Bad CGI Sharks

It was an unlikely celestial event. The moon shifted its orbit slightly, causing a disturbance in the tides. This was followed by a series of unsettling phenomena: fish fell from the sky, a surfing competition took place in the Sahara, and a wedding reception in a landlocked venue was interrupted by a shark attack. The final event was a live feed from the International Space Station, which was abruptly cut off after the station was bitten in half.

Initially, these events were dismissed as a bizarre viral marketing campaign. They were not. Poorly rendered and barely textured sharks are now a deadly, everyday reality.

I'm a background extra cast as a marine researcher, that find myself thrust into a leading role in this unfolding disaster. The cameras are still rolling, the budget has spiraled out of control, and a shark-shaped entity is staring directly at me.

I have 90 minutes of narrative time (nine turns or more accurately, nine days) to scavenge, improvise, and survive. My goal is to collect enough Plot Points to confront the Final Shark. I will either succeed or die trying, most likely to the tune of an ironic synthwave soundtrack.

I'd like you to introduce myself in the somewhat sarcastic dark comedy tone that suits these Sharknado movies. Name's  McGillicuddy, an Irishman somewhat like Crocodile Dandy (so I'd love to think), who is accompanied by my inseparable Darney, a French boy who is always optimistic and somewhat naive. I'm faster running than I'm at fighting sharks hand-to-hand; I'm no coward, but I'm smarter than I'm at doing crazy things. I've a certain charm, but nothing out of this world. I wear a peculiar outfit consisting of Nailbound Floatation Foam, which I use to punch sharks that fall from the sky.

September 1

We’d been in that nightclub for all of ten minutes, and Darney was already trying to convince the DJ to play some horrible French pop. He was having a grand old time, and I was just happy to be somewhere with a roof and a cocktail that wasn't full of fish scales. We deserved a break. The storm outside had other plans.

One second, the place was just your standard cacophony of throbbing beats and strobes. The next, a crack of thunder hit, and the enormous glass window that served as the club's fourth wall shattered inwards. It wasn't rain that came through, either. It was a torrential downpour of what looked like every single fish you've ever seen on a menu. A tuna landed in a champagne bucket, a half-dozen sardines hit the dance floor, and then a crab the size of a microwave scurried out of the deluge.

And it had a shark head. A shark's head, I swear to God, grafted onto a crab's body. The Shark-Crab Hybrid scuttled toward the bar, its tiny legs clicking on the tile as its shark mouth opened in a silent scream.

I wasn’t about to let some half-baked seafood monstrosity ruin my drink. My Nailbound Floatation Foam came in handy, and I swung it like a bat, hitting the beast square in its poorly rendered head. It stumbled, and that's when Darney, bless his naive heart, decided it was time to intervene. He grabbed a bus tub and, with a cheerful "Bon appétit, mon ami!", he brought it down on the creature's head. The crab’s shell shattered, and the shark's head flopped over. We were bruised, sure, but nothing a good stiff drink couldn't fix.

“Well,” Darney chirped, brushing a fish scale off his shirt. “I suppose that’s what happens when you skip leg day!”

That little skirmish got me thinking. Why was a shark-crab hybrid attacking a nightclub? Why were fish raining down from the sky? There was only one logical place to get a better look at the situation: the rooftop pool. What could possibly go wrong?

So we make our way to the rooftop. The storm is even more intense up here, and the rain is a steady downpour of miscellaneous aquatic life. The pool, normally a crystal-blue oasis, is now a swirling, churning vortex of water and fish. You see a glint of something large just below the surface.

September 2

The rain of fish had stopped, replaced by a fresh coat of what was either marine life or the world's most depressing confetti. We’d made it to the rooftop, and the pool, glowing neon blue from the nightclub's strobes, was a swirling, churning vortex of water and who-knew-what. Darney leaned over the edge, squinting. "I think I see something, McGillicuddy. Little ones!"

