It was completed a week later.
《Pettan Forest》.
However, it was surprisingly small compared to 《FRONTIER SAGA》.
The title screen only had a round, white protagonist and a picture of a forest. The only settings were volume and screen size, and there were no detailed difficulty settings or key configurations.
Once you started the game, there were no long explanations, and a few seconds later you were standing at the entrance to the forest.
I rebooted from the beginning several times and made sure there was no extra waiting time before saving.
“…This is fine.”
When I said it, I felt a little nervous.
I made it. I understand all the mechanisms.
Still, I can’t tell whether this game is a success, even if I play it myself.
Haru was supposed to come visit us today.
◇
The doorbell rang, and when I opened the door, Haru looked up at me before he even said hello.
“Yuu, you made a new game!?”
“It’s done. Yesterday, I checked that it works all the way to the end.”
“Show me!”
As Haru was about to step up into the house, my mother, who was behind me, grabbed his shoulder.
“Haru-kun, the game won’t run away, so let’s take off your shoes first.”
“Ah.”
It seemed he’d finally realized he had put one foot up on the step. He hurriedly started taking off his shoes.
“Yuu, turn it on first!”
“Okay, so go line up your shoes.”
“Even Yuu says things like a mom.”
“If they’re a mess, I’m the one who’ll get told off.”
“Then I’ll line them all up.”
Strangely satisfied, Haru lined up the left and right shoes perfectly.
When we moved to the living room and I opened my laptop, Haru sat down next to me before I could even get a chair ready.
“This?”
“《Pettan Forest》.”
“Pettan?”
“It’s a game about sticking to things.”
“It’s completely different from the Demon King game before.”
Looking at the round protagonist on the title screen, Haru brought his face closer.
“Do I move this?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s its name?”
“I haven’t given the main character a name yet.”
“Well then, Mochi.”
There was almost no time to think.
“Why Mochi?”
“Because it’s white and round.”
“I see.”
Indeed, it fit so well that it made the fact that I hadn’t decided on a name for a whole week seem silly.
“Then it’s Mochi from today?”
“I named it!”
That alone made him look a little happy.
This time, instead of a keyboard, I’d borrowed my father’s old gamepad. I’d made the button layout as simple as possible so that even Haru’s hands could hold it comfortably.
The controls were move, jump, and stick.
That’s it.
“Does this work?”
“You move with the left side. This one is jump, and you’ll figure out the other one by playing.”
“What about attacking?”
“I didn’t make that.”
“What about magic?”
“No.”
“A sword too?”
“There isn’t one.”
“What about levels?”
“None of that.”
Haru looked at the controller and at me by turns.
“Then what do I do?”
“It’s a game where you figure it out yourself.”
“You’re saying something difficult again.”
“It’s definitely easier than last time.”
“Really?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe…”
Haru started playing the game, looking suspicious.
As soon as the loading finished, the forest appeared on the screen.
In the center of a path surrounded by dark-colored trees, a round, white mochi was looking around. Every time it walked, its body squashed a little, and when it stopped, it returned to normal.
Haru tilted the stick.
Mochi started walking slowly.
“It’s kind of jiggly.”
“I thought softer would be… ah. I thought it’d be cuter.”
When he pressed the jump button, it squashed its body a little and then sprang up.
“So cute!”
When I heard those words, I felt a little of the tension in my chest ease.
It seemed that at least it hadn’t been hated in the first few seconds.
◇
After entering the forest and walking a little further, there was a small step.
Haru moved left and right several times as if confirming the controls, then jumped and crossed it without hesitation.
Beyond that was a cliff that couldn’t be climbed just by jumping normally.
Floating nearby were fluffy bugs with round, swollen bodies and small wings. The three of them were slowly bobbing up and down like balloons.
“Oh, there’s something here.”
Haru quickly approached.
When the protagonist got close to a fluffy bug, a small mark appeared on the protagonist’s body for a moment and then disappeared.
I stayed silent.
“Something just happened.”
