INSIDE THE GAME

SUMMARY

After being sucked inside a kid’s computer game, a familycan only return home if they win the game--which entails outwitting classicfairy tale characters, fighting killer beasts, and the wicked fairy they'replaying against--all before the laptop's battery dies and they perish alongwith it.

Hah! Let’s see if you make it out alive when you’re trappedin a small cottage with three hungry and very pissed off bears who want to ripyou a new one for eating their porridge and busting up their fine furniture.Oh, and you’re also trapped in a ludicrous too tight dress with Goldilocks’ curlsfused to your skull. This is the family’s first game challenge in the deep darkscary forest and dad bravely, kinda, faces it.

And it only gets worse. Much worse. Can you say man-eating ogreand fire breathing dragon? But that ain’t all. Besides the bizarre killercreatures trying to annihilate them, the poor family has to simultaneously playagainst their opponent, Vileena, the most wicked, disgusting and vile fairy inthe history of history. Hell, she would send Darth Vader and Hannibal Lecter screaminginto the night.

But it isn’t all brave heroic feats of derring-do you haveto do. Nope. You gotta have brains and be clever with ‘em. Besides the roleplaying tasks, you score points in this wacked out game by outwitting and outguessing what the eccentric fairy tale characters are going to do before theydo it. Or you have to figure out what objects they’re going to want to tradefor. There’s no money involved, just crazy trades, favors and plots.

Perhaps the Three Little Pigs demand something in Little RedRiding Hood’s cottage. This, of course, means dealing with that killer Wolf. There’sactually a logic to everything, but it’s a twisted kaleidoscopic logic that’s achallenge to decipher and changes from one fairy tale to another and indifferent sections of Fairy Tale Land and I’m getting a headache just thinkingabout it. Let’s just say it ain’t predictable and it’ll twist your brain with acorkscrew and keep you guessing and on your toes.

But the heart at the heart of this story isn’t found in the excitinggame--it’s found in the family. A frayed and fractured modern family who are atthe breaking point just before they get zapped inside. Thusly, we have a coupleof the most compelling themes in story telling unfolding here: the classicjourney back home, and a family’s rediscovery of their love for each other asthey learn to work together again as a caring team. (I also hid morals andwisdoms amongst the fun, but don’t tell anyone. Hmm, kinda like they do infairy tales, now that I think about it)

As I was saying, before rudely interrupting myself, thisfamily, the Millers, were being pulled apart by the all too familiar pressuresand distractions of today’s hyped-up-always-on-online-modern life. The threeMiller siblings are constantly fighting and bickering and teasing, or evenworse, totally ignoring each other’s very existence.

Maya, 5, extends an olive branch by asking her sister toplay the Fairy Tale Land game which was recently improved by her new littlefriend, Alice, an alien (more on the sweet alien family later). But her sisterwon’t even glance away from her own computer, and Maya complains “but you’vebeen Facebooking for hours and hours. Play with me a minute.” No way.

Maya goes to her brother, but he’s hypnotically chained to hismultiplayer Xbox Live and is slaughtering his online Halo3 nemesis playing inChina. Maya shoves her laptop in his face, but he just pushes it away anddoesn’t even notice her game is now bulging right out of the freaking screen!

And dad is the worst. He hit the big 5-uh-oh!, and is havinga mid-life melt down. When he’s not at a gym trying to prove he’s stillSuperman, he’s down in his dungeon music studio trying to rekindle his rock goddreams. Instead of spending quality time with his family, he’s playing withonline musicians like ShredChick69 and mom isn’t happy about that in the least.

And poor mom is working as much overtime as possible to tryto make ends meet and nobody is connecting with nobody no more and this familyis just falling apart at the seams.

Then they get zapped inside the game where if they don’tlearn to work together again, they’ll surely die. So that’s a decent incentive,don’t you think?

Say, did I mention the Millers have to score 100 points toget out of the game and expert Maya has never scored more than 33 points? Sothe odds say they’ll die. Say, did I mention that even as they begin to get a handleon playing this loony game, the characters begin to morph and become untetheredindependent thinkers because the organic alien electronics in the laptop arekinda Pinocchioizing everyone?

Oh, I forgot to tell you about the sweet alien family vacationingin the colorful Vermont countryside. Well there’s no time now. This wacked synopsisis way longer than regulations say a synopsis should be for the short attentionspan consumer you probably are.

So you’ll just have to read the story yourself, won’t you,my pretties? Yep, there’s no time to tell you about the family’s ally, MotherGoose, who is probably insane but the amazing thing is ---

Gregory Mancuso

310.823.2360

Gregory@GregoryMancuso.com

www.GregoryMancuso.com

WGA 1370350