After another information dump directly into his brain, Conner realized one of the bigger gaps in the gaming industry: the genres. While there is variety when it comes to gaming, like dance-off games, fighting games, sandbox games, survival games, and drawing games, there aren't many single-player games, and the ones that do exist have things like a worldwide leaderboard or less apparent ways to compare your progress.
Almost all games are competitive, but sandbox games are mostly used for experiments or study purposes because they are so open. Maybe it's just because of how games came to be on this Earth, or it could be just because games make more money when there is an obvious winner and loser, but either way, games on this Earth are always a contest between someone else.
Conner could make a mobile Animal Crossing or a mobile Stardew Valley. A casual game would be a breath of fresh air in this world. But just when thoughts like that came up, he realized some things.
First, the way the competition worked, a casual game would never win. You need to be able to catch and hold the audience's attention. They have three hours to play 15 games. The three games with the most hours played move on to the second round, where they play the ones they haven't and vote on which game is better.
Of course, some games won't get played, and some might get played for a minute before they get bored and move on. Those casual games might win votes, but Conner needed playtime to get to the second round. The second problem is time; he has an eight-day deadline.
Luckily, game engines have gotten incredibly good. These days, anyone can make a game using a game engine. But to make a great game, you need to learn how to code and fill in the blanks that just using a game engine would leave. Unlocking the tablet and putting his passkey in the game engine, Conner started thinking about what game to make.
He needs an addictive and quick-to-make game. The first game that came to mind was a wave defense game like Bloons TD, but then Conner realized there was one that checked almost all his boxes. Flappy Bird would be great for raking in playtime. It's addictive and easy to code quickly.
But as Conner logged into his account, he remembered he had already started making a game. There was no name to it yet, but it seemed almost done. All of a sudden, Conner felt embarrassed. Why was the first thing he thought about plagiarism? Remembering Conner's emotions while making his game, the thought of deleting it and starting from scratch made him feel sick.
This is the game he died to create. And he thought of deleting it, lazily throwing code together to submit a game like Flappy Bird? He was furious with himself. Conner took a deep breath and calmed down. He didn't even know if he wanted to do this. He had lost himself in his imagination, but in reality, Conner had just died and come back to life.
He doesn't know if some divine entity did this to him or not, but death has a way of changing your priorities. When Conner died, his desire for money, power, and attention all felt worthless, and he felt smaller than he'd ever felt. So, he decided if he would do this, it would be with his game.
This wasn't going to be about proving himself to his friends and family but about proving himself to himself. He wanted to leave a mark on the world that wouldn't be forgotten, to show that he deserved his life and that his being alive meant something. So he went to play it to check the game with his new mindset before completing it.
After playing it for a while, Conner judged it a failure. It wasn't bad—it was a pretty good game that he was incredibly proud of—but for this competition, it was awful—remembering how he felt when he made it embarrassed him. He seemed to put all his rage and frustration into making this rogue-like rhythm game.
In the game he made, you play a swordsman with no memories or real personality and fight demons in 13 different levels to get to the demon king. The story is pretty bland. But most developers don't have a great imagination for actual stories and usually use authors to make their stories more interesting, similar to editors. Conner had assumed they would judge based on the gameplay rather than the story.
Which seems to be why he made combat so challenging. To fight, you first swipe on the line indicated, which usually looks like a sword's slash, and then tap bubbles that appear on that line. And afterward, the enemy gets a turn. To dodge, you do the same thing except for an extra bubble that appears for your sword, or else it breaks, and afterward, you have to fight with your fist. Which would be a whole different combat system based primarily on tapping bubbles.
It sounds simple and would be if it weren't for the almost impossible patterns to keep up with. And because of an AI algorithm Conner generated, even if you lose and restart, it won't be the same pattern, so you won't be able to memorize it. Worse still, it's all on a tiny mobile device, so it's hard to see it perfectly.
Of course, It's entertaining, and it wouldn't be that difficult for pro gamers or people good at games, but most of the people in the audience will be casual gamers who wouldn't want to spend all of their time on a dull, demanding game when there are 14 other choices. Conner must've decided to ignore them and focus on impressing the judges and the pro gamers who might be streaming with the game's difficulty. But if he had submitted it as planned, it would have been impossible for Conner to beat those Indie gamer companies with experience in the industry.
