Monster Design Revealed

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Today, in the trending topics section, a post marked with a flame icon was pinned high, catching the attention of countless netizens.

[Repost][Domestic Horror Game "Dark Forest" Monster Designs Revealed—Caution! Those with weak stomachs, proceed with care!]

Netizens saw the title and their curiosity immediately piqued.

What is Dark Forest?

A horror game!

In this day and age, when touching the horror genre is practically a death sentence for any game, anyone brave enough to make one earns the title of "iron-headed kid."

And the second half of the title says, "Those with weak stomachs, proceed with care"?

Hah.

Who do they think they're looking down on?

Do they think netizens haven't seen it all?

Who here doesn't have years of gaming experience?

Battlefields, outer space—what place haven't players been? What opponents haven't they faced?

And they're supposed to be scared of some unknown horror game?

Unless their enemy designs can really pull something out of thin air?

So, a horror game with an intriguingly stubborn attitude, paired with a title dripping with provocation, instantly made netizens who hadn't played the demo click without hesitation, just wanting to see what kind of monster designs were in store.

But the very first image left netizens completely stumped.

It was a tree—more precisely, the trunk of a towering giant tree, and the poster had even labeled it.

Called the "Human Skin Great Tree."

From the close-up in the image, it wasn't hard to imagine just how massive this tree really was.

The picture was bleak and colorless.

No lush green leaves, no blue sky or clouds.

The entire image seemed drained of color, filled with a hopeless gray.

What truly unsettled netizens was that the giant tree's bark, true to its name, was made up of hundreds of human bodies!

Men and women, old and young, completely naked, as if enduring immense agony.

Their skin had become the tree's bark, their bodies fully fused into the wood. Their exposed faces had hollow eyes, and their slightly open mouths seemed to be wailing endlessly.

It wasn't so much that human bodies formed the tree, but rather that the tree had grown human-shaped cysts.

Anyone with eyes could see—this tree was devouring people! Digesting flesh and blood!

Because further up the trunk, those bodies were gone, leaving only skin-and-bone heads, like tumors, clinging to the bark's surface.

Though netizens all had years of gaming experience, they'd mostly faced humanoid AI opponents, or at worst, common monsters like dogs or lions—nothing repulsive.

When had they ever seen something this bizarre?

Just looking at it made their scalps crawl, and they flooded the comments below the image.

"Fuck, the demo already gave me hyperthyroidism from fear, and now you're telling me the full game has this kind of nightmare fuel? I'm out!"

"The moment I saw this, I knew this game was here to test my mental fortitude."

"Visuals are a 10/10! Is this a boss? This thing looks like a boss, my god, what weapon are we supposed to use against this monster? A table leg?"

"Seeing this image, as someone who played the demo, I can't even imagine how terrifying the full game will be."

"The devs are heartless! How did they come up with a monster design like this??? Why make a game that scares players like this??? Isn't it better to just pick up trash and go pew pew?"

But netizens knew this was just one monster design—there were more below.

So they looked at the second image, and immediately lost it.

Name: Snail Person.

The second image showed a fleshy, slime-covered soft-bodied creature.

It was clearly a close-up of a head.

But inside that head, you could clearly see the teeth and nasal bones, stripped of flesh, wrapped in soft meat. Layer upon layer of wrinkles hung like loose, aged skin—hard to look at.

A wave of nausea instantly hit the netizens.

In the image, viscous fluid stretched sticky strands between the skin and the skull.

Its distinctive translucent antennae drooped slightly, but the tips bore human pupils, staring dead at the netizens on the other side of the screen, sending chills down their spines.

"Is this a boss too? So disgusting! Seeing those two eye stalks, I just want to reach out and pop them!"

"Did a snail swallow this person? Or did the person turn into a snail?"

"Upstairs, looks like the human skin turned into that snail flesh, so it seems like the snail swallowed the person."

"Too disturbing, I only glanced once and couldn't look again, but that won't stop me from blowing it up in the game!"

"This forest is seriously terrifying. The crawling monster in the Demo already scared me, and the full version has even more weirdly shaped things like this."

After being tempered by the first two concept designs, the netizens' mental endurance had improved a bit, but when they saw the third image, they couldn't hold up again.

Name: Pretty Madam.

This was a naked, obese woman lying in bed, her body enormous.

Her limbs were terrifyingly long, her fingers sharp as claws, extremely abnormal.

Her torso and head were grotesquely swollen, like water balloons filled to bursting, puffy and bloated.

She was filthy all over, her breasts sagging, with nothing about her that could stir the imagination.

She stared blankly upward, her eyes dull and lifeless, devoid of any hope.

Her long, disheveled hair was already like withered grass, matted into clumps, its luster gone.

Because the depiction was vivid and struck the senses hard, netizens flooded in with complaints.

"Redefining the word 'pretty.'"

"Alright, aside from the player-controlled protagonist, is there a single normal person in this game?"

"Don't call it Dark Forest anymore. Rename it Monster Forest."

"These monster designs are great with a meal! I can eat two bowls of rice now!"

"Can't take it. Seeing this monster is like looking at my girlfriend."

"After seeing these pictures, I suddenly have high expectations for this game! Hope the full version keeps the same quality as the Demo! Don't screw it up!"

Beyond these three, there were several more bizarre and peculiar concept designs below.

There was a Wild Man with tree sprouts growing from his head.

There was a Head-splitting Monster, its head and torso split in two, connected only by the lower half of its abdomen.

There was a Mushroom Man, his entire body composed of clusters of mushrooms.

And there were translucent Vengeful Spirits, along with a Banshee whose disheveled hair merged with a crow.

These monster designs were incredibly unique and novel, truly giving netizens a different kind of visual horror, sparking a new wave of intense discussion about Dark Forest. Those who hadn't played the demo rushed to download it, wanting to experience the terror firsthand.

Meanwhile, the Danmu Network was just as lively.

Since these monster designs debuted on the Danmu Network, the Fourth Calamity Club was merely reposting them.

Under Meng Shu's own account feed, the number of people eagerly awaiting the game's release kept growing.

The actual demo showed them a rough idea of the game, the trial version let them experience its horror and oppression, and now the announcement of these unprecedented monster designs in the gaming industry had directly ignited the player base. They clamored for the developer, Shuo Guang, to speed up development—they couldn't wait!

Some unscrupulous browser game and mobile game developers, seeing this trend, didn't hesitate to steal video footage from Dark Forest and use it in their own game ads.

At this moment, Meng Shu had already sent the game for review. Barring any surprises, the results should come back in about a week, since this world was different from his original one and didn't deliberately suppress such works.

So now, he was in his room developing the second chapter.

He had no idea that the release of the monster designs had sparked a second wave of heated discussion online.