I Raised Snow White!

Since I was young, I liked simulation games where you raise characters.

There are countless game genres in the world, but why was it specifically growth simulations that attracted me?

Honestly, I didn’t have a clear reason. I just enjoyed watching the characters grow through my efforts.

For that reason, I didn’t stick to a single type of growth simulation game.

From egg-shaped games sold at stationary stores to the latest releases, I ended up trying them all. Before I knew it, I’d become someone who couldn’t resist any game with a growth simulation element.

However, the growth simulation genre wasn’t that popular. Over time, after playing so many games in the same genre, even new releases began to feel repetitive and tiresome.

Just as I was wondering if I should move on to a different genre, an indie game silently released and caught my eye.

[Snow White Princess]

If translated directly, it was simply ‘Snow White.’

This new game, with mechanics reminiscent of the original simulation game Princess Maker, was a ‘child-rearing simulation game’ developed by a foreign indie company.

The opening story of the game was simple.

Set in a medieval fantasy world based on the tale of Snow White, the player took on the role of a king who had lost his queen and was left alone to raise the young princess.

Naturally, there was no Korean language support, and since it didn’t seem to gain much traction after its release, there weren’t any domestic sites providing information.

Though it bothered me that the game’s reviews were ‘mostly negative,’ the price was low, and the illustrations were cute, so I figured I might as well give it a try.

Apparently, there were dozens of different endings, and I didn’t have any other games to play anyway. With a lighthearted attitude of ‘If it’s not fun, I’ll just get a refund,’ I clicked the purchase button.

And with that, I found myself absurdly drawn into this game.

*

“Ah… this is driving me crazy. No wonder the game reviews are negative…”

[BAD END]

I scratched my head in frustration as I looked at the red text displayed on the monitor.

How many times had I seen that [BAD END] text?

[Snow White Princess]

This game, Snow White, was a frustrating experience in many ways.

In typical ‘child-rearing simulation games,’ you teach the young daughter to study, take up part-time jobs, go on adventures, and go through various ‘events’ while raising her.

Depending on how the player raised the daughter, she could grow up to be a remarkable person, an average one, or even a villain. The appeal of most ‘child-rearing simulation games’ lay in the sense of healing you felt watching your daughter grow.

I had expected the same from Snow White…

But this particular Snow White was entirely different.

It wasn’t a child-rearing simulation game; rather, it was a rogue-like game disguised as one. And a brutally challenging one at that.

*

“…Dead again.”

True to its title, Snow White featured a character everyone knew: a single antagonist. A mad woman who talked to a mirror, consumed with jealousy over the young princess’s beauty.

She was Snow White’s stepmother, known in the game as the Mirror Witch.

Her name was Vivian Lilienthal.

She was the one responsible for turning this child-rearing simulation game into a rogue-like nightmare. Having endings where the child dies in a simulation game is shocking enough, but there weren’t just one or two such endings.

Sometimes she died from poison, sometimes from a curse, and sometimes while she slept, a knife would end her life. I saw over twenty different death endings myself.

Ordinary people, after a few bad endings, might delete the game or post long, angry comments on gaming sites. But I was different.

By sheer luck, I had witnessed one happy ending, and that made it impossible for me to leave this game. After seeing the happy future of a daughter who grew up through all sorts of hardships, I…

I had vowed to collect every happy ending.

It wasn’t easy by any means. This game’s progression wasn’t solely based on the daughter’s stat parameters. There was an element of extreme luck involved. Without heaven’s favor, a happy future for the daughter was impossible.

Even luck wasn’t enough. A single wrong choice would lead to the death of the daughter I had spent hours nurturing. This game required meticulous choice management.

And despite being a game with no save feature, it saved the number of times my daughter had died on the screen’s corner. Each time that number went up, I cursed the developer’s cruelty.

The number on the corner of the screen reached 120.

The number of happy endings I had achieved was only five. Feeling like I couldn’t endure any longer, I swallowed my pride and searched for strategy guides online.

However, as expected from an unpopular foreign indie game, no Korean sites had any information. At most, some blogs had written paragraphs of curses directed at the developer after bad experiences with the game.

Even overseas players were few. On international wikis, there were spoilers for people who had given up on achieving the game’s endings.