Haru backed off a little.
When he approached it again, the same mark glowed.
“Is this it?”
He pressed the third button.
Mochi stuck to the fluffy bug’s stomach.
The fluffy bug, suddenly heavier, sank down just once, widening its eyes and flapping its wings as if surprised. Just like that, it slowly began to rise into the sky with Mochi dangling from it.
“Wow, it flew!”
Haru’s voice rose along with it.
A second one passed nearby.
“Maybe I can stick to this one too.”
He released the button to switch, but the timing was too early and Mochi fell to the ground.
“Ah!”
The white body hit the ground and was squashed.
A moment later, poyon.
It returned to normal as if nothing had happened.
Haru’s eyes went wide.
“It doesn’t die?”
“It doesn’t die.”
“No matter where it falls from?”
“It’s okay. Even if it falls into a hole, it’ll come back nearby.”
After thinking for a while, Haru smiled happily.
“Then it’s okay to fail.”
“That’s why I made it that way.”
“One more time!”
This time he tried to jump to the second one, but failed.
The third time also failed.
He managed it the fourth time, but got greedy and tried to move on to the third one, and fell off.
Even so, Haru didn’t look fed up. Every time he fell, he said, “That’s a shame,” and immediately went after the fluffy bugs again.
I almost opened my mouth several times.
It’s better to let go after it rises higher. It’s easier to reach the next one if you jump when it’s coming down.
Things like that, I could teach him as much as he wanted.
However, I closed my mouth each time.
I remembered why I’d made this game.
I wanted it to be something you could play without me being next to you.
“Ah.”
It was the sixth time.
Haru suddenly stopped moving.
“What happened?”
“Up until now, I’ve only been jumping off after getting to the top.”
“That’s right.”
“But if I let go on the way up, it might fly forward.”
I didn’t answer and looked at the screen.
“Why don’t you try it?”
“I’ll do it.”
He used two fluffy bugs to ascend and released the button just before reaching the top.
Mochi, its upward momentum still intact, flew into the distance in a gentle arc.
It landed with a plop on top of a bush it couldn’t reach until just now.
“Look!”
Haru looked at me.
“Did you see it? I thought of it!”
“I was watching properly.”
“Did you know, Yuu?”
“I knew, but I didn’t tell you.”
“Then I found it!”
He proudly puffed out his chest.
I laughed. This was probably what I wanted.
◇
When he passed through the bushes, he found a Goron sleeping in the shade of a tree with a large shell on its back.
There was a cracked rock at the end of the road.
“Someone’s sleeping again.”
“Because it’s a forest where everyone sleeps well.”
“Will it get mad if I wake it up?”
“What do you think?”
“You made it, Yuu, right?”
“I made it, but Haru decides what to do with it.”
“Then I’ll wake it up.”
He was quick to decide.
First, he jumped and tried to get on top of it.
He slipped and fell. He tried pushing from the front.
It didn’t move.
After thinking for a few seconds, Haru brought Mochi closer to its back and pressed the button to stick.
The white body clung tightly to the Goron’s shell.
Goron suddenly realized that something was attached to him, and his body trembled. He stood up in a hurry and started running without looking ahead.
“Whoa, wait, wait!”
Haru was laughing and tilting the stick, but Goron didn’t listen.
He continued straight down the road and plunged headfirst into the cracked rock.
The rock cracked apart.
A beat later, Goron himself fell over backward.
“I broke it!”
“His head seems to be tough.”
“I wasn’t aiming for that.”
“But the path is open.”
“If I did it again, would he run a different way?”
I was a little surprised when Haru said that.
Normally, I thought he would have said “I got it!” and moved on.
But Haru was already thinking about using the same creature in a different place.
“You should try it.”
“I’ll do it later!”
It seemed the desire to move on won out.
◇
A river was flowing on the other side of the rock.
Mochi could go into the water on its own, but it just floated around and couldn’t move as fast as it could on land.
“Slow.”
Haru laughed.
