Along with Pitch Black, the music stopped at that moment, leaving behind a deathly silence.
It was as if the entire world had been paused.
Wearing headphones, Xin Xin could only hear the ringing in her ears and her pounding heartbeat, each thump lending a strange trace of life to the quiet darkness in the video.
Soon, the image resumed.
What came into view was a room faintly illuminated by moonlight, with a clock hanging on the wall.
At the same time, the ticking of the clock broke the silence of the night.
The camera slowly turned, revealing the room's layout in full. It was luxurious and tidy, clearly the home of someone wealthy.
As the clock continued ticking, the camera shifted toward a dim corridor.
The floor was littered with scattered building blocks, dolls, crayon drawings, light bulbs, and candles.
It seemed no one in the house had bothered to clean or maintain it.
At the end of the corridor was a barred window.
Outside, the moon shone bright amid sparse stars, and the night was hazy. Yet the lights were few and far between, with not a soul in sight.
It made the night feel even lonelier.
The view at the window slowly turned and rounded into the corridor on the right.
But what lay at the end of that corridor made Xin Xin's chest suddenly tighten.
It was a door—a plain yet old red door. Against the surrounding snow-white walls, it stood out glaringly.
She did not know what that door represented, but she could clearly feel that after it appeared, the moving camera in the trailer slowed down.
It became sluggish, cautious.
As though something existed behind that door, making even the trailer's camera proceed with utmost care.
Xin Xin swallowed, her throat bobbing as she gulped down a mouthful of saliva.
In the dim, deathly silent corridor, with the night and the ticking clock, an eerie atmosphere gradually spread, filling her with an inexplicable sense of dread.
Xin Xin did not know where that feeling came from. The trailer before her was clearly just a hallway and a red door. It did not seem like much, yet it gave her an overwhelmingly oppressive feeling.
She even pulled both legs up onto her chair and crouched there, because she had begun to feel that the space beneath her computer desk was unsafe.
Just as Xin Xin buried her face between her knees and watched the camera slowly approach the door through the slits of her eyes—
Suddenly! A deafening bang! A pair of dead fish eyes rolled upward appeared without warning, taking up more than half the screen!
Xin Xin screamed in terror.
Her movement was so violent that her chair could not withstand the shaking and toppled over.
The entire livestream heard the streamer hit the floor, followed by her sharp intake of breath and muffled groans of pain.
Without motion capture, her anime avatar froze completely and stopped moving.
The viewers and fans were stunned for a moment, then immediately burst into laughter at the livestream effect. Gifts flooded in as everyone expressed their satisfaction.
Those who made livestream highlight videos began preparing clips, intending to post that segment separately.
Xin Xin's popularity skyrocketed at that moment.
To the point that the ugly face in the trailer, missing its jaw and covered in bloody grime, was no longer scary.
The next day.
The Visage trailer, which had originally only gone viral on Danmu Network, swept across the entire internet in an instant.
Advertisements promoting it were everywhere.
Pause any video site at random, and a pop-up window would appear on the screen.
Editors from major websites also reposted it to their own sites without hesitation.
This free, manual promotion worked remarkably well, and both gamers and non-gamers soon knew about this game advertised as psychological horror.
On the Fourth Calamity Club, the video was even marked with a flame icon, signifying that it was one of the day's hottest posts.
Besides reposting the trailer, the post clearly announced the game's release date: one week later!
The players immediately expressed their anticipation and flooded the comments.
"This is the first game trailer in my life that I watched with my eyes covered, peeking through my fingers."
"The point is, this is a haunted game! Those trash games before only made monsters to save effort, and not even Dark Forest was an exception. This game actually dares to challenge the horror supernatural genre that no one has done before. I'm so excited!"
"Don't forget, there are two ghosts in the trailer! A little girl ghost and a suspected elderly Female Ghost. Can you handle that?"
"I'm looking forward to it too, but I'm afraid my heart can't take it. This is a VR Game! 21 Points already scared the hell out of me. If I play Visage, won't I just drop dead on the spot?"
"The atmosphere is so strong! The trailer alone made me jump. Who knows how scared people will get when they actually play it."
"I didn't dare watch it alone. I watched it with a livestream, but I was still scared."
"Dark Forest's position as the king of horror is hanging by a thread. Once Visage comes out, who can compete with it? Horror Games have failed to develop for more than a decade, but this year, three masterpieces appeared at once. And they were all made by the same person."
"There definitely have to be weapons for self-defense in a game like this, right? Otherwise, what the hell are we supposed to play?"
"Why is it called Visage? Does the name have some special meaning?"
"Only Game is seriously amazing. Every time it releases a trailer, it means the game will launch within a month. Unlike other companies that only keep people waiting."
"So this is the trailer that scared Xin Xin, the MOBA carry god, so badly she fell over? It really is incredible. Even I, a grown man, got scared several times."
Amid such online discussion, Visage had not even been released yet, but it had already been labeled "Best Horror Game," "Most Anticipated Horror Game," and more.
Only Game and its producer Shuo Guang also became representatives of high-quality Horror Games.
After all, with two phenomenal works already behind them and a new trailer terrifying enough to prove itself, more than eighty percent of players had no doubts about Visage's quality and eagerly showed their support.
Everyone had assumed that was all there was to it, and that they only needed to wait quietly for the game's release a week later.
To the players' utter surprise, however, another trailer was released just two days later.
This new trailer was about the same length as the first, running for more than four minutes, and it showed even more of the game's content!
If the first trailer let players know there were two ghosts, Lucy and Dolores, then the second let them know about Lacan, a Mask-wearing ghost, and a large group of faceless ghosts with no eyes or mouths, their bodies covered in wrinkles!
What was this?
Were they about to unleash the big guns on the players?
There were already so few supernatural horror games in the horror genre, and now that one had finally appeared, it actually had so many ghosts in it.
Were they afraid players would not be scared enough while playing?
So the developers had gone all out and stuffed so many ghosts into the game?
Moreover, the second trailer revealed more locations: a scene with a hundred hanging corpses, a doorway with a gigantic eyeball growing in front of it, crisscrossing stairways turned upside down, and life-sized mirrors arranged in a circle with shadowy figures inside them.
It sent the players' anticipation soaring to its peak!
Compared to the first trailer, the second showed more actual gameplay.
It revealed even more of Visage's true content to the players.
At the same time, though, players noticed that neither trailer seemed to show any scenes of fighting with weapons.
For almost the entire time, the protagonist was holding a Lighter, a camera, a compass, or a small bottle of yellow medicine.
In short, there was not a single weapon resembling a gun or kitchen knife in sight.
Ordinarily, if a game had combat, it would show at least some of it.
For example, Dark Forest's trailer had included combat scenes.
So why did the new game Visage not show any combat?
Was it deliberate, or—
The players immediately thought of a possibility, but quickly shook their heads and denied it.
After all, that seemed impossible.
In a VR horror game whose trailers were already this terrifying, if there were no combat—or if players could not fight at all—
It might really scare people to tears!
Thanks to Moon Hanging High in Night Sky for the 130 reward! Thanks to Can't Think of a Nickname for the 100 reward!
Thanks to Village Bridge Log for the monthly ticket! Thanks to Dimensional Star Dream for the monthly ticket! Thanks to Moon Hanging High in Night Sky for the monthly ticket!
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