If all Conner wanted were connections and a future in developing games at a good company, then submitting that kind of game wouldn't be a bad idea. His parents and friends would probably congratulate him on his respectable career and talk about how impressive the company he joined is. But that wasn't what he wanted, and Conner still wanted more.
Conner wanted to be recognized for his skills, noticed, and never ignored again. He needed a position where no one could forget he existed, even years after he was gone. And Conner couldn't get what he wanted in a company under someone else.
In a competitive corporate environment, he would lose his drive to create fun games and instead focus on winning over people who try to keep him down.
Conner needed the first-place prize to fulfill his desires: a personal skyscraper he could use to build his performance store. The contest organizers are a mix of different people from the industry's backbone, like CD manufacturers and VR innovators, who got donations from giants in the digital entertainment industry.
By pooling all that money, they somehow got a skyscraper in this cyberpunk-esk world and the second-place and third-place prizes. A performance store is only something that the greats in the industry can afford personally. You cannot afford it as a regular person on a company salary.
A developer puts all the games they've played, created, or just worked on. It's like an arcade, a museum of video game history, and a biography of who they are, but the main reason people go to those museums is because new releases of their games show up in performance stores first. Of course, if the performance store doesn't make enough money, or you don't buy it from them, the organizers can and will take it back in a year. However, the winner can promote their product in a performance store for a year.
For indie companies, it's an opportunity like no other. For Conner, it was a way to skip almost 10 steps ahead in his plans. But first, he needed to make some tweaks to his game.
Looking around the room, he found a transparent table that had a CPU and also worked as a monitor. Conner stood up and dragged his IV pole over to it. As it automatically rose to his standing position, he realized this was the perfect place to finish designing his game.
There are nurses on standby in case Conner gets sick, food brought to him on a schedule, and an IV pumping fluids directly into his so he doesn't have to stop to drink. He hopes his family's insurance is good because he's not leaving for a while.
Opening up the game engine, a holographic screen floated up, tapping a key, and a notes tap screen floated up next to it. The biggest concern was that the difficulty needed to be lowered. That was easy enough, though; it would probably take less than half a day with how developed game engines are, and not only that, but he already has a complete combat system. The next problem was that it would need to grab attention or keep it. The best way to do that is to start an interesting story that people would want to see the end of. But that would merely grab attention. Plus, he needed hours of gameplay; putting a movie on a screen and calling it a game wouldn't work.
Conner decided to create a relatively short and loose story that the player could fill in with their imagination and maybe clues from the game. He still needed to give them a reason to stay. That's when Conner thought about why people played games. People immerse themselves in games to feel emotions they couldn't usually feel in real life, and he could abuse that.
He could get people to stay longer using one of the most common emotions. Conner typed and bolded the word rage. He needed to make the most punchable-looking enemies and have them say insults that would make them too focused on beating them up to think about switching games.
Of course, rage is tiring, and while it might feel better to beat them, it wouldn't be enough to make them want to stay until the story ends. Conner needed more emotions than anger to immerse the player.
Role-playing games are good at immersion. While Conner couldn't make a Telltale game, he could add dialogue with multiple options and reactions to make the players feel like they're conversing with the NPCs.
When talking to characters, he could change the design from a 2D-pixel, hack-and-slash rhythm game to more of a visual novel. That would immerse them and make them more attached to the game's outcome. Of course, he would have to use an AI Art generator because of that.
He isn't an artist, and while the game engine does help with the framework of games, visual novels aren't popular here, and the art that comes with them is very personalized. While he prefers actual hand-drawn art, beggars can't be choosers.
One of the biggest problems is how bland the characters are. A main character with no memories or personality and a stereotypical demon king wouldn't even be a good anime. The main character can be ignored for the most part because the player can put themselves in that spot, but the big bad can't just be a strong, evil guy.
For his first game, he needed to make it memorable, iconic even. But how do you even make a scary bad guy in video games? He couldn't even remember when he'd been genuinely scared of an actual person, not even in a horror movie or game. Most of the fear there came from jumpscares and gore. He came up with some ideas using his memories of the scariest or at least most memorable antagonist.
He first thought of a skinny, gaunt old man sitting comfortably on a decrepit old throne in a collapsing throne room, a dark, decaying crown on his balding head, two horns that looked like they were stabbed into his head, and a vacant smile on his face. Then he realized kids would be there, plus Conner wasn't making a horror game. That old man isn't a bad idea for a villain, but he wanted something a little different for his first game.
