Paula has been trying to sell you something else since the day she opened. Ten lines, and nine of them are an upsell: a kroket, the large, a frikandel speciaal that is not on the board, prosecco, oysters, another one for the passenger you do not have. And every single time, whatever she said, you got chips.
The tenth line is the one that mattered. That's the regular. The rumour menu starts when you stop looking so insured.
There is a rumour menu now.
She stops. That is the first thing, and it is the one that had to come first. She used to run her round whatever was happening, so ordering meant matching course and speed with a boat that was not trying to be caught, two seconds of holding a key against a hatch that had already gone past. Come within thirty metres now and she takes the way off and lies there, and she stays lying there for a few seconds after you leave, so ordering twice is not chasing her twice.
Space opens the board. It does not buy anything any more. It is a toggle, and nothing comes up on its own: drift past her and the game leaves you alone. Open it and there are seven things on it, numbered, and the numbers order.
Three of them are on the board on the side of the wheelhouse:
- Patatje met. What she has always sold. Your hull is made good and the drink comes off you.
- Broodje kroket. Your airtank locker, filled. Until now the only way to get one of those was to run down a diver in the one marked box on the lake.
- Kaassoufflé. Ninety seconds during which your engine cannot boil, and if it already has, this is the only thing on this water that has ever cut that short. Nothing that motor does today will be as hot as the inside of that.
And four of them are her leaning out of the hatch, and none of them costs anything. There is no money in this game and there is nothing to unlock. The only thing between you and any line on that board is how recently you had one.
- Frikandel speciaal. Not on the board, because then Thea would lecture her. Forty seconds during which nobody writes you up for speed. It will not get you out of a chase (the boats already behind you keep coming), but it will get you across open water.
- A coil of rope. Off her own deck and into a locker. You can carry three, dropped astern with F. The rope has been in the game since racing arrived and it only ever caught other racers. It catches patrol boats now. And Thea. Five seconds of a police boat crawling with your rope round its prop, and no cure, because a patrol sloep has no hands to put astern with.
- A tray of bitterballen. Sent over to the blue boat, with her compliments. One wanted star, gone.
- Oesters. Oysters? On a plas? Yes. Forty-five seconds of scoring at 1.25× with none of the drunk under it: the bar's payout with the handicap taken out. You have to be moving to collect it; a boat sitting still scores nothing, oysters or no oysters.
The board tells you all of that. Every line has a sentence under it saying what it does and how long it does it for. The first version had jokes there instead, which was the wrong place for them, she has ten spoken lines and every one of them is already a joke. Nobody could have guessed what oysters were for.
And F now asks you which. There are two things to throw, tanks and rope, so R switches between them, and the HUD shows both lockers with the one holding the key marked. It is a preference rather than a lock: throw your last rope and F goes back to tanks on its own, and it goes back to rope the moment you buy another. On a phone you tap the dim line; there is no extra button.
Throwing moved from G to F and switching from X to R while this was being built, so both are now beside the movement keys instead of a reach across the board.
And the stick on a phone is no longer linear. It was, and it was far too sensitive, which is what linear always is on a control a thumb wide: the small correction you make at speed was asking for a tenth of a thumb. Half the travel is about a fifth of the helm now, a tenth of it still answers, and hard over is still hard over.
The one thing that stops you ordering is the fryer. Every line has its own cooldown: six seconds for chips, half a minute for a rope, two minutes for the ones that grant something, always longer than the thing they grant lasts, so none of them is a switch you leave on. Order what you like. She is a snackbar.
Nobody has raided her yet. Give it time.