 Alex Harris had been an avid gamer since he was a child. He would spend countless hours playing and analyzing many different games during his childhood, and over time, he developed a particular interest in testing games and providing feedback to developers. As he got older, he realized that his passion for gaming could be turned into a career, and so, when he graduated college, he applied for every game-related job he could find. After a few interviews and rejections, Alex finally landed a job as a game tester in the fall of 2010 for a new gaming workplace that had just opened near his home in Ontario, Canada. He was over the moon about it, and when he arrived at the building on his first day, he was given a warm welcome by the people in charge. They gave him a tour of the workplace, told him the rules, and introduced him to the other workers. After Alex had spent some time socializing with his new colleagues, they gave him his first assignment. Alex's first task was to test a game called China Palace, which was still in its early development stages by a small and lesser-known company called Golden Line Games. The game was described as a first-person-styled game about a player, needing to find some important items, and solve puzzles to escape a large Chinese restaurant that they've been accidentally locked in at night, before a timer runs out. Alex was curious about the details of the game, and eagerly went to work in one of the quieter rooms to test the game straight away. As soon as Alex booted up the game, he was immediately drawn in by its retro 2000s style. However, he saw that due to hardware issues, some of the 3D objects and textures were rendered properly, making the game look slightly outdated and clunky. There were also some elements in the game that felt a little bit odd to Alex. There was no main menu at all when he opened the game, and there were a few elements in the restaurant setting in the game that also looked slightly more ominous than Alex had expected, such as the game lighting of the restaurant, and a slow bell chime playing slowly in the background, with a 20-minute timer on the top left corner of the screen. There were also some Chinese themed decorations scattered around the restaurant that looked really ancient. Despite this, Alex pressed on, happy to test the game to its fullest potential. He didn't really care about most of the glitchy and unfinished stuff in the game, knowing that the developers of it would do something to fix it. It was still in development after all. As he went further into the game, Alex noticed some more things in the game that caught his attention. They didn't seem odd to Alex at first, but this would soon change as he continued playing. There were some cute, cartoony-looking sheep characters that started following him around slowly, with neutral but slightly stern expressions on their faces. Alex didn't think much of them at first, assuming they were just a quirky addition to the game's atmosphere. However, as they became slightly more persistent, he slowly began to feel a slightly odd sense of an easiness about them, as if there was something sinister about them. They wore 2D assets in the game, with those stern expressions frozen on their faces, while they followed the player around slowly. It wasn't until later that Alex discovered the truth. The cartoony-looking sheep characters' designs weren't actually original designs made for the game, but had been taken from a kid's show that had been popular in China for many years. This revelation made Alex feel a little more curious about the game's development process. It was clear that the developers had cut corners, and taken shortcuts in the game's design. Despite this, Alex continued playing, his mixture of feelings growing more complex with each passing moment of the game's atmosphere. He also found it a bit funny that the designs for the sheep were taken from something that was related to China, considering that the game's setting was literally a Chinese restaurant. Alex was definitely no stranger to horror material in most games. He had some experience playing and looking into some horror games during his childhood, before he graduated from college, and got his job as a test player. Some he was comfortable playing, such as some zombie survival-type games, and some he usually stayed away from, with material that might be too over-the-top for his age at the time. So, he felt that a game like China Palace was a bit of a tough nut to crack, despite not having anything like blood or gore anywhere in the game so far. The glitchy style of the game's 3D assets, the low quality of some of the textures and sound effects, and its retro 2000s style was enough to make him feel uneasy, but somewhat intrigued at the same time. Alex also discovered further in the game that one of its gimmicks was that if the timer reached zero, the game would go into a supposed bizarre mode. Despite his slightly uneasy feelings about what he had seen in the game so far, Alex's curiosity got the better of him. He wanted to experience everything the game had to offer. So he tried his best to find and solve all of the items and puzzles in time by looking in cupboards, pigeons, secret paths, and basements in the restaurant, while the eerie bell chime continued to play slowly in the background as the timer ticked down. Unfortunately, Alex failed to complete the game in time, the timer had reached zero, and the bell chime stopped. But although he thought he would see something simple, like a simple game over screen, some loud alarm sounds that sounded like ember alerts started playing, and loud distorted digitized sheep-bleeding noises that sounded more like blood curdling screams, abruptly started blaring out of the computer's speakers. This startled Alex a little, as he wasn't expecting something so sudden as ear-shattering sheep sounds. He also saw that the cartoon sheep characters no longer had their common neutral and stern expressions on their faces, and instead had angry and menacing ones with gritted teeth instead. What made them get more menacing was that while the designs of the sheep still had their cartoony look to them, they also had more realistic details mixed in, such as shading and limb details. It was almost like if this style of design was added to them, just for this one moment in the game, and while they didn't look too scary, it was enough to make Alex's skin crawl a little with the loud noises playing in the background. The sheep began to pick up speed, and began to chase the player around the restaurant. Alex in his state of both an easiness and confusion, tried to find a way to escape the sheep's wrath, while the screams grew louder and louder as they came closer to the player, and it was at this point where Alex couldn't tell if they sounded like sheep, or actual recordings of a human crowd screaming in panic. What made it worse for Alex was that he was the only person in the room experiencing all of this, and worried that no one would believe him if he told someone