And he was right. They were little. A whole swarm of them, no bigger than house cats, their tiny fins zipping around just beneath the surface. For a second, I almost thought they were cute. Then they shot out of the water like something out of a cheap sci-fi movie. A hundred tiny gray torpedoes, their little jaws gnashing. Baby sharks, sure, but they had the ferocity of a thousand hungry piranhas.

They hit us like a flurry of tiny, toothy baseballs. Most of them missed and just flopped around on the slick rooftop, wriggling to their demise. But the ones that connected... they bit like damn piranhas. Their teeth were like needles, and their bites were surprisingly strong. Darney, with his endless optimism, seemed to attract more of them. He was hopping around, swatting at the little things, while I was doing my best to just not get hit.

"At least," Darney yelped, a tiny shark latched onto his pant leg, "they're not... loan sharks!"

I cringed. The joke was bad, even for Darney, but it did make me look at him. He was a little more banged up than I was, but nothing serious. It was his suit that caught my eye. The little bastards had shredded parts of it. It was made of some kind of slick, almost plastic-y material, and it seemed to repel the bites, but it was still full of holes. And that's when it hit me.

Being out in the open was a terrible idea. We were basically fish food in a fishbowl. What we needed was cover. We needed to get away from the sky, from the air, from where the sharks came from. We needed to go down. Underground. The only way was down, and the nearest way down was a rusted-out manhole cover leading to the sewer.

Darney, oblivious to the grim future, just shrugged. "The sewers, McGillicuddy? What could go wrong?"

I just sighed and grabbed the manhole cover. I didn't have the heart to answer that question.

Darney and me descend into the grimy depths of the sewer. The air is thick and smells of damp concrete and something vaguely metallic. A weak, flickering light from a busted streetlamp above illuminates a murky tunnel. I can hear the distant, sloshing sound of water.

September 3

The sewer, it turned out, smelled exactly how you'd expect a sewer to smell. Which is to say, like a thousand dreams of a better life had gone to die in a wet, dark place. The water was shallow, thankfully. Just a grimy trickle, nothing a self-respecting shark would bother with. So, we moved slowly, the beam of my flashlight cutting through the gloom.

That’s when we saw it. A face, just floating there in the darkness. Pale and unblinking.

Darney, being Darney, couldn't help himself. "Hey, buddy," he chirped, like he was greeting a long-lost friend.

The face turned. And then it started coming toward us, fast. My heart, which had been taking a break, started doing a frantic tap dance against my ribs. I shone the flashlight on it properly, and that's when my brain decided it was done processing information for the day. It was a face, a perfectly normal, albeit bewildered-looking, human face. But below it... below it was the body of a shark. The poor thing was shambling toward us on its fins, like a very confused, very deadly seal.

"Right," I said, putting a hand out. "Listen, mate, whatever you are, we're not here to be a meal. We're just trying to get from A to B without being, you know, eaten."

It stopped just short of us, its black shark eyes blinking slowly. Its human mouth opened. "They're not my food," it said in a voice that sounded like it had been gargling with gravel. And then, it turned around and swam away, or at least, tried to, awkwardly bumping into a concrete pillar.

I just stared. Darney, for his part, was already finding the humor in the situation. "Well," he said, the tension finally breaking with a high-pitched snicker, "I guess we’re not on his diet. Maybe he's a vegetarian. He just doesn’t know it yet."

My sarcasm was about to hit peak performance when the ground beneath us started to rumble. A tremendous suction pulled at our feet, and the water began to rush. One moment we were in a grimy sewer pipe, and the next, the flashlight beam caught a colossal pane of glass. It wasn't a sewer at all. We were in a massive, interconnected network of water tunnels, a colossal fish tank.

What could go wrong?

September 4

Things could always get worse. I knew it. It’s a basic law of the universe, right up there with gravity and the fact that a well-aimed throw of a Nailbound Floatation Foam can’t solve all your problems. One moment we were in a grimy, fish-smelling pipe, and the next we were in a grimy, fish-smelling pipe that was also a giant aquarium tunnel. My lungs burned, and I knew we had to find air, and fast.

