It all started because of a broken heater, of all things. This was back in February, the kind of cold that seeps right into your bones. I was living in that tiny apartment on 5th street, the one with the windows that rattled. My heater gave out with a final, pathetic clunk on a Tuesday, and the landlord said he couldn’t get to it until Friday. So there I was, wrapped in two blankets, my laptop the only source of warmth on my legs, just desperately clicking around the internet to kill the time and ignore the fact I could see my own breath.

I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. Just scrolling. Then I saw an ad, one of those flashy ones, for this online place. I’d seen them before and always scrolled past, but that night, shivering and feeling a bit sorry for myself, I thought, why not? A little distraction. I clicked through, and that’s how I ended up on the site. It was bright, full of colors and sounds, a complete contrast to my grey, freezing reality. I signed up for the welcome bonus, more out of a sense of absurdity than anything else. What did I, a nearly-frozen graphic designer, have to lose? I poked around the games for a bit, feeling a bit silly, and then I found it. This one game, it had a quirky name that stuck with me. It was called https://vavada.com.am/press/lucky-barrel-tavern/.