Hooked on Respawn

Joel plays Etherfall as Valerie Stormweave, a fire mage, because the game is kinder to a woman than it ever was to him. Darcy plays as Marcus Ashveil, a shadow ranger, because she got tired of being called sweetheart forty seconds into every conversation.

They meet in a raid. They click. And somewhere between the boss fights and the four-hour talks on a floating mountain, they fall - each certain they're deceiving the other, neither aware the deception runs both ways.

There's just one complication, and it's glowing. Etherfall's Hearthglow system reads your heart rate and paints attachment as a soft gold light you can't hide and can't switch off. The game has noticed something. Now it won't stop asking the one question they're both too scared to answer: what happens when the person you've fallen for turns out to be nothing like the avatar - and everything like the truth?

Told in alternating points of view and stubbornly, helplessly funny, Hooked at Respawn is a romantic comedy about the selves we build to be loved, the friends who meddle in our love lives while fumbling their own, and the strange honesty of pretending to be someone else. For anyone who's ever felt more themselves in a costume than out of it.