Chapter 1: Prologue

Space.

So dark and void that it can be filled entirely with imagination. For creators, it is nothing short of the ultimate material.

That's why games set in space are so abundant, enough to bury you head-deep.

The genre distinctions are also incredibly vast, ranging from grand strategy games that deal with galaxies to games where you terraform planets or travel between multiple planets to gather resources.

Despite the numerous masterpieces and classics that beckoned to me with their chirping, the space-themed game I chose was—

A 2D side-scrolling pixel mining game, ‘GalaxyBound’.

The tags attached to this game are as follows:

Open world, survival crafting, sandbox, adventure, horror, sci-fi, and so on...

In summary, it can be described as a kind of space version of Terraria.

With a retro interface full of 2D side-scrolling pixels, and the fact that you're zooming around in space? Not to mention, while doing adventures, building, and hunting?

I, who was crazy about sandbox mining games with farming systems like exploration, gathering, and processing, couldn't help but scream "Wow!" and bring my mouse to the payment window.

The problem was the game developer.

They were notorious for extremely slow updates and being riddled with bugs.

Eventually, the company hit a snag with unpaid employee wages, and updates were completely cut off.

A game with no updates.

That's as good as a dead game.

But I was still playing that abandoned game.

Because the gameplay wasn't bad.

The fact that it had many bad reviews means that many people were playing it. What does it mean when many people play a game while complaining?

The material of space had infinite expansibility.

Thanks to that, dedicated modders were stubbornly sticking around, constantly providing oxygen to the game.

I, too, enjoyed the game to the core by attaching over a hundred mods, sucking the marrow out of the dying game.

Some people criticized the game for being outdated due to its pixel art and 2D side-scrolling nature, but I didn't care.

What's the purpose of a game? To be fun, right?

If it's fun for me, it's a Game of the Year (GOTY) and a god game!

Moreover, using mods, I could implement and enjoy a realistic space epic on my monitor with my own hands, making it a truly perfect game.

Except.

Until the one enjoying it becomes the one experiencing it.