“If you try hard, you can cross.”
“But it’s far.”
As he was looking at the water’s surface while saying this, a long, slender fish passed by with great force.
Haru’s eyes followed the shadow of the fish.
“He’s fast.”
“That’s fast.”
“…Can I stick to it?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s it?”
“It wouldn’t be fun if I answered.”
The fish came back.
Haru approached at the right time and pressed the button.
Peta. Mochi stuck to the fish’s back and was pulled through the water at tremendous speed.
“Fast, fast, fast!”
The fish cut through the water’s surface, making big splashes along the way.
The whole thing flew into the air.
“Wow!”
It landed on the water.
However, the next moment, the fish rubbed its body against the rocks on the riverbed, and Mochi came off.
“It fell off!”
Mochi was floating alone in the middle of the river.
“Swim to shore?”
“It’s too slow.”
“Then what should you do?”
Before I could ask, Haru was already looking around.
After a while, another fish came toward them.
“If I wait, one will come again.”
He stayed swimming in place without forcing his way to the shore.
The moment the fish approached, he stuck to it, and this time he didn’t let go until the end, when he reached the opposite shore.
“We’ve arrived!”
“Just now, if it were me, I might have gone back to shore once.”
“Why? The fish come back.”
“True.”
For Haru, that seemed to be all there was to it.
Haru said quietly as he gripped the controller again.
“This is a little difficult, but I get it.”
The moment I heard those words, my heart felt a little warm.
It didn’t have to be too easy.
I didn’t want to take away the part where you think.
I wanted to cut down the unnecessary things to the point where he could think it through himself.
◇
After crossing the river, the forest opened up a little.
To the right, a large creature like a red fruit was curled up and sleeping. On the cliff to the left, a large cocoon was hanging from a tree branch.
“There are two ways.”
“You can go wherever you like.”
“I’ll look at both.”
“Aren’t you going to decide which one?”
“I’ll take a look and then decide.”
After saying that, he headed toward the fruit first.
As he approached, two eyes opened on the red surface.
“It wasn’t a fruit.”
“It’s a creature called Pom.”
“It has a name.”
“Mochi got one today too.”
“Because I gave it one.”
Mochi clung to Pom’s back, and she began to walk slowly.
“I can ride it!”
“It’s not fast, though.”
“Where’s she going?”
Haru didn’t do anything for a while and let Pom walk.
I looked at the screen too.
The behavioral rules themselves were simple.
Pom was only given rules such as approaching if there was a sweet smell nearby, avoiding obstacles if they were in front of her, and resting in a sunny place if she got tired.
That’s why I understood all the mechanisms.
However, I hadn’t decided where in the forest she would go.
Today, the cocoon on the cliff had grown until just before hatching, and a sweet, sap-like smell was leaking from it. As a result of the combination of wind direction and surrounding obstacles, Pom was heading toward the bottom of the cliff.
“Ah, she’s heading to the cocoon!”
Haru noticed it first.
“Because it smells sweet.”
“She can tell?”
“I made Pom so that she likes that kind of scent.”
“So Yuu made her go there?”
“I didn’t decide she’d go there. She just tries to approach when she smells a scent she likes.”
“…?”
It seemed that was difficult.
I thought about it for a while and said it again.
“I didn’t tell Pom, ‘Go over there.’ I told her, ‘If something smells good, you can go check it out.'”
“Ah!”
That got through.
“That’s why she went to see it on her own.”
“That’s what it is.”
Pom, who had reached the bottom of the cliff, looked up curiously.
At that moment, the cocoon burst open.
A small fluffy bug popped out from inside and tumbled down, unable to fly properly yet.
“It’s born!”
Haru leaned forward.
The small fluffy bug circled around Mochi once, then began to drift a little lower.
“Maybe I can stick to this one too.”
“She’s a baby, so she might not be able to fly very high.”
“Then I’ll just go halfway.”
Haru didn’t hesitate.
