Seamwalkers, Prompt 23

>> Send crappy text adventure back to store for refund. "It just locked up", I will tell the clerk.

You take the game back and receive a full refund. "Everyone's been returning this," says the clerk. "It must be poo."

On a whim, you check out an online walkthrough. It turns out you would've had to trick the gnome in the tree into building a mechanical butterfly so you could enter the sylph's realm and get something to help you breathe underwater in the mermaid's realm so you could go there and get something to help you survive the heat in the salamander's world so you could go there and get the explosives you needed to blow open the "employee's only" door where you'd find a guy sitting at a desk blogging an improv text adventure that he wasn't allowed to stop improving until or unless he got someone else to take his place which would, of course, be you, and off you'd all go to blog your own improv text adventures thereby participating in the great 21st century text adventure revival and sealing your places in history remembering always the quiet, unassuming start it had here in this sorely-in-need-of-a-facelift space called gigagiggles.

The End

Thank goodness.