Fate ate my life.

Is eating, really. It's like Rogue; anyone remember Rogue? It came on the huge floppy disks that don't even exist anymore. I think it was Shareware. You were a slightly yellow smiley face traveling through these rooms (and by rooms, I mean white lines appearing in vaguely rectangular shapes as you "walked" in), fighting monsters (represented with letters) by pressing the spacebar until you jammed a finger, then usually dying anyway. You were, incidentally, killed either by a letter you never saw coming or a diamond shape that meant trap...but it wouldn't always kill you, and you couldn't always see it until it was too late.

The tombstone was the most ornate graphic in that game, damn it.

So now, here I am, innocently minding my own business, exploring the nifty stuff that came with my computer (which doesn't even have a floppy drive, much less one for the huge disks), and I come across the one game in the preloaded HP game center that DOES NOT have an annoying one hour trial period. I am interested, to say the least.

It only gets better from here...you name a character, decide whether you want it to be boy or girl and whether its magical immortal pet will be a dog or a cat (I think we can all guess what I chose). You explore the pastoral town of Grove, frolicking around to the strains of Turlough O'Carolan music (no, seriously, it is). You even have a purpose, which is more than Rogue ever had...you have to get to the 46th or 47th level of a dungeon filled with nasties and kill the big bad nasty at the bottom.

Since it's just silly to send you up against the biggest nasty first, you do quests for the village folk...finding stuff they carelessly left in the dungeon, killing monsters that are after their chickens, killing monsters who stole their stuff AND killed their chickens...you get the idea (although, as to the first part...They left whatever-it-was down there, so they can get it on their own, right? Wrong. Apparently, their little stroll through the cursed and monster-infested dungeon in the first place was just a one-off. Or whatever.)

Did I mention that you find stuff in the dungeon? Potions, scrolls, spells...and my personal favorite, frelling enchanted weapons! They have names and everything...you can even use jewels on socketed items to make your owm. Want a pitchfork that can kill things with both fire AND lightning, while reinforcing your stamina? Well, too bad...it's mine! (Insert evil laugh here)

It's all very D&D...you have stats and your pet has stats. The monsters have stats and the cool and shiny weapons have stats...when you kill enough of the former with the latter, you get reputation and experience points which, you guessed it...up your stats.

Ooh! AND you can feed your pet fish that turn it into a monster to help you fight, and make it carry your stuff. It's a little kitty (or puppy) science project and sherpa combo!

The only problem with the demo? It only goes down to the third level. So I bought the full verion...and it's kicking my butt. Now, we all know that this will only make me more determined to win the game. Plus, this game lets you pay an apparently corrupt Reaper figure into letting you stay alive...no tombstone to taunt you when you are viciously killed by bugbears (don't ask). In point of fact, I'm not sure it lets you die at all.

So.

At least I finished Safecracker.