about the game. But at the same time, he was kind of thankful that no one was in or near the room at the time to yell at him or anything. Eventually, the sheep characters managed to catch up to Alex, and the game then froze for around three seconds, and the computer screen cut to black with nothing but an eerie silence. Alex just sat there in his chair, frozen after what he had seen. At this point, he had a mixture of emotions such as confusion, surprise, uneasiness, and curiosity. It didn't take long for a game over screen to pop up on the screen. Alex saw a black and white picture of what seemed to be a real building that had suffered a major fire with the angry face of the cartoony sheep characters faded and burned into the picture, along with the words game overridden at the bottom of the picture. It was a little unsettling for Alex, but not too disturbing or frightening. The game then shut down automatically, and the computer screen showed the desktop again. Alex was still sitting in his chair. He wasn't too scared by the things that he had seen in the game, and there wasn't any blood or graphic imagery that was too much for him. But he had a feeling that something just wasn't right with it, and he soon began asking himself questions. What happens at the end if you manage to escape the restaurant? What was the intended audience and age group for the game? Did the developers of it really want to make it his sinister? Were any of the elements in this game based on or inspired by real-life events? Were any of the things shown in the game supposed to represent something that he didn't know about? At that moment, another colleague named James somehow managed to hear the faint loud noises that were coming from the room where Alex was in, and came into the room where he saw him sitting in his chair. Luckily he wasn't mad at him, and just wanted to know if everything was all right. He saw Alex's slightly surprised and uneasy face, and asked him if he was feeling okay, but Alex just got up and began to walk to the office where his managers were, with James, escorting him. Alex and James walked into one of the manager's offices, with the manager in the office, noticing Alex's slightly concerned face, and told him to come have a sit down and talk. Alex began telling him what he had experienced in the game he had played earlier, hoping for an explanation or some kind of reassurance, although he was worried that he might not believe most of the story. The manager simply brushed it off, and told him it was probably best for him to take a short break with a cup of coffee. Alex sat in the office for a little while with his coffee. James was also there, sitting with Alex and comforting him, telling him that these glitches and oddities would be sorted out soon by the developers. Alex knew that James was right, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was off about the game that he had played earlier, but didn't want to push the issue further. Eventually, a few people in the workplace, including James, began looking into the China Palace game, and soon some of them began feeling the same way Alex had when he had tested the game. Some saw potential in the game's use of its ominous atmosphere, while some thought that some of the game's features should at least be fixed or toned down, such as the sheep noises and some of the hardware problems. Although it wasn't known if any of them had tried to complete the whole game without the timer running out, as they considered that aspect of the game extremely difficult to beat. The manager found the email containing the link to the game, hoping to find out what the golden line game's developers' intentions were with the China Palace game. So he sent a few emails to the account that had sent the original email, but never received a response. This only fueled his suspicions further, and he decided to do some research on the company that had developed the game. Not much was found, except for a small website that showcased other games the company had developed, with most of them still in development. China Palace was also included on the list, but there wasn't much information about the game itself. Despite some of its interesting concepts and possible potential that could have drawn a few people's attention, China Palace was never fully completed, improved, or released for anyone else to see and play. Many people had tried to get in contact with the developers behind the game, and asked them what their intentions were, but to no avail. Many assumed that the game and its company were some sort of prank made by someone who had nothing better to do, which might possibly explain why the supposed company wasn't responding to the manager's emails. The email that had the game, its files, and the link was eventually discarded, making the entire China Palace game a piece of lost media. Years later, Alex still continued with his job at the game workplace as a test player, also helping with development on some games. Over the years, he had gained some new friends there that he would talk to and hang out with often, including James, who had become one of his closest friends. He was still an eager worker, and was respected by most of his friends, as well as the people in charge of the workplace, and he knew if he was feeling any sort of stress or discomfort, he would come to one of his friends or the managers to help sort out his issues. Despite Alex living a better life doing his job and making new friends along the way, he just couldn't help but feel a little more curious about the China Palace game he had played all those years ago. The memory of the cartoony sheep characters with their angry expressions, and the slightly unsettling appearance of the game over screen, still lingered in his mind, and he often wondered what would have happened if the game had been released to the public for people to play, or if anyone had managed to save the link for the game, and had managed to play through the whole thing, and get to the end of it. Alex wondered if someday the game would become some sort of an urban legend in the gaming community. But considering the game's obscurity, as well as its short-lived existence, he personally doubted it would be. Over the years after playing the game, Alex would sometimes dream of vague images at night about it. Those of a dimly lit Chinese restaurant, and of some cartoon sheep characters with stern-looking faces. He couldn't see anything clearly, like as if everything was blurry. But all he could hear sometimes were the muffled loud noises of alarms going off and sheep bleeding in the distance, feeling like there was a presence close to him. He would sometimes wake up at night, and keep telling himself that it was all just a dream. But as he lay there in bed, staring up at the ceiling, he still couldn't shake the feeling that something was off about the game, something that went beyond just glitchy textures and creepy sheep characters, and he knew that memories like these would stay with him for quite a while.