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Gauntlet: The Video Game That's a Lot Like Life

by Milky

Questor the elf was feelin' blue. He picked up his bow and shot some arrows for no real reason. They hit some food, which disappeared. "Don't shoot the food," bellowed an authoritative voice. Questor just sighed. How he longed to ask "why not?" or find out who the authoritative voice was... but no, he could only ever say "ow" or "yummy".

Thyra was there. She was heading down the screen and wanted Questor to follow. She knew as well as he did that if she got to the end of the screen without him that it wouldn't scroll. She had never understood why. She'd tried to ask, but the only words she knew were "ow" and "yummy". It hadn't come out right.

Thor was following Thyra. He always had to follow everyone else because he was the slowest. He realized that Questor was sulking again so he threw some axes at him. Thor had never understood where he and Thyra got their infinite supply of axes and swords, but he didn't know how to ask using only the words "ow" and "yummy".

Questor didn't want to go with Thor and Thyra. He knew they thought of him as a third wheel and would probably rather adventure alone, if it wasn't for that screen scrolling thing. Suddenly, he decided he would let them be alone. He touched a blue rectangle and for some reason a gold key disappeared from his inventory and the blue rectangle disappeared. Now Questor faced Death.

Death didn't want to kill Questor. He knew from past experience that he would disappear as soon as he had taken away 100 of Questor's hit points. He didn't even have anything against Questor. He kind of thought maybe they'd be buddies if the circumstances were different. But he had no choice, so he started touching Questor, and managed to kill him and attack Thyra a bit before dying himself.

"Ow," Thyra said. Thor tried to comfort her by saying "Yummy," but couldn't tell whether or not this was successful.

Thor and Thyra noticed that Questor had turned into a pile of bones which emitted ghosts, so they threw impossible amounts of axes and swords at his corpse. They then stole his keys. They felt guilty, but hey, they had doors to open.

Now they were alone. Thor noticed how pretty Thyra was, in spite of her recent attack by Death. He wanted her, but he didn't know how to bring it up, so they kept walking along.

"Valkyrie needs food badly," the authoritative voice informed them, a few moments later. Thor knew just the place. He fended off some Grunts while Thyra helped herself to a serving of indestructible food. "Yummy," Thyra said, and the ice was broken.

"Yummy," Thor said passionately.

"Yummy," Thyra replied with equal intensity.

They ran away from the Grunts to go somewhere where they could talk without being beaten over the head with clubs.

"Ow," Thor asked.

"Yummy," Thyra replied, knowingly, as she moved against Thor.

"Yummy," Thor exclaimed, as he began walking against Thyra.

"Ow," Thyra panted.

"Valkyrie is in heat," said the authoritative voice, with a hint of slyness. This was true, but Thor and Thyra didn't know how to take off their clothes, so they just kept walking along, occasionally saying "Ow" or "Yummy", collecting treasures and fighting until they ran out of hit points and died.

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