CHAPTER 5: ENTROPY PART 2

CHAPTER 5 PART 2

After that previous stage I call "Time Warp", the next stage appeared to be a Toxic Waste Dump.



As you can see, the place looked grungy, and inhospitable.
The music was a short looping of an ambient synthesizer song. Listening to it made me feel like I had sniffed some toxic fumes myself, and it was messing with my head the whole time. I even felt like I was choking while playing this level.



The enemies all seem to be mutated to some degree. In the above screenshot you can see green mummies with bird skulls, that jump out of the waste to spit projectiles. There's also a brownish cow skeleton monster with spider legs.



Halfway through the level I even saw one of the deer from the forest. It was alone, and when I saw it, it was drinking toxic waste out of a barrel with an anteater-like tongue.



I was moving over to try to make it stop, but then this flock of skull birds came out of nowhere and started attacking.
The deer was scared by this and ended up running off the ground into the toxic waste. I feel bad for it. One of the birds bit me, but I regained health quick from killing all of them, they were rather weak.

I pressed onward. Of all the levels in Entropy, this was probably the most "normal", in that there was little deviance from the "Move forward, smash things" formula in the original game.



I encountered more creatures through the level, like tentacled blobs, and some kind of deformed thing with human-like teeth. I didn't feel like provoking them into a fight, so I kept on flying near the top of the screen. I still had to deal with occasional flock of birds now and then.



At the end of the level was a large, bluish green lake, and there I encountered another mini-boss. Some kind of a monster with a long neck and a whale's skull. It attacks with a mouth projectile, and by charging into you. It also could go underneath the water and rapidly emerge from a different place.

It was harder to beat than the boss from the Time Warp, and it had a lot of health because it must have taken me 3 minutes to defeat it. It let out a really loud noise when it died, and then sank back into the water as I left the screen.

Back on the board, I went to the nearest level icon I hadn't seen yet, which was a white tree. As I guessed, the level was a winter themed recolor of the forest stage.



But unlike the regular forest, I didn't feel unnerved starting this one. I think the music had a lot to do with it. It was a gentle, calm song, it almost sounded romantic. It was quite stress relieving, and the forest itself looked much less ominous covered in snow.

I traveled through the first segment enjoying the atmosphere for 4 minutes, when suddenly I realized something: I haven't seen a single creature since I started the level. Where are all the animals? Soon after, I left the screen, and the next segment started.

In the second segment, I was still in the winter forest, but now the music was gone. I was starting to feel suspicious, but then I reminded myself that there were other empty levels in the game and this was likely another one of those.

But then...I heard something familiar. It was the 12 second looping music from "UNFORGIVING COLD" starting up. I could feel my heart sink as I came across this horrible sight:



It was a whole group of dead deer creatures, covered in snow. Judging from the blackish blue tone of their skin, they must have all frozen to death. On closer inspection, some were missing body parts. Now I was frightened. But I still had to keep going.

Before exiting the level, I was really hoping to see something resembling the previous forest animals in a living state. And sure enough, I did.



It was a creature much like the beaked sloth, except this thing had white fur and was more of a beaked gorilla. It was walking very slowly when I saw it, but I was happy to at least see something alive. However, it didn't stay that way for long.



A pack of raptors, who must have sensed that something else was still alive, came rushing in from the right side of the screen. The beaked gorilla didn't stand a chance, as one of the raptors immediately lunged at it and ripped open it's back legs.

These "winter raptors" acted far different from their temperate relatives. While the other raptors only attacked while hunting prey or when provoked, the winter raptors seemed to have all gone insane. They attacked everything in sight, one was running back and forth clawing at nothing. Even the noises they made sounded different, more high pitched and enraged.



As I left this second segment, I even saw two Raptors fighting to the death. They were both covered in injuries, and one of the Raptors had been blinded in one eye. I took a screenshot, but I didn't stay to see who won the fight.

I only had to get through one more segment before I could go back to the board screen. But in this segment, I was no longer in the winter forest, but instead a very empty grassy plain, with a bright gray moon in the sky. The pleasant music of Winter Forest part 1 had returned.



And immediately, I started to feel dread. This is going to sound crazy but it's the absolute truth: The game made this level from one of my memories.

After a long stretch of nothing, I reached a lake. And then, the moon moved down from the sky, and begin to hatch like an egg.When it did, a curled up humanoid figure fell into the lake as the moon halves quickly disintegrated.





I heard a splash when it hit the water, then a moment of silence. Then the screen began to shake, and a new creature emerged from the water;



And thus I was introduced to a monster I call the "Moon Beast". This was the only screenshot I took, as I was focusing all my concentration on winning the fight. And it was the most difficult fight yet. Stronger than any of the previous bosses, this creature would have been hard to take down with Godzilla, and with Mothra it seemed nearly impossible.

I suppose I would consider myself fortunate that the beast lacked any attacks like Gigan's saw, because if it had I would never have won this. I barely had 3 bars of health when I finally killed this abomination.

But what happened afterward is hardly what I could call a reward.

...I've been trying to keep my promise and suppress this memory for years, but it seems as if I have to get it off my chest. This is a very painful memory for me, but the game already knows about it and I think you should too. I'll just tell you the important parts, because I don't like bringing this experience back into my head unless I have to.

Back when I was in Middle school, I had a girlfriend named Melissa. She suffered from some kind of mental disorder that caused her to go into "episodes".

When she was in an "episode", she would stand or sit perfectly straight and still, and her face would instantly lose any expressions she had before. She would speak very clearly, without any hint of emotion. When it was over, she would start trembling and sometimes bury her face in her hands, and remain silent for several minutes. I can't really convey the feeling it gave me in words, and I won't try. You had to see this in person to understand.

But despite this, she was a very kind person and I cared about her dearly.
We liked to hang out in a field at night, and look at the stars. But one night she didn't say anything to me at all, she just stared directly at the moon, trembling. I tried to talk to her, but she suddenly sprung up, and ran right into traffic. I tried to stop her, but I was too late. She got hit by a truck, and was killed that night.

I looked her right in the eyes when the wheels went over her neck. That sight has always haunted me.

I know that the game knows about this because after I defeated the Moon Beast....this happened.