He then thought the best way to make him memorable would be to unsettle the player. So, he came up with the idea that one of your attacks might twist his neck or break his jaw, and on his turn, he'd attack and then fix it afterward. But it doesn't solve the problem of the villain being nobody they should care about.
So he went through his memories and thought about an incredibly recognizable antagonist, Sephiroth. He wasn't horrifying like horror movie baddies, but his theme and looks stirred feelings of awe. The game made him feel important and dangerous, and so the image in his head suddenly changed.
A skinny young man who looked more like a human than a demon. Long black hair that partially covered his indifferent eyes. Pale, almost unhealthy skin with a sardonic smirk of disgust on his face. A long, flowing, dark robe stained in scarlet red that doesn't cover his arms. Sitting in a dark throne room full of shadows and on a throne that seemed carved from them.
But the looks weren't enough; someone like that couldn't be empty. Thinking of famous antagonists or antagonists made him feel uncomfortable. Too much came to mind, but he narrowed it down to his game and how the games made in this world are currently.
Monica from Doki-Doki and Sans from Undertake. Conner mainly chose these characters because they knew they were in a game. If he's thinking iconic, Sans is a distinctive character. Sans is incredibly popular for many reasons, but he's decided to focus on the things he could use for his character: his mysterious but complex past, his humor, memorable quotes, and obviously, how brutal his fight was.
Conner decided to use the combat from the original game with his fight. He couldn't just immediately go from his watered-down version straight to his rogue-like system, so he came up with an idea. First, the game would start with attacking and swiping for the first few levels. Swipes and taps when you get to a later stage. Dodging once when you get to stronger enemies like mini-bosses or fighting multiple enemies. And then the old combat system for his big boss, including the AI he created, wouldn't make sense for his villain to use the same moves every time you fight him.
And if he's making an unsettling antagonist, especially with how video game culture is here compared to the other Earth, while Sans is aware of the mechanics of the game, when it comes to self-aware characters, the antagonist who caught his attention is Monica. She shocked Conner the most at the time. He didn't notice how comfortable the fourth wall was until it disappeared.
While the idea itself isn't scary, it would be very alarming when a character you think of as an enemy knows who you are and where you're from. Monica's obsession and the lengths she would go to already made her an uncomfortable character, but not only that, but she somehow had power over the game itself.
Conner decided to combine all of them to make his demon king. Neither Conner has ever written a script when it comes to making the story. Still, Conner from other Earth has read thousands for auditions, and reading so many different stories massively helped with his creativity. Not only that, but in doing so, he's gotten extraordinarily good at script analysis. 'And writing a script is just doing that backward,' he joked.
He might not be as good as a professional writer, but Conner's creative. He's played many different characters from all different backgrounds, so he knows how to create a backstory for his character. Plus, he's read plenty of scripts, good and bad, so he knows what makes a good story. He started by asking himself questions and getting lost in a world he made up.
Why would a man with no memories go on a journey to kill the demon king?
'Someone must have told him to.'
Who would or who could?
' His boss. Someone who could tell him what to do… Maybe he's a knight, and the king ordered him to do so.'
Why would the king want the demon king dead?
'The demon king wants to kill him.'
Why would he want this king, in particular, to die?
'Maybe the king killed his family when he was a normal child. Orphan characters do make people more sympathetic.'
Why would a king kill an average family?
'Greed, power, maybe a treasure that could give him that.'
Why would a normal family have a weapon that could give him that?
'They probably wouldn't. The king could've sacrificed them to gain something. Maybe he summoned a demon to wish for power.'
Could the lives of a small family be enough to summon a devil?
'Maybe he was already an orphan and lived in an orphanage. That way, the player could also be an orphan at the orphanage.'
Did they summon a devil?
'No, they would have to fail in some way. That way, the antagonist has an excuse for having the ability to break the game's fourth wall. The ritual has to go haywire. That might also be a good excuse for his hate of the player. He knows who the player is, why they are here, and maybe not just that, but the player is controlling the body of one of the orphans.'
First, coming up with a loose idea of what he wanted, he immersed himself in the world he scrapped together. Conner could fill gaps in the story by asking and answering why something would happen in a story. Doing this helped him see the bigger picture and make the story. He started to lose himself in writing a script in the notes that didn't exist and creating a story on his own for the first time.