AustLit

'Sam hates his office job, but at least every night he can delve into Alterwhere and forget about stupid teamwork for a while. The world’s hottest new cerebral reality game is a fully immersive mash-up of the retro fantasy RPGs he used to play on his dad’s steam account, back in the early 2030s – the kind where you can eat a bowl of stew in the middle of a battle, fire crossbows underwater, and steal all the plates from an NPC’s kitchen as long as they’re looking away at the time.

'As Sam sets out to solo champion monsters and drink mind-altering potions, he realises the greedy devs are working hard to monetise their free-to-play model. On top of morally questionable microtransactions, he must also contend with a mob-thieving elf, the unexpected success of his alchemical experimentations, a mind-bending crossover of game life and reality, and worst of all – if he’s not very careful, he might even be in danger of making some real friends.

'Old Man Gamer is a fresh and comedic LitRPG which pokes fun at tropes both new and old. A standalone story, it is primarily concerned with gaming, and contains some violence, a fair whack of drug and alcohol use, mild romantic interludes, and surprisingly little cursing (not sure why that happened).' (Publication summary)