Darney, bless his perpetually cheerful little heart, pointed with a gurgling sound toward the wall. And that's when I saw it. It wasn't the vast, open ocean. We were in a big, glass fishbowl, and on the other side were people, staring at us with the same wide-eyed confusion we felt. A family with kids, a woman taking a picture with her phone. The tunnel had to have an exit. We just had to get to it.

We started swimming, a frantic, awkward doggy-paddle through the murky water. That’s when it appeared. Not a real shark, of course. That would have been too simple. This was a Shark-Shaped Inflatable Costume, the kind you’d see at a half-rate carnival, bobbing in the water. The budget, it seemed, had run out long before they got to the part where they bought real sharks. This thing, this cheap, plastic monstrosity, was a guardian. It followed us, its vacant plastic eyes staring straight ahead, its mouth a gaping circle of stitched-together fabric. It was less of a threat and more of a cosmic joke, a reminder that even in the apocalypse, the show must go on with a shoestring budget.

The inflatable thing kept pace with us, but it didn’t attack. It just… watched. It was so ridiculous that even Darney had no jokes left. He just swam, the small bubbles of his sigh rising to the surface. We finally reached a grate and, with a few desperate shoves, pushed it open and scrambled out, gasping for air.

We had made it. We were breathing. But where were we?

I looked around, wiping the grimy water from my eyes. We were in a drainage tunnel, a colossal, concrete spiral leading down into the darkness. A giant storm drain. It wasn't the most glamorous of exits, but at this point, I'd take anything that didn't have a dorsal fin.

What could go wrong?

September 5

The air in the Giant Storm Drain was a symphony of despair and concrete. As we started our descent, the flickering of a maintenance light revealed a slumped figure. It was a person, or at least, a person-shaped form, wearing a terrible, lumpy gray costume with a gaping mouth. A Shark With an Actor Inside. He was one of the poor extras from the aquarium, no doubt.

"Help," he wheezed from inside the foam suit. "Can't… move."

I was about to ask what in God's name had possessed him to get into a costume like that during a shark-pocalypse, but I never got the chance. Before we could even get close, a shadow fell over us. A real one this time. Not a shadow of a shoddy costume or a half-eaten ISS. This was a shadow with a dorsal fin.

A massive, beautifully-rendered CGI shark dropped from the sky and, with a gulp, swallowed the poor actor whole. The shark-costume-clad man didn't even have time to scream. He was just… gone. One moment, a man with a dignity problem, the next, a fish dinner.

Darney and I screamed, a high-pitched, guttural sound that was less brave hero and more terrified spectator. We turned and ran, the sound of my sneakers slapping against the grimy concrete.

"I guess," Darney said, his voice trembling a little, "he wasn't very digestible. Probably because of the bad acting."

It was a terrible joke. The kind of joke that makes you want to get eaten by a shark just to stop hearing them. But it was all we had. We sprinted down the sloped tunnel until we found a metal door. We threw it open and stumbled inside, gasping for air and sanity.

We found ourselves in a room that was… well, it was something. It was a Fake Beach. Fake sand, fake plastic palm trees, and a huge, tacky green screen on one wall projecting a bright blue sky with fluffy clouds. It was meant to look like Hawaii, but the effect was so terrible that it gave me the creeps.

Darney was silent for once, his eyes wide. "People… people paid to get into this room?"

I didn't have an answer. All I could think was, at least there aren't any sharks here.

What could go wrong?

September 6

My lungs burned. My legs ached. And still, the image of that poor, devoured actor was burned into my brain like a cheap film reel. Darney and I collapsed onto the fake sand of the Fake Beach, a terrible, tacky oasis in the middle of a world gone mad. The gentle lapping of fake waves from the sound system did nothing to soothe my nerves.

Just as I was starting to think maybe, just maybe, this was the worst it could get, a shadow appeared on the green screen above us. And then, a CGI-rendered shark, a truly impressive specimen of cinematic garbage, came crashing through the flimsy ceiling and onto the plastic beach. It was a beautiful sight, in a horrible, this-is-the-end-of-the-world-and-it-looks-like-a-B-movie-special-effect sort of way.

