NPC IN VILLAGE SIM GAME MUST BE REAL NOVEL (2025)

Yoshio is 30 years old, with no job and a shut-in lifestyle. His mundane days and nights are suddenly interrupted when he receives a copy of The Village of Fate, an experimental game with graphics like nothing he's ever seen before. In the game, he takes on the role of a guardian deity who watches over the people of a new village... but he finds that the game characters are so intelligent, reactive, and human that he starts wondering if they could be real people somehow.