A superficial description of SS13 would say that it is an online role playing game played in rounds that last around an hour (sometimes a little less or a lot more depending on the gametype.) where you play as a crew member on a quirky and chaotic spacestation. Your job could range from a doctor to a security officer or even a clown, and each of these jobs is given enough depth to feel like it could be a game all on its own, but what really set it apart for me back when I played it as a kid was the dynamic nature afforded to its mechanics by its community.

If you rolled playing as the captain, you could steer the round into any flavor you wanted, deciding to rule with an iron fist and focus on delivering harsh sentences to undesirable troublemakers didn't always result in a full brig and a peaceful station but it did always result in exciting multifaceted conflicts. Traitors planting bombs to serve as diversions from their true objectives would turn into complex rebuilding efforts with random no authority cooks and barkeepers being conscripted as emergency paramedics and engineers. Potentially uneventful shifts as a janitor could turn into a desperate struggle for survival hiding from aliens and trying to not run out of oxygen all while dragging the naked corpse of an assistant to the cloning bay. Every round felt different from the last, and this ceaseless variety is something that I think has more or less been preserved to this day, but I can’t help but feel that my best times with the game are long behind me.

I still come back to it every now and then, but I’ve never been able to recapture that feeling of playing a game where the world so often felt not only dynamic, but truly alive. On youtube you can find a dozen videos with hundreds of thousands of views showing the game off, but back when I first heard of it that wasn’t the case. You had to find it for yourself, and that made it a lot easier to sacrifice a bit of my round if it meant everyone else that found the game got to have a little bit more fun, and I may be making shit up, but I think this went the same way for a lot of the people I played with too. It’s a bit harder to take having my head lopped off with an esword in stride when there’s now a high chance that the person who did it may have learned to play it not because of their own interest in it, but because they were told about it by a youtuber who constantly regurgitates memes from /pol/

Yeah
7:30 in the night, yeah
Ooh

I get those goosebumps every time, yeah
You come around, yeah
You ease my mind, you make everything feel fine
Worry about those comments
I'm way too numb, yeah
It's way too dumb, yeah

I get those goosebumps every time
I need the Heimlich, throw that to the side, yeah
I get those goosebumps every time, yeah
When you're not around
When you throw that to the side, yeah

I get those goosebumps every time, yeah

7-1-3
To the 2-8-1, yeah, I'm riding
Why they on me? Why they want me? I'm flyin'
Sippin' lowkey, I'm sipping lowkey in Onyx
Rider, rider
When I'm pullin' up right beside ya
Popstar, lil' Mariah
When I text a cute game, wildness
Throw a stack on the Bible
Never Snapchat or took Molly
She fall through plenty, her and all her ginnies
Yeah, we at the top floor, right there off Doheny
Yeah

Oh, no, I can't fuck with y'all
Yeah, when I'm with my squad I cannot do no wrong
Yeah, saucing in the city, don't get misinformed
Yeah, they gon' pull up on you

Yeah, we gon' do some things
Some things you can't relate
Yeah, 'cause we from a place
A place you cannot stay

Oh, you can't go
Oh, I don't know
Oh, back the fuck up off me

I get those goosebumps every time, yeah
You come around, yeah
You ease my mind, you make everything feel fine
Worry about those comments
I'm way too numb, yeah
It's way too dumb, yeah

I get those goosebumps every time
I need the Heimlich, throw that to the side, yeah
I get those goosebumps every time, yeah
When you're not around
When you throw that to the side, yeah

I get those goosebumps every time

I want to press my like, yeah, I wanna press my
I want a green light, I wanna be like
I wanna press my line, yeah
I want to take that ride, yeah
I'm gonna press my lime
I wanna green light, I wanna be like, I wanna press my

Mama, dear, spare your feelings
I'm reliving moments, peeling more residual
I can buy the building, burn the building
Take your bitch, rebuild the building
Just to fuck some more
I can justify my love for you
And touch the sky for God to stop debating war

Put the pussy on a pedestal
Put the pussy on a high horse
That pussy to die for
That pussy to die for

Peter piper picked a pepper
So I could pick your brain and put your heart together
We depart the shady parts and party hard
The diamonds yours, the coupe forever
My best shots might shoot forever like

I get those goosebumps every time, yeah
You come around, yeah
You ease my mind, you make everything feel fine
Worry about those comments
I'm way too numb, yeah
It's way too dumb, yeah

I get those goosebumps every time
I need the Heimlich, throw that to the side, yeah
I get those goosebumps every time, yeah
When you're not around
When you throw that to the side, yeah

I get those goosebumps every time