Pay to play. Since the beginning of online gaming this has always been the norm; you paid the company and they let you play their game. So it's no surprise that Alex Stanton was living every gamer's dream. It was the opposite for him. He was getting payed to play.
Gilded Obsession
The Elite watch as the pawns of Eden struggle for their very survival. But Catherine can't help but desire the adventure and drama the world promises. Once she's made the plunge into the virtual world, she'll quickly learn what happens to the curious cat.
Eden was built as the perfect fantasy reality. Instead of being a means of entertainment for its players, it became a world where the rich extort the poor to fight and die for their own amusement.
As a pawn, your life is your own. But death in the game doesn't mean you reload and start over. When you die in Eden, you die in the real world. Sometimes survival comes at the cost of another's life.
My Opinion: Lorcan, captain of The Wandering Willow, takes on a high paying escort job. Only the person he has to escort is the young daughter of a rich family on her first trip into Eden. If she dies in the game she dies in real life and so will Lorcan for not protecting her.
This is a short read at 95 pages for $2.99. It is available on Kindle Unlimited. If you have Kindle Unlimited, this is a good short story. Otherwise it’s overpriced.
Score: 6 out of 10
Gilded Obsession (The Permadeath Legacy Book 4)
The Dive: Birth of a Wordsmith
What happens when a game becomes your life? What happens when your life becomes a game? Follow Christopher Weston as he dives too deeply into the newest hit game, learning the skills needs to survive in this brave new world.
My Opinion: It is such a joy to read such a well written and edited story. The characters are vividly described and the mechanics of the world are familiar and easy to understand. It was easy to become engrossed in the story and I found myself at the end before I knew it. I definitely want more story!
Score: 7 out of 10
The Dive: Birth of a Wordsmith
Towns and Towers: A New Land
When Sam’s new video game system arrives in the mail, he unexpectedly finds that it isn’t the one he sent in for repairs, and instead he has received some sort of limited edition model. He soon finds out how unique the model is when after downloading his newest game he is transported into the system and expected to play through the role of his character without access to the real world, or any of the informationally packed strategy guides he is used to using.
World Seed: Game Start (Book 1)
But with the age of VR, everyone still dreamed of that next step, the next level of adventure. And after a hundred years, it has finally arrived. The first consoles, known as Seeds, mass distributed among the people, with such realism that they no longer qualified as a Virtual Reality, but as an Artificial Reality. But what happens when things become too real?
Fantasia
Killing Pawns
Gamer of the Dead
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
I decided to create a new story. Nothing original, I just followed the latest and more popular genre here in RoyalRoad. Zombie Apocalypse meets the Gamer. to make it a bit different, I decided to create a new kind of zombie with its own rules. hopefully, the zombie will become more dangerous and open up new possibilities. So basically, this is a story of an underdog guy surviving the zombie apocalypse… and the unrequited love of the woman he loves.
Without further ado, ENJOY!
Survival World RPG
While Mike was sleeping, the world went to hell in a hand basket. Now he has to learn to survive in a new world where magic and monsters are real, and even the weakest man can become strong by raising his levels.
Can Mike survive this world turned video game? Very doubtful. Will the apocalypse improve his love life? Don’t count on it. Will he die alone and in pain? Signs point to yes. Am I reading these answers from a magic eight ball? Concentrate and ask again…
Overlord
The final hour of the popular virtual reality game Yggdrasil has come. However, Momonga, a powerful wizard and master of the dark guild Ainz Ooal Gown, decides to spend his last few moments in the game as the servers begin to shut down. To his surprise, despite the clock having struck midnight, Momonga is still fully conscious as his character and, moreover, the non-player characters appear to have developed personalities of their own!
Confronted with this abnormal situation, Momonga commands his loyal servants to help him investigate and take control of this new world, with the hopes of figuring out what has caused this development and if there may be others in the same predicament.
My Opinion: In his favorite MMO, Momonga is the high level leader of the top guild. When that MMO is shut down, he’s transported to a world where he’s trapped in his over powered game
Crimson Nightmare
Blacksalt Slayer
Blacksalt Slayer is a wonderful standalone story in the permadeath legacy series. It begins with a player just trying to make enough money playing a VR game to pay for rent and food. Unfortunately for this player, he’s been accused of a crime that he didn’t commit. If he’s caught his character could face death not only in the game but in real life. Even though it’s short, the author combines action, mistaken identity, a murder mystery thing.
World of Prime
Christopher Sinclair goes out for a walk on a mild Arizona evening and never comes back. He stumbles into a freezing winter under an impossible night sky, where magic is real -- but bought at a terrible price.
That brings me to the thing that just barely keeps this from being a LitRPG story. Realism. Within the story are all the elements of LitRPG: leveling, experience points, alignment, classes and spell points. They’re all just called different things and pushed into the background for the sake of realism in the story.
The Chaos Wave
Hidden (there’s a joke in there if you read the story) has decided to go digital or transfer his consciousness permanently to a digital game world. Follow him on his adventures in this digital game world. This book contains part 1- Luck and Death and part 2- Goblins and Dwarves. Part 3 -Rage and Chaos is not yet written.
Stormbane
Jenni wakes up in an inn she's never visited before, in a land she didn't even know existed. She's wearing the armour equivalent of a bikini and there's a longsword propped against her bed. A weapon that she somehow knows how to use with brutal efficiency. And downstairs, the place is packed to the rafters with adventurers. Although she doesn't know it yet, Jenni, now called 'Stormbane', has entered an MMORPG, one that she's going to turn upside-down.
Mirror World Series
Oleg isn’t meant to become a great wizard or a famous warrior. He’ll never have a castle of his own. Neither will he ever tame a dragon. And he’s definitely not the type to conquer a kingdom, however virtual it may be.
Oleg is doomed to toil away in the recesses of Mirror World’s mines. His goal is to raise enough money for a heart transplant for his dying six-year-old daughter. The clock is ticking. Will he make it?
Shepherd's Wolf
Blue Pills
User Unfriendly
Hell’s Glitch
In the novel, the main character is a video game tester that loves dark and difficult games. Boy does he get what he’s looking for. The combat in the VR game is brutal, difficult, and more dependent on skill and tactics than stats. The game mechanics are very familiar replacing XP with souls.
If you like the Dark Souls video games you’ll probably like this novel. Also, turns out there is a series of comics based on the Dark Souls franchise you can read after you’re done with this.