05
00
04
42
FF
09
16
66
16

——————
|..@.-
|.%.+|
|<g..|
——————

You (@), a wizard named Butt, have just begun to climb out of the dungeon. Moving through a door (-) into a small room, you confidently bludgeon an ant to death (%) with your quarterstaff. You start towards the spellbook (+) lying nearby and see something move. On the screen, it is a bright-green lowercase letter ‘g.’ A rapid slideshow of possibilities: goblin? gremlin? giant? grue?

“The gremlin chuckles.”

It’s not hard to imagine what a chuckling gremlin sounds like. You’ve never encountered one in a dungeon. You feel your face getting warmer as you move towards it.

“You feel vulnerable.”

Maybe this was a bad idea. You tap ‘n,’ stepping past the ant’s corpse.

The gremlin disappears back up the staircase (<), leaving you alone in the room. You hear its laughter echoing down the stairs, mixed with the sound of your heartbeat in your ears.

Matthew Ström is a designer, developer, and amateur astronaut at a company called Planetary.