There is a little game I have been playing pretty much on and off for the past 10 years (in fact 10 years, one month, and 6 days) by the name of The Kingdom of Loathing. Have you ever wanted to be a Seal Clubber? How about a Pastamancer? What about an Accordion Thief? A Radish Dancer? Well you can’t be that, but the first three you totally can, because in The Kingdom of Loathing an Adventurer is You! As today marks the retirement of one of the game’s long time writers I feel it a fitting to address the nachos in one of the internet’s longest running free-to-play browser-based multiplayer role-playing games.

Imagine waking up a stick figure in a strange and distant land, only to be told by a bird to meet with a shadowy council. This council in turn sends you off on various quests (Visit Mt. Noob, clean giant garbage off the Nearby Plains, find a mosquito larvae in the Spooky Forest) armed with weapons (Frying Brainpan, Huge Mosquito Proboscis and Homoerotic Frat-Paddle) and familiars (Clockwork Grapefruit, Mini-Hipster, and Sabre-Toothed Lime) with the ultimate goal of killing a Naughty Sorceress who is terrorizing the land. That’s the game in a nutshell, but peel back that shell and you find an incredibly intricate music box of hilarious writing, solid mechanics, and gratifying gameplay. And how do you power yourself while adventuring through this magical land? Same way as in real life, by eating food like flavorless gruel, balaclava baklava, and of course, nachos.

NACHOS OF THE NIGHT

First up are “Nachos of the Night” described as “This is a plate of unnatural blue corn chips topped with bright orange artificial cheese and heavily pickled jalapeño. Unlike the children of the night, it doesn't make beautiful music. However, after you eat it, you'll be making music of a sort, and involuntarily.”

It the game it looks like the image above, but in reality it looks like this:

Not too appetizing, which is reflected in the game as them listed as a “decent” food, a rating only a step above the lower rating of “crappy”. Would I describe these nachos as decent so far as nachos go? Nope. What you have here are basically concession nachos, however they do get a little bit of a bump with the replacement of crummy round chips with blue corn ones, but still nothing I would feed a loved one. This is why I’m eating these alone now...

Nacho Rating: 3 out of 10

SUBLIME NACHOS

Next are the “Sublime Nachos” described as “These are like nachos from a restaurant, which is to say they're good, instead of a soggy, depressing, microwave-tainted plate of nachos you made at home.” Sounds tasty right? Well these bad boys are made via magic by Jarlsberg, the most Mysterious of the Chef-Magi of the Times of Old, from the following ingredients:

Consummate Corn Chips

Each of these chips is a perfectly flat, perfectly equilateral triangle of toasty corn goodness. No corn chip factory on earth had quality control as good as Jarlsberg.

Consummate Salsa

If somebody tells you that "salsa" is just the spanish word for "sauce," you should hang out with somebody else instead.

Consummate Melted Cheese

This has all the qualities of a can of artificial nacho cheese food product, but is still made of real, wholesome cheese. And also there's no can.

Consummate Sour Cream

How can you tell if sour cream has gone bad, am I right, ha ha anybody here from out of town?

Those four items in real life combined results in this:

As you can see, not too shabby, but sublime? No. Maybe if I was using magically conjured consummate versions of the ingredients that would do it, but I would call these totally average at best and possibly the bare minimum to be called acceptable nachos at worst. They’re rated in game as “awesome”, but I don’t think I could give them a higher rating than “good”.

Nacho Rating: 5 out of 10

HEIMANDATZ, NACHO GOLEM

Lastly, while not a food, it would be remiss to not mention the foul creature “Heimandatz, Nacho Golem” described as “You find your path blocked by... well, you're not sure what it is, exactly, but it's pretty gross. It appears to be a giant pile of thin triangular shards of something, coated with a viscous, bright orange sludge. You know, actually, it looks just like the world's largest pile of nasty truck-stop nachos... Oh. Uh-oh. The pile begins to quiver, and then quake. The chips begin to slide across each other and link edge to edge, glued in place by the "cheez" that oozes between the cracks. You stand transfixed in awe as the mass of nachos reconfigures itself into that horrible eight-foot tall humanoid monstrosity that you never truly believed existed: Heimandatz, the Nacho Golem.”

As “the world’s largest pile of nasty truck-stop nachos” this punny beast might not be very tasty, but at least there’s a lot of him to eat and that’s got to make up for something! If you eat enough that makes up for the quality right? Right? I don’t know, and really I don’t want to find out.

Nacho Rating: 4 out of 10

So if any of this has titillated your taste buds, or more importantly made you interested to play the game, you totally should, because it’s free. FREE! Plus they’re good people so if you want to toss them a few bucks as well, it will fill that void in your heart you had no idea how to fill. And if you do go on, check me out (Dexorcyst, #251813) for a good time and I'll give you some fake nachos. The Kingdom of Loathing, an Adventurer is You!

Overall game rating: 11 out of 11. (That's ridiculous. It's not even funny.)