Digital Factory as a government project was born to have numerous goals attached to it. One of them being to allow novice and new game developers to dip their toes into the industry early to develop their skills.
Another of them being to educate the public population on the various and growing types of monsters being discovered. From the Slow Walker Zombies, to the Sprinter Zombies, and even the Hercules Zombies.
Each of them were deeply studied to the point their habits were recorded. And the best way to educate an entire population on dangers was through entertainment.
How many young kids these days know the weaknesses of zombies or any monsters from video games?
It was simply the easiest entrance point and acted as a supplement to when these kids grew up and got a more thorough education during their military service.
Which as a result made all the free character designs and animations were made hyper-realistic to reflect real-world dangers.
But for Jack he didn't care about all the nuances about this subject. All he cared about was that it decided that his game would be more nightmarish.
Jack looked around the zombie category and found about twenty Zombies he found would work with his game and weren't so disgusting that it would make him puke. He dragged what he selected and put them all into a Zombie folder.
"Now for the plants. I should be able to find some good ones that aren't too horrid." Jack muttered to himself.
The plant selection was much better. They were not so disgusting.
Next up was getting the assets, background, and music. Luckily, these were also easy to get.
Once Jack had everything he needed to make his game look how he imagined it was now for the long and troublesome part. The coding.
Cracking his knuckles, Jack focused and tried a few test programs to see if he still understood how to best use Digital Factory.
Starting with the classic "Hello, World!".
Hours quickly passed by as Jack fingers glided on his keyboard. There were no pauses, no hesitation, and with his fingers flying across so fast they became blurry.
With his face fully concentrated, the code flowed out of his mind into the program.
Suddenly Jack stopped as he frowned.
"There is a bug." Jack mumbled as he quickly saved his work before finding the lines of code that wouldn't work properly if he tested it.
It was mostly correct. But with certain inputs it would cause the entire program to crash. He just needed to put some limiters on what could enter this portion of code.
After fixing the code. Jack saved it with a quick keyboard command and ran a brief test. After a few seconds all the parameters came out with success so he continued with coding.
Time flew by as Jack forgot to sleep. By the time he felt he had done enough it was already the next day.
"Shit, did I end up staying up all night? I got too into making this game." Jack said with surprise.
He had never been this excited to make a game. Maybe it was because this was his first time having complete creative freedom. He no longer needed to follow the system's harsh requirements and could just do what he wanted.
"Alright, I'll just quickly give this project a name…and run it to see if there is anything I missed." Jack said he felt a bit reluctant to stop working.
Still he gave the project a pretty decent name, Windor's Siege (Beta).
He then ran it.
Immediately a black screen popped up. It slowly faded in to reveal a lonely city surrounded by a massive black wall in the middle of barren wasteland. It was the last oasis. The last patch of land untouched by the monsters wandering about.
The camera then panned out before zooming into a small abandoned base that looked as if it hadn't been taken care of for years. An old truck stopped in front of it as a young girl stepped out of the truck, a cigar in her mouth, a freshly printed newspaper under her armpit, and an open letter in her hand.
Then the title screen faded in.
Placeholder Title (Change later)
"I should change it before I forget again." Jack said and minimized the page and changed the title.
After a quick save, Jack opened the updated game and watched the beginning again.
Windor's Siege
"All fixed. Hopefully, I replaced the other placeholders." Jack muttered before yawning.
Due to a lack of time he didn't have much else for the beginning. It just went straight into the game play.
He planned to add the introduction and guide once he woke up
But overall the gaming portion was pretty good. Overall the game was decently balanced. However, he felt it was a bit too easy in the resource management portion.
So he made it harder by making the food, water, and electricity more expensive. Which wasn't exactly the perfect fix but it made it a bit more fun.
After making a bunch of little changes, Jack looked at the time and slapped his face. It was already noon.
"That's enough for now." Jack yawned and quickly saved twice before going to sleep.