But this wasn't just any shark. This was an Echo Shark. It didn't just attack. It mimicked our every move. I took a step to the right, and it sidled to the right. I feigned a jab, and it gave a little wiggle. It was a dumb, pointless, and somehow deeply unsettling dance with a poorly textured predator.

And that's when it hit me. This shark was dumber than a bag of hammers. It could only mimic. It couldn't improvise. It couldn't think. It was a reflection of my own stupid choices. So, I decided to make one more stupid choice. I ran toward the far edge of the room, which was an open doorway, and faked a jump. I leaped, throwing my arms up as if to fall into the abyss, but at the last second, I grabbed the ledge.

The Echo Shark, however, was not so clever. It mimicked my jump perfectly, but it had no concept of "grabbing a ledge." It just plunged headfirst into the empty space beyond the doorway, its pixelated form disappearing with a muffled thud.

Darney, with a strength I never knew he had, grabbed my wrists and hauled me back to safety. "What would I do without you, Darney?" I asked him, genuinely. He just smiled, a little out of breath, and pointed the way out.

We walked through a couple of more rooms in the aquarium—more bad dioramas, more fake habitats—and finally emerged into an adjacent building. It was a Warehouse Full of Props. There were no green screens, no flimsy roofs, and most importantly, no water. Just a vast, open space filled with stacks of crates, bizarre alien masks, and fake trees. For the first time, I felt something approaching hope.

What could go wrong?

September 7

My brief moment of relief in the Warehouse Full of Props was, of course, a lie. A glorious, beautiful, temporary lie. The vast space, filled with everything from fake alien corpses to cardboard spaceships, should have been a sanctuary. But then we heard it. Footsteps. Slow, deliberate, and somehow… clunky. My heart, which had just started to slow down, decided to go for a personal best.

"People!" Darney whispered, a flicker of hope in his eyes.

"Or something worse," I muttered. I was right. It was always something worse. Rounding a stack of plastic crates came the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen, and that was saying something. It was a Shark with Legs. Big, fleshy, bipedal legs that looked like they belonged to a gorilla. It wobbled and shambled toward us, its dorsal fin scraping against a hanging prop of a rocket ship.

There was no time to run. This thing, for all its awkwardness, was fast. We had to fight.

"Anything!" I yelled, grabbing a prop sword made of flimsy plastic. Darney, bless him, grabbed a ridiculously large fake bone and a wig made of what looked like dryer lint. The shark with legs lunged. I swung my plastic sword, which immediately snapped in half, and I dodged its snapping jaws. Darney, with a surprising amount of grace, swung his bone and hit the shark square in the face. It stumbled, and I took my chance, grabbing a rubber alien mask from a bin and shoving it over the shark's face. It thrashed and clawed at the mask, its legs flailing. Darney then, in a moment of pure inspiration, threw the lint wig at its head, and it stuck to the mask, blinding it completely. The shark with legs stumbled back blindly and toppled over with a crash, taking a whole shelf of foam meteors with it.

We stood there, panting, surrounded by the remnants of our bizarre victory. "Well," Darney gasped, "he won't be... leg-ally challenging anyone anytime soon."

Before I could even give him a deserved glare, a new figure emerged from the shadows. This wasn't a shark with legs. It was a shark. With a suit. A Shark in a Business Suit. It was wearing a finely tailored three-piece suit, a crisp white shirt, and a silk tie. It didn't lunge or snap at us. It just stood there, looking at us with what could only be described as professional disappointment.

"The helipad," it said, in a low, gravelly voice, its fins making a strange flapping gesture. "A helicopter went down during the storm. Go there. It's your only way out."

I stared at it. I had so many questions, none of which I was prepared to ask. This thing wasn't trying to eat us. It was giving us advice. We couldn't run; it was standing between us and the only way out. We were exhausted, beaten, and covered in fake hair and rubber alien faces. We just stood there, speechless.

