Scribble monster from version 1.21.10
Do you think that in a world made of perfect cubes, non-square myths do not exist? Do you believe that the game engine is physically incapable of creating a rounded, chaotic shape without mods? I used to think so too. Until I launched version 1.21.10. And what if I tell you that they #*$#xist? And they don’t just break the game's geometry. They break your perception of reality.
It all started like any ordinary, completely unremarkable day in single-player survival. I spawned in a beautiful spot — at the foot of a hill, next to a wide and calm river. The sun was slowly rising over the pixelated mountains, and the background music set a peaceful mood. I needed resources to build my first house, and noticing a coal vein on a nearby stone ledge, I headed there with a stone axe and a pickaxe in my hands.
I walked up to the dirt blocks exposing the stone rock and started mining. The sound of the tool hitting the stone was a familiar, soothing sound. But at some point, the music abruptly cut out. It didn’t fade out smoothly like it usually does when you change biomes; it just stopped with a strange click, as if someone pulled the audio cable out of the jack.
I froze. The surrounding world plunged into absolute, dead silence. No water splashes, no rustling grass, no distant mooing of cows could be heard. It felt like the game had crashed, but the hand-swaying indicator was working, and the clouds kept flying across the sky.
I aimed my crosshair at the opposite bank of the river. And right then, my heart skipped a beat.
Standing against the background of peaceful green slopes was it. At first, it looked like a graphical bug — a black silhouette resembling a blot or a chaotic tangle of broken scribbles. But this silhouette had eyes. Two bright white, glowing eyes of different sizes that looked straight at me through the screen. This creature physically violated the laws of world generation. There was not a single cube in it, not a single right angle. It looked as if someone had crudely drawn it with a black marker right over my game. The creature didn't move. It just hovered statically on that shore, as if studying me.
I tried to calm myself down. "Just a GPU artifact," I thought, though panic was already rising inside me. I turned my back to the river and stepped close to the coal ore, trying to focus on mining. But the game started behaving unnaturally.
Suddenly, for a fraction of a second — literally a single flash frame — the entire screen flashed blood-red. A text warning popped up sharply in the center of the screen, written in the standard game font: you will die. I didn't even have time to read it consciously; my brain caught the phrase at a subconscious level.
My hands on the keyboard started shaking. I turned around to check the hill and went numb. The dirt blocks around me began to behave contrary to the laws of physics. One of the grass blocks broke off and hovered right in the air, completely unsupported. And slightly to the left, on top of the hill, under another floating cube, it appeared again.
This scribble monster had moved much closer. Now its broken, twisted silhouette was clearly visible. It stood in an unnatural pose, tilting its head, and its white eyes seemed even larger. It was clear: it was stalking me. It moved every time I looked away.
"Run!" was the only thought flashing through my head. I dropped the coal, held down the sprint key, and rushed along the cliff, hoping to break away and just hit the "Save and Quit to Title" button.
But the game would no longer respond to controls. The Esc key on the keyboard simply didn't react — the pause menu wouldn't open. I was locked inside my own world.
Suddenly, the lower left corner of the screen started flashing. The game chat, which is always empty in a single-player game, began to fill with messages at a frantic speed. The text poured in a solid wall without pauses or punctuation marks: unknown: i am here i am here i am here i am here i am here. Because of this spam, the chat sound turned into a continuous, maddening static noise.
I ran blindly, breathing heavily in real life. Cliffs squeezed me from all sides, and there was only water ahead. I found myself trapped in a dead corner between the stone blocks and the river. I turned around sharply, holding out my stone axe — the only weapon I had. I hoped I could hit it, break its hitbox, do something, anything.
From behind the nearest dirt block, right out of the darkness, this creature jumped out at me. This time it was right in my face. Its silhouette pulsed insanely, black lines twisted into a violent vortex, and its huge white eyes stared straight into my soul. It was a real, pure jumpscare that almost made me fall off my chair.
In the next second, the creature completely took over the screen. Black scribbles expanded, blotting out the interface, the health bar, and the hunger bar. The stone axe in my hand felt like a useless toothpick against this entity. One of the monster's eyes stretched crazily vertical, turning into a white stripe. The monitor flickered. The sound in my headphones turned into a deafening digital screech, and the game instantly collapsed.
But the computer didn't return me to the desktop. Instead, the whole system froze, leaving a disturbing black screen right in front of my eyes. At the bottom, a neon-green hacker font glowed with the words: G4m3 0v3r. And right above the head of this monster, which was now completely burned into the screen, green numbers shone: 10 01111011.
I sat in the complete darkness of my room, breathing heavily. If you translate this binary code into regular numbers, 01111011 is 123. But what does this number mean? How many worlds has it already erased? How many players before me have seen this screen?
I pulled the computer cord out of the outlet. But even on the turned-off, dark monitor, it still felt like I could see two faint, white, non-square eyes. They exist. And they are waiting for you to launch your next version.