When Jack woke up it was already six in the afternoon he was starving but when he looked at his bank account. He gritted his teeth and ate whatever he had in the fridge before getting back to work.
After working on his game until three in the morning, Jack sighed with relief as he completed the beta. It was now good enough for him to send it to Sarah, his investor, to test out and get her opinion.
"There are a few things I wish I had more time to do but it's good enough. This is only the basic framework so it's going to change quite a bit." Jack muttered to himself and began to send it to Sarah to get her thoughts.
Satisfied with the email, Jack hit send. Across the city, in a college dorm, Sarah was sitting on her bed wearing a white tank top and baggy shorts with pink heart prints. Her expression was energetic as she read a textbook about the history of plants in video games.
Sarah's phone buzzed, pulling her attention away from her textbook.
"Ding!"
[Hester Bunny]: It's done.
"Why did you have to send such an ominous text?" Sarah muttered as she rolled her eyes.
She sent him a thumbs up emoji before pulling up her email. His email was the most recent one so she clicked in and was surprised.
Inside the email, Jack had detailed which platforms the game was compatible with. And the range was what surprised her.
It was compatible with mobile, computer consoles, and VR. Basically the entire package.
"As expected of the legend himself. No wonder he was able to upload three games in two years." Sarah muttered with a smile.
She had played some of the other games that he had developed and she couldn't deny that they were well made and fun. It was unfortunate none of them matched her tastes so she couldn't get into them.
So she had the same expectations for this one too.
Still she was willing to try it so she downloaded the game package and immediately opened it on her phone.
She saw the animation scene and clicked her tongue.
"It's amazing. He did this in less than two days. I can tell he used the free assets from Digital Factory but they all work so well together." Sarah said with excitement.
Next up was the tutorial which was pretty basic. But it was all tied back to the story which made it clear to her what was going on.
From what she gathered she was a young female Botanist, who inherited money from her grandparents after their death. At the same time, the city which was the one in the background issued an incentive to people where it was selling off land outside the city to anyone who wanted it.
The only thing was that they needed to provide their own protection from the hoards of monsters that came every night. As for what kind of protection was needed, it was plant monsters that came in the format of cards.
Some cards could be bought directly from the city but they were pretty basic and mostly farm type plants. For the really powerful plant monsters you needed to research them yourself.
Her character desiring freedom and a change of scenery took this offer up, bought this base camp and immediately moved in.
"So quick. Did Hester base the main character's background on me?" Sarah was flattered and felt invested in the story.
"Wow the first plant cards I get are the Furred Venus Fly Trap and the Dandelion Fruit Tree. He really put a lot of thought into it."
"He even knew that the fruits of the Dandelion Fruit Tree are inedible and used as materials for other things like oil. So these are just used to sell off and get money to buy other resources." Sarah said as she felt giddy.
She felt as if she had gotten an easy and fun way to review her plant knowledge.
"Ahh! The first horde is coming. Wow, they are disgusting. Luckily only Slow Walker Zombies, my Furred Venus Fly Trap should be able to get them." Sarah muttered as she watched as a green furred Venus Fly plant that was ten feet tall opened one of its mouths full of razor sharp teeth.
Once one of the decaying Zombies got close, the mouth lunged and swallowed the entire zombie. Only its calves were exposed as they wiggled helpless as the rest of its body was melted from the pouring acid.
The second, third, and fourth Slow Walker Zombies suffered from the same fate since they were all clumped up close to each other. A common trait for these Slow Walker Zombies.
"So nasty." Sarah said with a pale face. She felt her stomach terribly watching these Zombies get eaten.
It wasn't pretty but didn't deter her from enjoying the rest of the game.
Though she made up her mind to tell Jack to make everything cuter once he was able to.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
"Huh? Is it seven in the morning already? Did I stay up all night?" Sarah said with surprise. She was having so much fun that she forgot to go to bed.
"Uh, night five is about to begin. I'll finish this round then get ready." Sarah said as her eyes glued to her screen.
While her dorm mate woke up and greeted her only to get nothing back.