The Essence of ecnessE

The Essence is a 1998 Windows game that takes and puts you in the shoes of a person. You decide his every move, what he does, says and thinks. In fact, the fact that the A.I. has MANY varieties of responses to these actions baffled some players, obviously because of how much space that alone took up. Fortunately, or unfortunately, if you wish, the download only takes a few seconds for all that information. I found out about this game via a friend telling me he was sending it to me. The following was his email:

Dear Richard,

I was cleaning my attic for old possessions when I came across this game. It was called, "The Essence", a childhood favorite of mine. Since you have such a big imagination, I thought you'd want it.

Regards, Craig

When I received the package, I immediately put that shit into my Windows XP (by the way I still use XP, thank you very much) and started the installation. When I clicked to fire up the wizard, it said it wouldn't install, so I tried installing it using Window's 98', so I switched the system to it, and it finally worked. Took about 3 minutes to put it onto my computer, but when it did, I eagerly dashed to click the new icon.

The icon was a rather disturbing one, a human heart with wires inside. Regardless, I just went on. Turns out it was created by a company called Espache Games. Never heard of them. This must probably be their only game, maybe they had more, but upon further research into the company was fruitless. The title screen was a black background, and crooked red text spelling the title, obviously.

The choices were simple, a start and options. I clicked options out of curiosity, and what followed was an image of a decapitated torso missing legs, bloodied, with wires around and on top of it. I then realized this game must have been rather dark, despite the free-flow gameplay the back of the case boasted.

I started up the main mode, and the screen flashed red and took me to a blue screen, looking exactly like the blue screen of death, but you could type. I typed, "I think I'll go suck my wife's boobs." The game responded with a loud buzzing noise followed by a crackle. I continued, typing things like, "I will shoot my neighbor's kid" and "The dog will be hanged". I got very, very creative with what came out of my mind, until finally, after I typed, "Hi, God, would you burn in Hell?"

A large image of a swelled, pus filled, scarred face of a grizzled bearded man popped up, and I fell out of my chair. I then noticed the room was pitch black. A man with white robes, white beard and hair, like in the image, and white, pupiless eyes. 

"Come closer, Richard."

I did as told and when he extended his hand, I did the same. When we finally touched, a flash of white light enveloped my view. I found myself in a dank basement, no doors, no escape, but a computer, the only light in the room. It was an XP, like mine, and only one file existed. I sat down a the rotted desk and clicked the file.

The image.

It was my own face, morphed and distorted to look like, some bizarre being. I was pretty shocked to see something like that, but I assumed it probably had access to my camera that was facing me, and was connected to my computer. Basically, I thought of it as a spook tactic, a clever one.

That, however, did make me piss my pants, and I had to go change. I checked the drawer for some clean shorts, when I found a notecard in one of the pockets. It read:

BUT WHO WAS THE SKELETON POPPED OUT???!!!

What a game.

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