After seeing that Sheltered 2 is in development, I noticed the other games by that same dev team, and saw Narita Boy was one of them. So I decided to try out the demo of it.
It's definitely a retro love letter to the 80s era of video games, and TRON in particular. It brings in a lot more depth to the story, and makes it feel a lot more like Ready Player One, in so far as The Creator of the digital world you are sucked into. That it seems to be heavily implying that a lot of the components of the digital world, are shaped, and reflections of key points in his life. It's pretty neat so far, though I did run into a hiccup with the demo. Not sure if I just got turned around, or if it what, but it gave me an item and said "go use this in the garden!" and I'll be damned if I could find a way to any garden. Navigation isn't great, as there is no map, at least not in the demo. But it's fun, as someone who grew up in the 80s, seeing the cheesy, yet heartfelt tone of the scifi elements is endearing, and made me smile. I can see the direction they seem to be going with it, and I'm down for it. I'll likely pick up the full game while it's on sale.