You are no one. Level zero. Empty of mind and memory. Even your past has been stripped from your brain by the inscrutable System.
A long, difficult road lies between you and remembering any part of who you are. A road punctuated with one death after another. You are too puny to survive by might alone. Information is the single resource that might keep you alive, but the brainless “digis” have none of it. Only those with experience can give you what you need, but most care nothing about you or your plight. In fact, some make it their mission to kill you.
So die you will, again and again, your life counter clicking lower and lower. Even the creators do not know what happens when your counter reaches zero, but many are sure that your last life here is just that. No more respawns.
You are not the first player in the world of S.T.Y.X., and you will not be the last. You can only hope luck will be on your side. The luckiest players are those who find a vulnerability in the System. Those they call cheaters.
Perhaps cheating is the only way to win.
Enjoy your game
My Opinion: 329 pages, $5.92, Not Available on Kindle Unlimited
The story starts out with the man with no memories setup. The main character (MC) doesn’t know who or where he is. He quickly dies fighting a monster only to be respawn in the same place he woke up. While the MC tries to figure out what’s happening he gets strange messages about stats, levels, XP, and a bunch of other RPG mechanics he doesn’t understand.
Welcome to a story I best describe as digital apocalyptic groundhog day with RPG powers.
The first half of the story focuses on the MC trying to figure out the many RPG rules of this world he finds himself in. He gets some help from other people like him but mostly he has to figure it out through trial and error (dying and respawning). However, with the aid from a woman who’s managed to level up more than him, he starts to get the hang of surviving and how to increase his power.
The second half of the story is more about the relationship of these two survivors and a group of evil players that hurt others.
The novel is a weird mix of apocalypse survival, monster killing, and RPG progression that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But I enjoyed it.
Score: 7 out of 10