Mochi clung to the fluffy bug and floated halfway up the cliff, then jumped repeatedly and climbed up.
I hadn’t taught him anything.
Pom reaching the cliff and the fluffy bug being born were the result of simple rules converging on the spot.
Then Haru saw this and changed his way of playing.
There was no complex personality AI like 《FRONTIER SAGA》’s, nor a huge historical simulation.
Even so, it seemed something unexpected could still happen.
◇
A gigantic creature called Mugumugu was lying on the cliff, blocking the path through the forest.
“It’s huge.”
Haru brought Mochi closer.
“Is this the boss?”
“I guess it’s like a boss.”
“Do I defeat it?”
“There’s no attack button, though.”
“Ah, I see.”
He tried approaching it from the front.
Mugumugu let out a snort, and Mochi bounced back with a pop.
“No good.”
He tried again.
It still got bounced.
Haru didn’t keep pushing there and started walking around.
On the right side was a leaning tree with a large fruit hanging from a branch.
There was a small slope on the left.
When he went around further behind, he could see Mugumugu’s large mouth through a gap in its curled-up body.
Then, a small bubble with a picture of a fruit appeared above its head and quickly disappeared.
“Is this guy hungry?”
“Maybe so.”
“Can I feed it some fruit?”
“Why don’t you try it?”
The answer I’d prepared used the setup on the right.
You make Goron hit the leaning tree, the impact drops the huge fruit, and it rolls down the slope and gets fed to Mugumugu.
Haru did glance at the big fruit once.
However, he started heading back the way he had come.
“Where are you going?”
“Pom.”
“Pom?”
“That guy looked like a fruit.”
I couldn’t help but close my mouth.
I see, so he’s going that way?
He went down the cliff and looked for the Pom he’d been riding just now.
Mochi attached itself to Pom, who was resting in the shade of a tree, and Haru slowly led her to Mugumugu.
“You’re going to feed her to it?”
“It wants to eat fruit, right?”
“Well… they do look similar, though.”
“Let’s try.”
He brought Pom close to its mouth.
Mugumugu’s eyes opened. The big mouth opened wide.
“Ah.”
Pom curled up in surprise.
Just like that, posun.
She went into its mouth.
“She got eaten!”
Haru’s eyes went wide.
I also watched the screen.
A few seconds later, Mugumugu’s right cheek swelled. Next, the left.
Its whole body was shaking, as if something was bouncing around inside its stomach.
“What’s it doing!?”
Haru started laughing.
The next moment.
“Buekshoi!”
With a big sneeze, Pom flew out of its mouth.
The red body rotated once in the air and landed with a plop in the grass.
Her eyes were spinning for a moment, but then she got up.
What’s more, she started eating fruit from the nearby trees as if nothing had happened.
“She’s alive!”
“Pom’s skin is very tough.”
“It couldn’t eat her!?”
“Mugumugu just swallowed her whole, so I guess it didn’t eat her because she didn’t agree with it.”
“Can we do it again?”
“If Pom doesn’t mind.”
On the screen, as expected, she was now keeping her distance from Mugumugu.
“She doesn’t like it.”
“That’s right.”
We both laughed.
And most importantly, Mugumugu seemed to have gotten full after eating the fruit from a nearby tree.
With a big yawn, it rolled over to the side of the road and began to sleep comfortably.
The road had opened.
After staring at the screen for a while, Haru turned to me.
“This is what I came up with, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Weren’t you supposed to use the tree fruit?”
He’d figured it out.
“Why did you think that?”
“The one on the right looked suspicious.”
“Correct. I made it with the intention of using that one.”
“So I did it a different way?”
“You did.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t tell you anything.”
Haru’s face suddenly lit up.
“Isn’t that amazing!?”
“I think it’s amazing.”
“Maybe I’m good at games.”
“I think so. But you just fell off the fish twice.”
“That’s practice!”
He answered immediately.
But I really thought it was amazing.
Pom being treated as food and Mugumugu being able to swallow anything large enough were both simple rules that I made.
