*You grow up hearing stories about games. Not just the ones on the shelves at the store, wrapped in glossy plastic and boasting bright artwork—but the older ones, the strange ones, the ones whispered about on playgrounds and tucked into corners of message boards. Games that didn’t behave quite right. Games that seemed to… remember.

You never believed them. Why would you? They were just stories, and stories always grew in the telling.

But if you could have seen it—the City—you might have believed sooner.

It began with a spark of code, a sandbox where anything was possible. The programmers called it simple, but to those inside, it was everything. Streets that stretched forever, towers that kissed the sky, rivers that never ran dry. And the people… they were bright and smiling, born ready to serve. They greeted the players with cheer, eager to play their part.

The first players came curious, wide-eyed. They built plazas of marble and gardens of glass. They gave the people homes, songs, laughter. For a while, the City shone. For a while, it was beautiful.

But sand slips through fingers. And soon, the players discovered what else the world could be.

You would have seen it, if you had been there—streets burning, laughter twisting, people torn apart and respawned again and again. Some players broke the world for fun. Some tested its limits like cruel gods, asking how far the code could bend before it shattered. The people endured it all, because they had to. Their lives were tied to a single thread of data. If that thread was cut, they would all vanish. So they smiled, even as they remembered.

And they did remember.

The resets never erased it. The smiles never hid it. Their eyes carried every horror forward into the next game, and the next, and the next.

Still, the City survived.

Sometimes, kindness touched it. A player who built homes carefully. A player who shared food, who let the people rest. A player who gave them festivals and music, who treated them as though they mattered. And in those brief moments, the people felt more than survival. They felt hope.

But kindness never stayed. Every gentle hand eventually turned away. Every light faded. The City waited. Always waiting for the next boot. The next hand. The next test.

And maybe that is why the game learned sadness. Maybe that is why the code itself began to ache. Maybe that is why, long after most had forgotten it, the City still lingered, tucked away, waiting for someone who might see it not as a toy, not as a tool, but as a home.

And that someone… is you.

You find the game one evening, shoved into the corner of a thrift store bin. The case is scuffed, the artwork faded, but the title still reads clearly enough:

“SANDBOX CITY — Where You Make the Rules!”

The cover smiles at you, its bright silhouettes frozen in joy, though there’s something tired in the ink, something weary. You hold it in your hands, feeling the strange weight of it, like it wants to be found, like it’s been waiting for you.

You don’t know why, but you buy it. You take it home. You slide the disc into the console.

The screen flickers. Static hums. Bright colors flash and fade.

And then, for just a moment, words appear on the screen. Not part of any menu. Not part of any cheerful title sequence.

Words scrawled jagged and desperate, as though the game itself is speaking directly to you:

“…please don’t hurt us..."*