01. Snow White
01. Snow White
[Episode 1] - Snow White
I've liked raising simulation games ever since I was young.
There are countless game genres in the world, so why specifically raising simulations? Even if I thought about it, there wasn't really a big reason. It was just that I liked seeing the characters grow through my own hands.
So, I didn't discriminate when it came to raising simulation games.
From the egg-shaped games sold at stationery stores to the latest titles. Having consumed this and that since I was young, I had become a hardcore addict for raising simulation games before I knew it.
However, the raising simulation genre wasn't exactly popular, and maybe because I'd been playing games of the same genre for so long, even the occasional new releases started to feel stale and boring.
Just as I was thinking about moving on from the raising simulation genre to other games, an indie game released without much fanfare caught my eye.
[Snow White Princess]
Literally translated, it's just 'Snow White'.
This new release, which had gameplay reminiscent of the pioneer of raising simulation games, 'Princess Maker', was a 'parenting simulation game' developed by an overseas indie game company.
The game's early story was simple.
Set in a medieval fantasy world based on the fairy tale 'Snow White', the player becomes the 'King who lost his Queen' and raises the 'young princess' left all alone.
Naturally, there was no Korean language support, and perhaps because the rumors hadn't spread much after release, there were no domestic sites where I could get information.
The fact that the game's rating was 'mostly negative' bothered me, but the price was cheap and the illustrations were cute, so I thought, 'Should I just give it a try?'
They said there were dozens of endings in total, and I didn't have any other games to play anyway. With a light heart, thinking, 'If it's not fun, I'll just refund it,' I pressed the purchase button.
And just like that, I became absurdly addicted to this game.
*
"Ah... this is driving me crazy. No wonder the game reviews are negative..."
[BAD END]
I scratched my head in annoyance as I looked at the red letters floating on the monitor. Just how many times was this? Seeing that [BAD END] text.
[Snow White Princess]
So, this game 'Snow White' was a painful game in many ways.
Usually, a 'parenting simulation game' is a game where you raise your daughter by teaching her, having her work part-time, going on adventures together, or going through various 'events'.
Depending on how the player raised the daughter, she would become a great person, an ordinary person, or a villain. Seeing the daughter's growth and feeling healed is what a normal 'parenting simulation game' is.
I played Snow White expecting that, but...
This damn 'Snow White' was completely different.
It wasn't a parenting simulation game, but a rogue-like game wearing the skin of a parenting simulation game. And a rogue-like game that tormented the player to a sickening degree.
"...She died again."
True to the name of the game 'Snow White', there was one villain everyone knew. A crazy woman who talks to herself while looking in the mirror and is jealous of the young princess's appearance.
Snow White's stepmother, the woman called the Mirror Witch in the story.
'Vivian Liliensole.'
She was the culprit who turned this parenting simulation game into a rogue-like game. It was shocking enough that a parenting simulation game had an ending where the child dies, but there wasn't just one or two of those endings.
Sometimes she dies from eating poison, sometimes she dies from a curse, and sometimes she gets stabbed by a knife while sleeping. Just the death endings I've seen exceeded twenty as a baseline.
For normal people, it would be normal to either delete the game after seeing a few bad endings or leave a long, critical comment on a game site, but I was a little different.
By pure chance, a happy ending I was lucky enough to see made me unable to escape this game. Having seen the happy future of a daughter who grew up after overcoming all sorts of hardships...
I had made up my mind to collect all the happy endings.
It wasn't just easy. The raising in this game didn't just consist of the daughter's stat parameters. It was an element of extreme luck. Unless the heavens helped, there could be no happy future for the daughter.
And luck elements alone weren't enough. A single mistake in a choice would cause the daughter I'd spent dozens of hours raising to die. This game was a game that required thorough management of choices.
And maliciously, despite being a game without a save function, the number of times the daughter had died was saved at the edge of the screen. Every time that number increased, I clicked my tongue at the developer's viciousness.
The number at the edge of the screen pointed to 120.
The number of happy endings I had seen was only 5. Thinking I couldn't take it anymore, I threw away my pride and searched for a strategy guide on the internet.
However, like an unpopular foreign indie game, there was no information about this game on Korean sites. Even if it did pop up in searches, it was just posts written by people who had been badly burned by the game, cursing the developer in heaps.
The number of overseas users wasn't that high either. There were various endings written on the overseas wiki, but they were mostly spoiler-heavy posts for people who had given up without seeing the endings.
Thinking that a daughter's happy ending meant nothing if I didn't see it myself, I stopped looking for strategy guides from then on.
