"Big bro! Did Little Nezha put a curse on you?!"
Gu Sheng had just returned to his office when Lu Bian and Da Jiang came looking for him.
The moment they entered, they wailed to heaven and beat their chests in despair.
"That game she mentioned—forget selling it, I don't even know how we're supposed to make it!"
Lu Bian genuinely felt like dying.
What kind of bizarre conditions were those?!
It was practically a garbage bin, the kind that didn't even separate wet and dry trash.
It had gathered nearly every unpopular or unfavorable element in the gaming industry!
There was simply no way to approach it!
"Why didn't you let me speak up during the meeting?"
Lu Bian said regretfully:
"I know that, as the director, there are things you couldn't conveniently say during the meeting,"
"But you could've at least given me a chance to be the bad guy,"
"If I'd argued with her, we wouldn't be in such a passive position now."
As he spoke, Lu Bian let out a deep sigh, looking utterly dejected.
Even Da Jiang, who was usually honest and quiet, nodded in agreement.
"Yeah, Brother Sheng. Before the meeting, you said the three of us were an Iron Triangle,"
"If there's any pressure, the two of us can shoulder it too,"
"We can't seriously make a game exactly the way CEO Shen wants, can we? That game would be a complete mess."
Seeing the two of them looking so worried,
Gu Sheng paused, then could not help but smile.
He had not hired the wrong people.
Clearly, both brothers thought he had been unable to speak up in the meeting and had been forced to accept Little Nezha's unreasonable proposal.
They wanted to speak up for him, help him reject Little Nezha's demands, and protect him.
Gu Sheng nodded. "Good. With that kind of loyalty, I didn't trust you two for nothing."
Then, his tone shifted.
"But there's one thing you two may have misunderstood. I accepted this proposal voluntarily."
Huh?
That single sentence nearly made the brothers' processors smoke.
"Voluntarily accepted..."
Lu Bian looked at Gu Sheng suspiciously.
"Holy shit, Old Gu, don't tell me you're actually an M? Is this... a mission from the CEO? This mission is way too absurd..."
"Would it kill you not to want to go bankrupt for one day?!"
Gu Sheng was speechless. He crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it at Lu Bian.
"Mission my ass! You're the damn mission addict!"
"No,"
Lu Bian caught the paper ball, amused by his own wild thought.
"I just don't understand the logic. You said you accepted it voluntarily? Are we really making this kind of garbage game?!"
Gu Sheng raised an eyebrow. "The game hasn't even been made yet. How do you know it'll be garbage?"
"Because it combines practically every garbage element on the market!"
Da Jiang immediately answered from the side, as though it were obvious.
"Top-down view, bullet hell shooting, pixel art, single-player, random equipment drops, enemies piled on top of each other—this is just a garbage Frankenstein's monster!"
Da Jiang's words seemed perfectly reasonable.
After all, those settings could not claim even a sliver of the current gaming market.
And a game that could not sell seemed destined to become a failed piece of garbage.
However, Gu Sheng did not see it that way.
He shook his head and said seriously:
"No game genre is garbage,"
"Whether it's shooting or racing, there have only ever been badly made games—never a genre doomed to flop,"
"It's just like League of Legends. There are only bad summoners, not useless champions..."
Before Gu Sheng could finish, Lu Bian raised a hand to interrupt him. "Some obscure Crystal Vanguard that can kill people with thirty-three Qs would like a word."
"Crystal Vanguard?"
Gu Sheng froze.
"What Crystal Vanguard? Is that a new champion?"
"Fuck!!!"
Lu Bian slapped his thigh.
"You have zero credibility! You even forgot Skarner!!!"
"Focus on the point, focus on the point,"
Gu Sheng said with an embarrassed smile.
"What I mean is, as long as we have a good idea, even a game genre that doesn't look commercially viable might be able to win through surprise."
"Ummmm..."
Lu Bian understood what Gu Sheng meant and smacked his lips.
"But even if that's true, what exactly are we supposed to use to win through surprise?"
"We start with random item acquisition," Gu Sheng said.
"Huh—?"
Lu Bian bared his teeth.
"To be honest, out of all those messy settings, this is the one I find the most ridiculous,"
"Think about it. I work my ass off to kill a boss, and it drops a lousy tree branch. Wouldn't that crush the player's enthusiasm?"
"But what if that lousy tree branch happened to be the item you needed most at that moment?"
Gu Sheng smiled faintly and said:
"Or maybe you've already farmed ninety-nine lousy tree branches, and you only need one more to craft a Holy Branch that grants you invincibility?"
Hiss—
Gu Sheng's words were like a spark that instantly lit the beacon in Lu Bian's mind.
"You mean... we can fully use the nature of randomness, letting equipment accumulate quantitatively until it creates a qualitative change?"
"Smart."
Gu Sheng snapped his fingers.
"Randomness is like a double-edged sword. You've only seen its bad side,"
"But in reality, it's precisely this randomness that fills a game with endless possibilities,"
"It can create a qualitative change through quantitative accumulation, or it can simply bring a straightforward unexpected reward,"
"Like you said, killing a boss might drop a little branch,"
"But on the other hand, killing a minor monster might also drop a divine artifact, right?"
Holy crap...
After hearing Gu Sheng's words,
Lu Bian suddenly felt enlightened!
That was right. Why couldn't they build the game around the thrill of randomness?
After all, this thing was just like buying lottery tickets!
Most people did not buy lottery tickets because they were certain they would win.
What made lottery tickets appealing was, to a large extent, their uncertainty!
It was the anticipation filled with endless possibilities before scratching off the coating!
So!
Games worked the same way!
In fact, in a game, they could hand players countless lottery tickets!
And among those countless tickets, as long as the player hit the jackpot once, they could enjoy the exhilarating pleasure of breezing through the stage and mowing down hordes of enemies!
And!
Once players truly experienced that pleasure, they might even become addicted to it and be unable to stop!
Even after failing a hundred times, they would still hold enormous hope that the next run would definitely clear the game!
At that thought, it was as if Lu Bian's Ren and Du meridians had been opened!
"Then we can also give equipment levels, making it stronger and stronger as it levels up!"
"And! Once it reaches the level cap, it can fuse with other max-level equipment to create an even higher-level Super Weapon!"
"Of course, a Super Weapon's abilities absolutely have to be ridiculously overpowered,"
"Like invincibility, brutal lifesteal, massive damage..."
As Lu Bian spoke, Da Jiang was struck by inspiration as well.
"We can also work on the visuals,"
"Starting out plain and ordinary, then gradually increasing the special effects,"
"Or we could simply create even more bullets than the enemies' bullet hell!"
"As the game progresses, the visuals become more and more dazzling, and the effects grow more and more numerous,"
"And for Super Weapons, we can just make them rainbow-colored! Fill the whole screen with effects flying everywhere!"
The more Lu Bian and Da Jiang talked, the more excited they became. They high-fived each other.
"Fuck! Just thinking about it feels awesome—!!!"
Meanwhile, Gu Sheng wore the gratified smile of an old father.
Then, a thought stirred in his mind.
A crisp chime rang in his head!
Ding! You have consumed 7,899 Emotion Points! Unlocked for you— "Vampire Survivors"
Before you continue