Dream Journal
November 4, 1996
CRAZY! The Cloerma of Badgerdoo (or something like it) was the name of this game. It had full VR headgear, and players would walk around in real rooms while the game projected onto the surfaces. There were these large colored drug wafers that you’d take before playing. You’d break it in half and share with another player. The first four worlds were fun. Then there was an intro Aliens (the movie) world and a full Aliens world, both of which were really intense. Only the fifth and last world required the drugs, I think.
Ed and Rafe decided to play while I watched from outside the VR. They were at the level of the fairy-type beings who were suffering from a sickness. They had no pupils and their skin was stained black around their eyes. Worst of all, they went into these fits. It was supposedly scarier than Aliens. You couldn’t play in your room because the sickness would infest all your ultraviolet/neon colors and mess them up, and wreck some of your paper. . . . Then it would ruin everything and spread. I let them play and they walked to my room because that’s where all the supplies were (according to the game’s projected environment). Rafe tried going in first but I kicked him out, yet somehow they made it in. I was mad that my room was contaminated. They didn’t seem too scared, only curious. I wished I knew what was going on in the game. This may have been in the Dark Tower. I think it was.
Drugs and Games: This one is really unique. I’m watching from outside as other people engage in what is essentially a subdream caused by a different context being painted over the current environment. Now this is what we do — this is how we understand nonphysical environments in our own terms — by projecting familiar forms onto it. But in this case, there is the additional layer of the game, which is taking over the initial interpretation of the astral environment.
My ultimate gaming idea is similar to this — you put on a headset that paints things over the real environment around you, so that while you’re interacting with fairies and dragons and such, the setting is the real world around you. That’s what kind of game this was — a layer over the current reality — something that comes quite naturally in the dream world! This game then adds mind-altering drugs into it, making one hell of a game experience.