Craig was being held up by a few of his friends, but they were now distracted by some sci-fi shooter. He finally had the saw the option to walk to that back room he saw Andrew slip into.
It was as though a smoke bomb had gone off at the room he just entered. That, added up with the room being poorly lit, forced him to rely on his sense of touch for the time being. The smoke came from one of the arcade machines, which had trouble staying on, as the screen malfunctioned. Eventually it turned off.
The smoke slowly faded, and luckily for Craig, thanks to the light the present arcade machines emitted, he slowly found his field of vision become clearer again. Around him he found various machines with games on them he'd never heard of. Probably they weren't ever used before, and the was covering the control panels of most of them. Some screens had been touched by adventurous kids now and then, but the amount of coins thrown into their coin boxes was significantly lower than those in the main area. It was a back door after all.
Of Andrew no trace.
Smoke? Andrew vanished? Since when did he master the art of some ninja? Craig had to search a little longer.
Just when he was about to leave the room, a beam of light assaulted the corner of his eyes. Turning to face it, he looked at the arcade machine that was previously malfunctioning. It had reset. It booted up by itself again. It caught Craig's attention.
Coming closer Craig finds out someone had tampered with the coin box. It could've been Andrew going on a raid, and he sees that it indeed is empty. His friend did show him a few tricks once on how to get money from old coin slot machines, so he knew what he was doing before Craig got here.
Craig noticed a small red button and pushed it. He almost hit his head in the machine in surprise, as an audio box, very close to his right ear, all of a sudden let out loud sounds coins falling.
He got up, and the screen now showed a different menu than before. There were two options. "New game" and "Load game", although the loading part was locked. Craig smirked. Of course, nobody ever played a game like this, that's why. Thus, it was necessary to start a game.
Craig picked "Player_1" and hit a button, which confirmed his choice and brought him to a new screen.
The screen showed a big model of what he assumed was his character for in the game. On the top left it showed a current state, which was "Alive", luckily. Right next to it was a bag with coins, and the number "100". So he owned 100 starting gold. Although a model was shown of his character. The whole lower half of the screen showed a bunch more characters. It was brought to his attention that he could pick any of them. Starting from a dwarf, to a human with lizard-like wings and tail. Looking at the world map, on the top right, he saw it was actually far bigger, in comparison to present RPG game maps like the one on World of Warcraft. FAR bigger. The scale of the world said 1:1, but of course it could just as well be a joke of the creators. If not, travelling would take a long time.
That was one of the things his character needed to be able to do. Travel. A filter made him able to see what models were best fitting for travelling. Top ranked were winged creatures, of course. Harpy's, Griffins and dragons apparently (so that's what that lizard-winged character represented). Most of the other high ranked options traveled by land, the highest ranked land type being a centaur.
He touched the screen, and now the centaur was has pick. It got centered on the screen, so he could take a closer look. Touching the screen on the info button, Craig could see its attributes:
Pros:
+ Able to travel long distances quickly by foot.
+ Great strength.
+ Imposing due to its height.
+ Great speed.
Cons:
- Big appetite, quickly hungered out.
- Broken bones can be deadly.
The biggest appeal was its travelling abilities, but strength could also be important during travels. This was in contrast to the much weaker Harpy character.
Craig had made his choice, and now advanced to the character customization. It was mostly just changing things like the color of the centaur's fur and the human part attributes. He wanted to make the character realistic. For some reason though, he couldn't change things about the face, which was already blurred out to begin with. For what he was actually able to change, he set the hair colour of the centaur to that of his own, and made the tail match it, both turning brown, almost black, because of it. He was given the option to form a mane on the human back of the centaur, but refused. He did leave horse ears on the human head though. It wasn't much of a change and it would immediately improve stats like spying and hearing, so Craig just went with it.
The size of the horse lower body was above average, but not the biggest horse size he could select. A centaur on medium height was already imposing enough after all.
After checking everything twice, Craig was satisfied with the result.
The detailed model showed a centaur with light brown fur, but an almost black tail, stretching to halfway its hind horse legs. The hooves were visible, as the fur above it was cut short, instead of having 'boots'. The horse half perfectly merged with the human upper body. Which showed a man of Craig's posture, so tall, but not muscular. Horse ears erupted out of the character's messy, almost black hair. The hair wasn't long. Nothing else could really be shown, as the face was blurred for some reason.
So that was all for the character customization.
A detail he missed when looking at the centaur the first time, was how it was holding a small brown bag in its hand. It was probably the starting money. Craig was able to already spend it on supplies, and so he did. He picked a supply bag, which looked like it could be thrown onto the centaur's equine back. A lot of stuff could be packed in those things. The prize cost was also very high, as now he had only 20... "G" left. He lowered that number with some food. He remembered Centaur's needed that more than humans in order to survive. Apples seemed to fill the hunger bars quickest for centaurs in comparison to other foods, for a low price that is,. He wasn't able to buy any meat for his character.
Now Craig was satisfied with everything. His character, its customization and the purchases he made. All he had to do was hit the button to advance. And so he did.
And so the back room was filled with smoke again...