Guys I think my game is haunted
Not really, but also yes. Let me explain.
So last night I was playing Alto's Odyssey, and for people who don't know, it's a 2D game abt snow bourding, and basically the only mechanic you have is jumping and backflipping. You have three goals (trick scores, discovering biomes, etc) to complete to level up, and every 10 levels you unlock a new character. Every character has their own skills and weak points. And you could collect coins to buy stuff at the workshop. I swear this will all be important in a moment.
So I was playing the game last night at 1 AM, and the goal I was supposed to complete was called 'backflip to kiss a rail' which I have no idea what it meant, which was unfortunate since I was only two goals away from unlocking a new character: a llama named Filipe. I had only 8000 coins, but I didn't want to use them to skip the goal. I was on level 38.
When I opened the game today, I was weirded out by the fact that I apparently had a different goal to achieve. So I was like, "Maybe I just passed that goal without knowing and went to the next level? It was very late." But then I noticed more oddities.
I was on level 41. I don't even remember passing the 30's.
I had a 25000 coins. I didn't even pass the 10000's!
And I had apparently acquired a new character without realising. If we just ignore the fact that the game literally announces it to you when you unlock a new character and say I just didn't notice, you know what the terrifying part is?
The game said I achieved character-specific goals. Yup. The goal "Jump 20 meters high with Filipe" was marked as complete.
Now maybe my account got hacked, I wouldn't know. Maybe I was using someone else's account, which I checked; I wasn't. But there is something else that creeped me out more than any of these oddities combined.
Because it didn't happen while my phone was closed, it happened while I was playing the game.
For context on the game mechanics: Every character has different abilities. For example: Maya is a very fast backflipper, but she has problems building up speed. Izel is insanely fast, but that also means he's hard to control. Alto is a default, since he is the first character you get to control. They could sometimes be hard to distinguish in gameplay, but their interaction with their environment can give them away.
And most importantly, you could only change characters between runs.
So I started playing with Maya, since naturally she is the easiest to increase the trick score with. She may be slow, but she's the best for the job. When I lost, I started a new game immediately.
I notice almost instantly that Maya got too fast from one backflip; she naturally can't build up speed that fast. When I focused on the character more, I realised I was playing with Izel.
I didn't change the characters.
That was exactly the moment when I realised something was wrong.
I went to the player list, and it was also the moment I had Filipe unlocked when he really shouldn't be, and I made all the discoveries mentioned above.
Oh, and this is a true story. I just thought this was interesting enough to post abt online.
(Is it ironic that I'm also an AWTDE fan? And the fact that I'm not planning on deleting the game any time soon...)
Uhhh- Happy reading and good day?
