Hello

This time, the keyword is interaction, so I want to look at some special and unusual ways games let players interact with in-game characters. That applies to all games to some extent, but it stands out even more in RPGs, where you directly take on the role of the protagonist and communicate with other characters. In that sense, you could say almost every action is built around interaction. Here, I have gathered a few cases from MapleStory that felt especially distinctive

A case where provoking an NPC comes at a price

Floor 49 of The Seed is a stage where Dorothy's illusion gives you silhouette quizzes based on monsters that live on Victoria Island. You clear the floor by answering 5 questions correctly, and if you get one wrong, 5 minutes are deducted from the remaining time you can stay inside The Seed

If you click Dorothy's illusion on this stage, you get 4 dialogue options in total. The first 3 are what you would normally expect, but the 4th and final option feels oddly out of place

If you choose that option, you are sent straight back to The Seed lobby regardless of how much time you have left. Since The Seed currently goes up to Floor 50, the fact that this choice appears on Floor 49 makes it seem like an intentional trap, which is fairly interesting

Also, before this option was revised, it included the expression “삐리리삐리리,” and because of that, the dialogue that followed was different from what it is now.

It seems this was changed because the expression indirectly suggested something that could get you chat-banned. At the time, though, there were also silhouette questions with identical outlines, like the Junior Cellion, Junior Grupin, and Junior Lioner shown above, so in some cases you had no choice but to guess with 1/3 or 1/2 odds. Since losing 5 minutes for a wrong answer would immediately ruin a ranking run, the option made enough sense in context

Also, if I remember correctly, around that same period the so-called unfair silhouette questions, including the example above, were removed. After that, getting an answer wrong became a matter of skill rather than luck, so revising this option became even more understandable

A case where you could watch an NPC grow up

Even in the recently ended Elanos event, there was an NPC in the form of a puppy whose growth you could watch over time, and because players had been seeing that character consistently for 3 months, many reactions said the game felt a little empty after the event ended. There was also a similar case in the past, though unlike Elanos, which used an animal form, this one involved human characters

This was actually the theme of the 19th anniversary event held back in 2022, Maple Momentree.

The event centered on taking care of Ellie, named after Ellinia, and Reese, named after Lith Harbor, and watching them grow. There were 4 stages in total, and each stage had both a different sprite and its own illustration

Seeing a single NPC portrayed from infancy all the way to adulthood like this is not a very common presentation, so it left quite a strong impression on me

Also, this baby version was commonly called Abubu by players, taking the name from the NPC's babbling line rather than the official name. For the same reason, I remember that the Android given as one of the final rewards was also called Abuburoid

A case where you can raise a boss monster

In this case, it is not an NPC but a quest where you can watch a monster grow. Specifically, you can raise Timer, one of Ludibrium's Master Monsters. This quest can still be done now

You do not get Timer's Egg by defeating Timer itself. Instead, you obtain it by using the eggs of Tick-Tock and Chronos

After that, once you complete the monster-hunting quest, you receive Timer's Egg

The adult form is cute as well, but this version is even cuter, and you can make it grow by dragging the Clockspring Bugs you previously obtained through hunting and feeding them to it

You need 10 Clockspring Bugs for each growth stage, for a total of 30

Once it is fully grown, you can return to the NPC and claim your reward

Possibly because it has the feel of a pet companion, the reward is Trait EXP. Now that even the Item Pot's Mukkaebi is gone, quests in this format are rare to begin with. Considering that Timer is cute and the reward is not especially appealing, it feels reasonable to simply not turn Timer in and keep it in the Use inventory instead

A case where you could keep making phone calls with one NPC for 30 days

Lastly, in FriendStory, the hometown of Kinesis, there is a quest that still feels quite unusual even now: the mission where you call Orka

As you progress through FriendStory, you can obtain Orka's phone number, and the quest works by calling her once a day for 30 days and having a conversation. The catch is that this is not available at any time. It can only be done between 8 PM and 9 PM, and if you miss even a single day out of the 30, you have to start over from the beginning, which makes the requirement quite harsh

What makes it even more notable is that the 30 days of dialogue are not all the same. There are detailed changes depending on the day, such as the NPC's attitude gradually softening. She is an NPC who has now disappeared from the story after the end of the Arcane River storyline, so this stands out as a particularly unusual case that shows how much official emphasis was placed on her at the time. You can check the dialogue for each day here

The reward for this quest is just this one Girls' Pillow Fight Chair

Since the reward is not usually something that would justify that level of commitment, the achievement tied to this hidden story is said to still have a completion rate of only 0.03%. Of course, for players who like this NPC, the process itself may be the real appeal. And since a quest that lets you communicate with an NPC in this format will probably be hard to see again in the future, I think this is a very distinctive example of interaction

Thank you for reading