I am absolutely ashamed of myself.

I've never considered graphics an issue. Many of my favorite games are pretty old, and I've never minded motionless sprites or minimal animation. I played Spiderweb Software's Exile back in the 90s (and sank countless hours into both of its remakes), along with obscure RPGs like Realmz and TaskMaker, and I enjoyed some truly ancient roguelikes found on shareware CDs that came with magazines. I never had any problems with putting myself into my characters' shoes, graphics notwithstanding. I feel as if the minimal graphics give my imagination more freedom to roam and create on its own, much like reading a book.

And yet, when I first saw this game, I thought "Meh... not what I'm looking for." How wrong I was.

I was a relatively late arrival to the survival genre, used to this type of game in 3D, with elaborate building systems and first-person perspective. For some reason, seeing UnReal World's top-down 2D view just didn't connect with me like its newer cousins and derivatives, despite my long history of 2D gaming. I guess I just didn't understand it; didn't grasp how the survival concept could work in a 2D world.

I am ashamed because I more or less dismissed this game, turned off by the oldschool appearance and UI, despite my own beloved memories involving games that looked even more primitive. I thought the LARP photos standing in for characters were kind of silly, despite the fact that I own a full RenFaire outfit and have eagerly attended Hurstwic classes. I have a personal goal to go primitive camping and sleep on a reindeer hide someday. (I did get to touch one, once, at a reconstruction of a Viking camp. It was super thick and honestly felt like memory foam. I want to know how my underpowered, microwave-fed 20th-century body would feel, waking up on that.) I've painted my own shield and I own a combat-grade warhammer. There are throwing axes in my bedroom.

My point is that I am absolutely the target audience, and yet despite everything I know about myself, I dismissed this game. I thought it looked a bit weak, silly even, and moved on. I did at least have the presence of mind to put it on my wishlist.

I am an idiot. This game is anything but weak. It's stronger and harder than me.

I finally bought UnReal World because it kept coming up in lists of "hardest survival games," and that was what I wanted. They weren't wrong. 3D graphics don't mean sh*t. My first experience playing UnReal World was absolutely on par with my first experiences of huddling in freezing terror in the legacy version of Savage Lands, or frantically building a dirt house in Minecraft and hoping my 4 torches would be enough before nightfall, or quivering in an unfinished thatch hut in ARK while praying the raptors wouldn't notice me despite only having gotten three walls up in time, or finishing my first tiny house and getting inside just before the deadly sandstorm hit me in Conan Exiles.

My first death was to a bear that lurked near my campsite and showed no interest in me. I ignored it and went about my business. That was a fatal mistake, and one day, the bear decided I was not beneath its notice after all. I blithely selected "No" when asked if I'd like to cancel my current action because my ursine neighbor had just come into view. After all, it had never bothered me before. The bear rewarded my faith in its benign nature by charging forward and swiping the life right out of me with its massive claws. I lay bleeding out in terrible confusion, and then the screen went black.

I'll remember that death. You always remember your first.

Since then, I have frozen to death, naked on a rock surrounded by water, hoping to meet a spirit. I have been murdered by a Njerpezit warrior whose pathetic combat skills (equal to mine) resulted in a fruitless trading of blows for over a quarter of an hour until he scored a lucky hit and put his handaxe through my face. I have drowned after misjudging the width of a river in comparison to my own swimming skill, weighed down by inexperience and hubris. I have starved, bled, vomited, and suffered, and I remember every death with just as much passion as the ancient epics.

But I've also triumphed. I've awoken to strange noises to discover an elk in my pit trap, and suddenly found myself with enough food for months. I've pulled nets in from the sea that resulted in a catch even the gods would envy. I've thrust a spear straight through a Njerpezit skull and watched his dog flee in terror. I've covered myself in bear hides and carved my own skis, to glide across the snow with the meager winter sun glimmering in the frost on my fur-cloaked shoulders.

I played until the sun came up, and then I kept playing. In the end, I lost a day. An entire day. I emerged from my bedroom to discover that the sun had gone down. I wondered what happened.

This game happened. UnReal World eats hours like nothing else I've ever experienced. I have to be very careful. I've never been addicted to hard drugs, but I imagine this is what it's like.

In my mind, the 2D graphics have become a tangled, snow-laden forest; churning rapids; a hastily-constructed shelter built in desperation by frostbitten hands; a lucky fish catch hours from death by starvation; a hurriedly-built fire providing last-minute salvation; each meal a brief moment of respite from a constant sense of impending doom just as intense as any Jack London story. The LARP character photos, with their limited dialogue, have each become individuals offering a precious moment of human contact in an unforgiving world that wants nothing more than to chew me up and spit me into an early, unmourned grave. It says a lot that your ancestors are remembered for their deaths above anything else they accomplished.

Now, whether I'm at work, or grocery shopping, or watching TV, or doing pretty much anything, a part of my soul is forever stuck in Iron Age Finland, plotting my next move, craving the harsh, brutally beautiful, low-resolution landscape, and all its dangers and rewards. Enormous Elk, I kneel to you. Your game has written its own name in my prideful blood, and I regret nothing.

The forest is waiting. Just give in.