What could go wrong?

September 8

We made our way to the helipad, a high-altitude platform designed for a machine that was now a twisted pile of metal and broken dreams. The Shark in a Business Suit laughed, a horrifying, multi-toothed sound that echoed off the concrete. It was the laugh of a supervillain who had just won the lottery and a lifetime supply of bad puns.

"I bet his dentist has a summer home in the Hamptons," Darney whispered.

"I bet that suit costs more than his entire dental plan," I shot back.

That's when he pointed to a glint of metal in the corner. It wasn't just a glint; it was an entire shark made of what looked like polished steel. It was motionless, a gruesome sculpture, until the Shark in a Business Suit laughed again. The Metal Shark moved, its joints whirring with an ominous sound. It was the henchman, the main course, and we were its appetizers.

The Metal Shark was faster than it looked, and the fire from the wreckage of the helicopter didn't even phase it. We dodged its metallic lunges and snapped jaws. I saw my chance and, with a desperate lunge, I grabbed a loose piece of helicopter blade and wedged it into the broken propeller. Darney, understanding what I was doing, kicked a piece of debris into the propeller, and the blades began to spin, creating a deadly vortex. The Metal Shark, caught in the current, was pulled in and torn to pieces with a horrible screech of metal.

The Shark in a Business Suit watched it all happen, then, with a huff of what I can only assume was indignation, it turned and fled. A true coward.

We had survived, but what was left? We looked over the edge of the helipad, down to the ground. A new building stood there, a glass-domed structure that had somehow appeared out of the chaos. We made our way down and found a door. We opened it and saw it: a Reality TV Set in an Underwater Restaurant. It had a bar, tables with half-eaten food, and even an empty stage. But the glass walls, the ones that were supposed to show the serene ocean, now showed a swirling mass of angry, terrible CGI sharks.

We were back in the belly of the beast.

What could go wrong?

September 9

My stomach felt like a knotted mess of dread and bad CGI. We were in a Reality TV Set in an Underwater Restaurant, and just beyond the glass, the ocean was a churning mass of angry, terrible sharks. We looked around and saw the contestants. They were a motley crew of social media influencers, aspiring chefs, and a guy who was apparently famous for being really, really good at competitive eating. They were all completely freaked out, and I don't blame them.

The glass walls that were supposed to be our protection were no longer working. Sharks were coming in from everywhere, like a bloody, toothy flash mob. They were picking off the contestants one by one. The wannabe chef was gone in a gulp, followed by the competitive eater. It was a grim scene, but it was also a great metaphor for the entertainment industry.

Darney, of course, found the silver lining. "Well," he said as we bolted for the exit, "the ratings on this show must be through the roof!"

I didn't have time to respond. We were about to reach the door when it appeared. It was the Final Shark. It was bigger than the rest, its fins were more menacing, and its teeth were more numerous. Its eyes were pure black, and it looked like it was created by an intern who was told to "just make it look evil." It was the mother of all sharks, and it was pissed.

We knew this was it. We had to fight. We swung our fists, threw chairs, and even used the bar stools as makeshift weapons. It was a brawl that defied all logic, a ballet of desperation and bad choreography. We were bruised and battered, but we fought with everything we had.

Finally, with one last, desperate blow, we won. The Final Shark went limp, its massive body crashing to the floor with a sound that shook the entire set. We were exhausted, bleeding, and bruised, but we were alive.

We stumbled outside. The storm was over, and the sun was shining. The world should have been beautiful, but it was a disaster. The town was in ruins. Smoke billowed from every building, sirens wailed, and sharks—poorly rendered, barely textured sharks—were everywhere. There were no people, no cars, just silence. Every shark was dead.

The sun was shining. What could go wrong?

This is the result of playing Bad CGI Sharks at the beginning of September. There are many things in the game that didn't make it here because I got really lucky with the dice rolls and Darney and McGillicuddy survived, taking out sharks all by themselves. You can buy the game here.