She pushed the blue button and the clock reset. She pushed the up button and an image of a villager appeared in the bottom left grid. She pushed the left button and the villager disappeared from the bottom left and reappeared on grid left. Another villager appeared in the top middle left. Flor continued to move the villagers together, with another villager appearing each time she pushed a button. Eventually, two of the villagers combined into what looked like a farmer, and then those stacked into a hunter.

  When she pushed the next button to combine another two villagers, she heard a tiny shriek seeming to come from the wall in front of her. She looked up just in time to see a spiderling come out from a hole in the wall. She jumped, but the spiderling wiggled its front legs and then went to a rest. Curious and brave, Flor walked over to it. She realized it was an animatronic creature attached to a pole. A hole had opened in the wall for the spiderling to come out from. She noticed larger sections that looked movable and guessed that larger adults and magical spiders would come out if she played well enough. So that’s what he meant by immersive.

  She returned to the console and moved the pieces toward the spiderling, which also moved toward them. After two moves, a newly formed hunter engaged the spiderling. The sounds of shrieks and human grunts came out of the speakers and the hunter disappeared to be replaced by a farmer. And there is the atrophy from attacking enemies. The animatronic spiderling rolled over and disappeared back into the wall.

  Thinking she understood the rules, Flor continued to play. Her moves joined more villagers into farmers who joined into hunters and then militia. Every few turns a spiderling appeared, with the associated sounds and animatronics. She worked to defeat them quickly. After a few more turns, she had created a knight, and then an adult spider came, with a louder shriek and a larger animatronic. As she moved her knight toward the adult Widow, another spiderling appeared. The board was getting pretty cramped quickly, and Flor could see how gut reactions probably wouldn’t win the game, at least if that game combined enough pieces to create a level 13 unit. She continued to play on until she combined two mounted knights into a hero and couldn’t combine enough lower-level units to have more space.

  She looked up at the timer and realized about ten minutes had passed, which was longer than expected. Perhaps looking at the effects had taken a bit or two of her playtime.

  She looked at her interface clock and realized it was still early. There was still enough time to play a couple more rounds before 1030. She pushed the blue button and played until she created a knight, but ran out of room. In the third game, she made a Lord before she ran out of room. Yikes. I doubt I’ll be able to get the monument puzzle interface to open if it’s as difficult as this.

  She left the game room and ventured out to find Sparks, who was already waiting. “Don’t worry. The interface unlocks easier since it doesn’t have the spiders coming at you. It’s like the programmers made the Widow’s Run into an expert challenge. How far did you get?”

  “I made a Lord, so something like nine or ten combinations.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Not bad for fifteen minutes of playing. I’m two beyond that and I’ve been playing it daily for weeks. Did you see the magical spider?”

  Flor shook her head.

  “They add an extra layer of difficulty, and I can only imagine the giant spider also does. Anyway, once we get to the center of the monument, there is a switch at the bottom of the center. After you flip that switch, the monument display in the entry hall becomes a puzzle you can engage in. That then opens up the monument interface.

  “Huh. That’s a different sort of complex than the city.”

  “Yeah. But, let’s get through this, then I feel like you’re excited to get to the Lighthouse.”

  “Oh, yeah. The chats this morning.”

  “Yeah. Is everything alright?”

  “Oddly, yeah. I went to the temple after and the Cleric there was able to give me a two-point rage reduction. She says she can continue to provide additional reductions over time. This brings up another interesting point I discovered.” Flor told Sparks about the puzzles tutorial and the if-equipped comment on rage. “What does that mean, do you think?”

  “Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. But maybe they recorded the same message for multiple playtest servers and not every server tests rage.”

  “Huh. That makes too much sense.”

  “Anyway, the switch is right there,” said Sparks as he knelt to show her. She knelt and flipped it from down to up. Nothing specific happened that she could see.

  “How did you figure that out to the next point?”

  “Trial and error, mostly. Let’s go before it resets, but you have at least fifteen minutes.”

  Flor and Sparks went back into the Entry Hall. The monument display didn’t look overly different. Sparks stood back while Flor approached, and then her interface flashed and she was dragged into a puzzle.

  It was oddly similar to the Widow’s Run. Instead of villagers, she started with depictions of tiny monument stones, which slid together to combine into small monument stones, then medium-sized stones, then big, then large, and then giant stones. Once she had created a giant stone, the interface flashed and disappeared.

  Puzzle complete. +1 to Combine Sliders.

  Attempt puzzle again? Yes/No?

  Flor selected no and then watched as the monument mock-up interface changed from the four-by-four combine slider grid to a four-by-four slider puzzle. She hadn’t done one of these in the game before. She wasn’t nearly as confident in them as in other types of puzzles, but from watching Alastair beat the city a few days back knew that she needed to pop the lock ring. She would then remove a piece of the puzzle before returning the map to the original configuration.

  She noted that there were fifteen distinct locations on the monument map. {Cliffs 1, Cliffs 2, Stairs, Entry Hall, Hotel, Gift Shop, Tavern, Monument, Shore 1, Shore 2, Entry, Path 1, Path 2, Utility, and Waste.} The section listed as ‘Waste’ was gray compared to the others, so Flor considered it the section that needed to be removed. It was at the opposite corner of the puzzle from the pull ring, so Flor considered that she could rotate the pieces clockwise, or counter, until the waste section could be removed then continue the rotation until the pieces were back in their starting location. She shouldn’t even need to touch the four pieces at the center.

  She started moving the pieces around, then clicked the Waste section when it was where the ring had been.

  Remove Waste? Yes/No?

  She selected yes, then moved the pieces back to their original order. The table flashed and the map seemed to shrink and grow simultaneously.

  Puzzle complete. +2 to Sliders.

  Attempt puzzle again? Yes/No?