I believed that a happy ending for my daughter wouldn’t have meaning unless I witnessed it firsthand, so I stopped looking for guides after that.

The number on the screen’s corner rose to 210.

The count of happy endings I had achieved increased to fifteen. By then, I could get the daughter safely to the game’s midpoint, but as I reached the latter part, the witch’s interference grew even fiercer.

Occasionally, after witnessing yet another bad ending, I would feel so exhausted that I didn’t want to continue. But each time, the empty ‘True Ending Achievement’ section in the achievements tab would drive me back to raise the princess again.

Even if I couldn’t collect all the happy endings, wouldn’t it be worth seeing the true ending?

*

“This morning, I’ll have her work in the kitchen to boost her stamina, attend etiquette classes to regain grace lost in the kitchen, and… to prevent early adolescence, I’ll make sure she rests one day every five days… Great.”

The more I played, the deeper my interest grew. There were so many characters and professions. Besides child-rearing, there was farming, cooking, fishing, horse-raising, racing, combat… plenty of entertaining daily content.

If it weren’t for the witch, I thought this game could have received much higher ratings. The more I played, the more it felt like a true ‘child-rearing simulation game.’

“Phew…”

The number on the screen’s corner reached 340.

[True Ending]

The Snow White I had raised, wearing a golden crown, ascended the throne.

From her seat on the throne, Snow White gazed down with a chilling smile.

How could she not smile? The witch who had tormented her was now writhing in pain beneath her.

Tap! Clack! Tap!

The witch laughed.

Through her tears, convulsing in agony, she laughed.

The witch, in iron shoes heated by fire, danced beautifully in the new queen’s coronation. With grace, to the very end, she marked the end of her life with a final dance of elegance.

“Phew…”

The Snow White I had raised becoming queen…

That was the game’s true ending. Well, it was as I’d expected, and I didn’t think it was a bad ending.

Without realizing it, I began to tear up as I recalled the hardships I’d endured to reach this ending. A rogue-like child-rearing simulation game… I doubted I would encounter anything like it again in my life.

As the true ending finished, a small system window appeared at the bottom of the screen. [Queen Ending]

The system notified me of the achievement, and I clicked the small system window.

[Queen Ending]

Achieved by only 0.1% of all players.

“I knew it…”

0.1%… While I wasn’t sure of the total player count, it surely wasn’t many. Most likely, most players gave up after facing the witch’s bitterness early in the game.

Satisfied, I closed the game window and decided to look up a guide. Now that I’d seen the true ending, I felt like I could finally read through the spoilers for the remaining endings.

“Academy teacher ending… seen it. Chef ending… seen it. Marriage to the carriage driver’s son… seen it.”

Scrolling down the international wiki with all the endings listed in English, I was seeing mostly endings I’d already come across.

Then, as I scrolled with a nonchalant expression, I noticed an ending I had never seen in my thousand hours of gameplay.

“Witch ending… Is this the ‘witch ending’?”

I tilted my head in curiosity.

A witch ending? Could the princess actually become a witch?

Having never crossed paths with the witch in such a way, I had never even considered the possibility of this ending.

What kind of ending could it be? My curiosity was insatiable. I had no idea what the story would be.

As I was about to click on the entry in my curiosity,

For some reason, I felt my pride prickle slightly.

I, who had seen the game’s true ending, was relying on a wiki for other endings? Was this really the answer?

No. Absolutely not.

The fact that the ending was listed on the wiki meant that someone else had already seen it and written it there.

That meant there was no reason I couldn’t reach that ending myself.

A pointless spark of determination flared within me.

Now that I’d seen the true ending, I had nothing left to fear. At this point, I even wanted to collect every achievement in the game.

‘…Let’s sleep on it for now. It’s already 3 a.m., isn’t it?’

Feeling like I’d end up pulling an all-nighter, I quickly shut down the computer and lay down on my bed. As much as I enjoyed the game, it wasn’t something I’d skip work for.

‘…If it’s the witch ending, I’ll probably have to approach the witch actively, right? But how am I supposed to approach a witch who’s always trying to kill me…?’

As I closed my eyes, pondering how to unlock the witch ending, sleep slowly overtook me. With thoughts of burning through the weekend on the game once work was done tomorrow…

…Little did I know, this would be my last night as a regular man.