The number at the edge of the screen pointed to 210.
The number of happy endings I had seen increased to 15. Now I could get to the second half without the daughter dying, but as it went into the second half, the Witch's interference became even more severe.
Sometimes I'd get exhausted after seeing a bad ending for no reason and think I didn't want to do it anymore, but after seeing the empty 'True Ending Achievement' slot in the achievements tab, I continued the parenting.
Even if it was impossible to see all the happy endings, shouldn't I at least see the True Ending?
"This morning, I'll send her to a part-time job in the kitchen to build stamina, and fill the elegance lost from kitchen work with classes... and I have to give her a break one day out of five so she doesn't hit puberty early... Good."
The more I played, the more fun it was to dig into. Countless characters and countless jobs. Not just parenting, but farming, cooking, fishing, horse raising, horse racing, combat, etc... There was quite a lot of fun daily content as well.
If it weren't for the Witch's existence, wouldn't this game have received quite high ratings? The game showed the facets of a 'parenting simulation game' properly the more I played it, to the point where I thought that.
"Phew...."
Like that, the number at the edge of the screen pointed to 340.
[True Ending]
Snow White, wearing a golden crown, ascends the throne.
Snow White, having ascended the throne, looked down with a bitter smile. How could she not smile? The Witch who had tormented her until now was writhing in pain beneath her.
Tak! Tarak! Tak!
The Witch laughs.
Shedding tears, writhing in pain, she laughs.
The Witch, wearing red-hot iron shoes, danced beautifully at the new Queen's coronation ceremony. Beautiful and elegant until the end. The Witch ended her life by decorating the coronation ceremony with such a beautiful dance.
"Phew..."
Snow White, whom I raised, becoming Queen.
That was the True Ending of this game. Well, I had expected it, and when I thought that it was a not-bad ending, tears flowed as I remembered the hardships I had gone through until now.
How much I struggled to see this ending until now. A parenting simulation game mixed with rogue-like elements. Wouldn't there never be a game like this in my life again?
When the True Ending finished, a small system window popped up at the bottom of the screen. [Queen Ending]. Along with the system alarm that I had seen the True Ending, I clicked on that small system window.
[Queen Ending].
Obtained by only 0.1% of all players.
"I knew it..."
0.1%. I didn't know how many total players there were, but it was clear it wasn't a large number. Most would have seen the bitter taste of the Witch in the beginning and quit right there.
I turned off the game window with a satisfied feeling and looked for a strategy guide for the first time in a while. I had seen the True Ending, so since I was tired, I thought it would be fine to just roughly look at the other endings via spoilers.
"Academy Teacher ending... seen, Chef ending... seen, Marriage with the stable hand's son ending... seen."
I scrolled down while looking at the various endings written in English on the overseas wiki. Was it because I had played so much? Most were endings I had already seen.
As I scrolled down with a bored expression, I was able to discover an ending that I, who had burned over a thousand hours into this game, hadn't seen.
"witch ending... does that mean Witch ending?"
I tilted my head without realizing it.
A Witch ending? Does an ending where the princess can become a witch also exist? Since I had never once gotten involved with the Witch, I had never even thought that such an ending would exist.
What on earth is this ending? My curiosity wouldn't stop. No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't even predict what the story of this ending would be.
The moment I was about to click on that post out of curiosity,
for some reason, I felt a slight blow to my pride.
I was the one who saw the True Ending of this trash game, so is it the right answer to rely on this overseas wiki just because I couldn't see a mere other ending?
No, it's not. Absolutely not.
The fact that it was written on the wiki meant that someone else had seen the Witch ending and written it down here. If so, there wasn't a single reason why I couldn't see that ending.
A useless competitive spirit flared up.
Since I had even seen the True Ending, there was nothing left to fear. I even thought that since it had come to this, I should get all the achievements.
'...Let's sleep first and think about it. It's already 3 AM, isn't it?'
Thinking I would end up pulling an all-nighter if I kept going like this, I quickly turned off the computer and lay down on the bed. No matter how fun the game was, it wasn't to the extent of giving up work.
'...If it's a Witch ending, I should actively approach the Witch, right..? No, but how am I supposed to approach a Witch who tries to kill me like that..?'
As I closed my eyes while thinking about how to see the Witch ending, I slowly drifted into sleep due to the oncoming drowsiness. Thinking that since it was the weekend after work tomorrow, I should burn the weekend with the game...
.......Without even dreaming that that would be the end of my life as a man.