t simulating consequences anymore.

It was syncing them.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model