TEEN: pcb0000 - A Digital Mystery Story (complete!)

[Bluwiikoon]

A trapped Pokémon reaches out to you for help. What will you do?
(banner artwork by Cresselia92)

Due to the unique formatting of this fic (forum-unfriendly HTML), it can only be viewed on my website. I promise this is necessary for the integrity of the story.

The prologue has a small puzzle that you need to complete in order to access the rest of the fanfic. If you need help, there is a spoiler tag at the end of this post with the solution. Please try your best!

Spoiler: Detailed content warnings (only read if absolutely necessary!)

Existential dread, descriptions of body horror, corrupted graphics, death, suicidal ideations, one instance of misgendering.

This fic is relatively light-hearted in many aspects, but contains sections that may be upsetting to younger readers or readers with trauma.

PROLOGUE:
>> Pokémon Sword and Shield: The Unused Box Customisation <<

Spoiler: The solution to the puzzle, if needed.

This story requires you to translate the binary code (the 010101s) on the page into text to progress. You can find binary converters with a quick Google search.

I'd like to request that discussion of plot details be in spoiler tags. Thank you!

 

[OrionTheAbsol]

Ah, interactive fiction and Pokémon box horror. Funny thing. I was thinking what would happen if the box system were to glitch. Or if the worst were to happen and it got shut down entirely when there are still Pokémon stored. It's something that I found that a quite few people are very uncomfortable on thinking about.

For the sake of not spoiling too much, I'll say that the ending hits especially hard. Life can be truly unfair and bring about irreversible tragedies. I think a horror story does well in simulating life's toughest challenges; it's hard to sit through and many people would rather not think about it, but I believe horror can also encourage people to come into terms with these types of challenges. In a way, to accept that this is indeed how life works.

Anyways, thanks for posting this unique story!

 

[AetherX]

This is really cool. I was a bit worried by the meta nature of it at first. Interactive fiction is fun, as is 4th wall breaking, but it can often come at the cost of the actual storytelling. So I liked that it pivoted pretty quickly to being an in-world thing.

Putting the rest in spoilers as requested just in case.

Spoiler

There was a lot of effort put into this for what amounted to a pretty simple story. I really commend you for that. The different Porygon sprites were really cute and endearing and helped make me care about the character, which turned out to be really important in the end. The plot overall was pretty straightforward as a mystery, but the format of it really elevated the whole thing. The two different endings as well added an excellent touch of emotion and... purpose? Like there are kind of two lessons/morals/ideas there. I liked the fact that despite how the two choices I could make were seemingly opposites, the two endings didn't contradict each other. Neither option is wholly right or wrong. It kind of added a third moral of how when you make a hard decision you just have to accept and internalize the reasons why you made that decision, or face being tortured by regret and what-ifs. Wasn't expecting it to get that philosophical when I originally signed up for a kind of meta horror/mystery thing.

But yeah, the writing itself was solid and the tone was handled really well (through formatting and writing together). Overall this is great and deserves more attention imo. Keep up the good work.