So now let me take you, readers (all two or three of you) back to that early morning of 11 April 2016. I'd just finished #Undertale.

I could not sleep for hours afterwards. I went to bed with my mind ablaze and lay awake. I didn't want the story to end. The kindly monsters of Undertale were now as alive in my head as if they were old friends, friends I still wanted to get to know better and spend time with.

No game had ever done this to me before, and very few other entertainments had taken such a deep root in my head. Tolkien, back when I was a teenager, had done so; later Alec and Seregil from Lynn Flewelling. But never characters from a game, till now.