YouTube ads finally recommended something I wanted.

So I found a nice clicker game and swiftly got addicted.

Over the past two days, I have wasted SO much time.

But honestly, I'm pretty okay with it. The game has three endings, and you have to achieve both bad endings to get the True Ending. The first and third time you get an ending, it can be very tedious. The first because you have no starting bonuses to help you out, and the third because the True Ending takes far more points, and, therefore, more work. Even so, I was compelled to get the True Ending. I plucked on for like two days. Don't worry, I did still plan for the trial, so I wasn't completely useless.

Also, Sayuri and Bisque would play this together, without a doubt. Bisque would do all of the grindy point gathering because it gives him a rush of dopamine every time they hit a new level, and then he'd call Sayuri in whenever he had enough points to progress the story, and they'd read together. Back to the point, though.

The game is called Alter Ego (no, not the Chihiro one), and I think it does a very good job of incentivizing you to keep playing. I never even found myself annoyed at ads. And that was because the ads were fully voluntary. Occasionally, a butterfly will pop up on your screen as you click, and they can offer you things like ten minutes of all point gains being multiplied by three or an hour's worth of passive point gain, and all it takes is a thirty-second ad.

I was so enthralled by the game because of the characters, of course. And I only really mean one character, because, aside from the player (who has a pretty meta role in the story), there are only two of them, and one is far less deep than the other. But this character's entire existence is in your hands.

Spoilers for the game, though honestly, I feel like I might be doing you a favor for telling you what happens before any of you get hooked on it as badly as I did.

This is Es. She lives in a library in a solitary world. The game world consists of nothing more than an endless dark hallway for contemplation and self-discovery (the point system, called EGO), and a library where you can chat with Es and progress the story. You assume that she's supposed to be your guide to this world. She gives you personality tests every now and then and asks you a lot of existential questions, most of which have to do with freedom, righteousness, and identity.

At the end of the game, it's revealed that you're really the one leading her, not the other way around, and that the answers to the questions you give her seal her fate. The endings are based off of Freud's concepts of Id, Ego, and Superego.

In the Superego ending, the one I got first and only because I couldn't get the True ending the first time, Es comes to think of herself as a villain. Chastised and called a failure for her nonconformity, she withers and comes to blame herself. The route ends with her choosing to disappear, believing herself the antagonist that you have overcome despite how many lovely, intimate moments you'd had with her up to that point.

The Id ending is much more startling. In this route, you feed into her impulses and encourage her nonconformity. This results in her going completely mental, believing that the world, and you, the player, are delusions meant only to serve her. She becomes severely riled up and swears to defeat the people and the rules that bind her, and, in the process, completely destroys the library that she once loved dearly. She has lost herself. It was both deeply tragic and honestly a bit frightful.

I was extremely upset with both endings, and I was aware of the existence of a happier one, so I went for it. The third route, called Alter Ego, finds her with some awareness of the other routes, though she only perceives them as dreams. She wonders aloud if these are both endings she chose, and you can nudge and guide her into finding her own way and choosing her own path— you do not have to deny yourself OR the world. She ends this feeling reborn, and she gladly decides to stay in the library and continue her self-discovery. After this route, you're free to visit her and chat whenever, and your point gathering rate is exponentially boosted. You can just... happily talk about books and about each other and about how you and she interpret the world. It's warm, and nice...

And I know it sounds dumb, but I wanna visit her every day.