So, I Lost my VESPER5 Save File.
(For those not in the know, this is VESPER5)
My PC was acting up something terrible a few days ago. I had hoped to manage to avoid resorting to the dreaded Windows reinstall, but it had gotten to the point that the problems that were arising seemed fairly malignant, and the OS installation felt unsalvageable.
Rewind to about a month prior; it is right in the middle of crunch time for my assignments, and I receive a recommendation from my lecturer that we ought to start playing this odd game, which will take a lot of time to experience thoroughly. I fire it up and give it a go without giving it too much thought; at least, not at the time.
As time passes, I manage to play it somewhat regularly, using my nocturnal tendencies to my advantage, and sneaking in my move of the day prior to going to bed: at 12:30 in the morning. It effectively becomes part of my daily rituals.
Once assignments ended, my sleep schedule changed and the game ended up sidelined, only progressing whenever my mind saw fit to recall it—the strange commitment I had to maintain on a daily basis; however brief, however seemingly unimportant.
Despite missing many turns due to this, the game moved along at a decent enough pace. The experience in itself felt almost meditative as one looks back on what has been done, and the progress so far. Each day, the activity takes a tiny bit more time out of one's schedule, as it presents to you your past actions before adding another small pebble to the pile.
It feels pretentious even for me as I type this out, but the game's unassuming nature felt somehow innocent and pristine.
With a new slate wiped clean, unfortunately I overlooked to rescue the tiny cache of data that VESPER5 squirrelled away, waiting for my return. When I launched the game again, I was not greeted by a recollection of my past exploits, however straightforward they may have been, but instead a clean slate.
I couldn't very well be expected to go through that entire experience again, could I? I had gotten the process of setting up my workstation down to an art, but something always slips through—art is messy, after all—and it just so happened to be the memoirs of my monk that got caught in the process of Genesis-style renewal, this time around.
Overly dramatic platitudes aside, I was faced with a dilemma. I would either have to play through the game as before, retracing my steps, or to manipulate the game into thinking that time is progressing, by playing with the system clock. Either way, my experience was tarnished, to some degree or another.
I decided to grant myself reprieve and continue to experience the rest of the game. Curiosity got the best of me. I spent the next 10 minutes or so stuck in an unpleasantly repetitive loop of changing the clock, then making a move.
This is when what was formerly meditative turned into monotony. It shed a completely different light on the game's experience, wherein it lacked the considerable gaps between visits to the game's world to cleanse the palate for the next.
While doing so, another thought dawned on me; I didn't need to follow the same route, nor did I have to leave it at the state I did, missed turns and all. I was already abusing of the game's weakness, so why not?
In the end I decided against it, and recreated my path to the best of my memory. Where the game would usually show the path to the player, I was showing it back to the game. Despite this repetition, I still found it challenging to remember exactly what steps I took towards the end. Although they were the most recent, that was why they were least repeated, hence the least memorized.
While it was only really a mild inconvenience in the end, it really brought to light how the game's experience hinges on that one simple trope. Without it there isn't very much left, and yet it is still a fairly compelling experience to have.
So, in closing: fuck games that store their save data on the C: drive.