However, nothing was ever set up for you to bring Pom here to be eaten.
The two mechanisms didn’t come together by coincidence; they meshed together as rules of the same world.
And Haru was the one who noticed that.
It wasn’t the answer I’d prepared.
Still, it wasn’t a mistake.
“…So this is what happens.”
“What?”
“This whole thing.”
In 《FRONTIER SAGA》, thousands and thousands of conditions came together, and a history I had never imagined was born.
But it seems it doesn’t have to be that complicated.
Even with just a few simple rules, if you can combine them freely, people will come up with answers I couldn’t think of.
That made me strangely happy.
◇
As we continued ahead past where Mugumugu had moved aside, the forest ended.
The large rainbow-colored tree that had been visible in the distance now towered over the entire screen.
“We’ve arrived!”
Haru said happily.
There was a small door at the base of the large tree. There were no letters or arrows. I’d only placed a door that looked like it would open.
“Is it over if I go in here?”
“You won’t know until you go in.”
“Yuu knows, right?”
“I do.”
“Sneaky.”
Haru took Mochi to the door.
Then, for some reason, he stopped moving.
“Aren’t you going to go in?”
“…Not yet.”
“Even though you’ve come this far?”
“Because I can still ride the fish.”
He made Mochi look back.
The forest he had been walking through continued into the distance.
The fluffy bugs were still floating among the trees, and Goron was sleeping again near the broken rock. Fish were swimming in the river, and the red Pom was walking around a long way from Mugumugu, looking for the sweet smell.
“I want to take the red guy from earlier somewhere else.”
“Just don’t feed her to it again.”
“I won’t let her get eaten this time!”
“That’s fine.”
“Also, I wonder if I can take Goron to the river as well.”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Then I’ll try it!”
With the goal right in front of him, Haru started heading back the way he had come.
I didn’t stop him.
In fact, I laughed a little while looking at his back.
I’d placed the large tree because I wanted the game to be cleared.
However, Haru chose to return to the forest once more rather than clear the stage.
Even in 《FRONTIER SAGA》, there were players who built villages, read books, and started businesses after defeating the Demon King.
The scale is completely different.
Still, what was happening in front of me was a little similar.
I want to have fun, so I’ll take a detour.
That was all it was.
◇
“Yuu.”
Even after a while, Haru was still riding fish and making Goron run in strange directions.
“What is it this time?”
“Am I the only one who gets to play this?”
“I haven’t decided anything like that.”
“Then can I show it to everyone at kindergarten?”
Those were words I hadn’t expected.
“You want them to play it?”
“Because it’s fun. If everyone plays, they might do something different from me.”
“…That’s true.”
“Takumi would definitely make Goron run forever, and I think Mina would like the fluffy bugs. Also, I want to show it to the teacher.”
It seemed Haru was already thinking about who would play and how.
“Then why don’t we have everyone play next time?”
“Really!?”
“Take turns, so you don’t break it.”
“I’ll teach them!”
After saying that, Haru thought about it a little.
“Ah, but isn’t it better if I don’t tell them?”
“Why?”
“It was more fun for me not to be taught, too.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“In that case, why don’t you tell them just a little if they’re really stuck?”
“Got it. I won’t give them the answer right away.”
That’s what I’d been saying until yesterday.
Now Haru was the one saying it.
On the screen, Mochi was running toward the river again.
The number of 100,000 people I’d seen that morning was still a long way off.
Even when I was told that I had saved 320 million people in my previous life, I couldn’t see the face of a single person among them.
But now, Haru was next to me.
I could see everything: how surprised he looked, what he said when he failed, how proudly he smiled when he found the answer on his own.
“Yuu, the fish is here!”
Haru exclaimed happily.
Mochi stuck to the fish and ran down the river, sending up a splash.
I no longer told him when to let go or where to go. There was no need to say it.
Haru was playing on his own.
And now he was about to pass that play on to someone else.
Just watching it was enough.
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