Contact the motion capture studio and produce all kinds of assets.
Meanwhile, Chen Xu led the entire team in developing Outlast.
The game's budget was not low, but it was not as high as one might have imagined.
After finishing the budget report, the total development cost, including subsequent promotional expenses, was tentatively set at six million.
Of course, it might increase somewhat later, but it would not exceed eight million.
For a horror game, that figure was quite substantial within the genre.
Everyone on the team was thrilled by this.
After all, this was their first major project.
Time passed day by day.
Art, animations, and all kinds of resources were steadily produced.
The game's plot dialogue had also been completed and would later receive a second round of voice recording.
The protagonist's various movements in the game were likewise going through repeated trial and error.
"Even I'm starting to get creeped out. Just how scary will the finished product be?"
Inside the office, Ruan Ningxue sat before her computer, looking at the concept art on the secondary monitor beside her, still shaken.
These concept designs mainly depicted scenes: the Psychiatric Hospital building in darkness, areas filled with blood and corpses, mental patients hiding beneath hospital beds in dark rooms, and footage filmed through a DV camera's night vision mode.
These concept art pieces perfectly conveyed Outlast's eerie atmosphere. Forget playing it—even looking at them sent chills down one's spine.
Ever since Outlast entered development, she had been going to bed rather late at night.
Why?
Because she was scared!
She had no idea what had possessed her that day. She had actually taken the DV camera Chen Xu gave her and tried it out at night. The utterly hellish atmosphere immediately left her feeling awful.
After all, imagining things and then scaring oneself was the most terrifying thing of all.
Of course, that was precisely why the concept art she designed according to Chen Xu's requirements had turned out so evocative.
"Yeah! And in the game, players can't fight back—they can only run." Hearing Ruan Ningxue's words, Yang Xin sighed as well.
Chen Xu, who was working on an animation design, smiled. "Isn't that exciting? Besides, if there are guns, it'll easily turn into an FPS game. After all, fear comes from insufficient firepower."
Why did ordinary horror games include firearms?
On one hand, it was to enrich the game's content. On the other, it gave players a suitable outlet for release.
This approach was actually quite fitting. Resident Evil from his previous life had adopted this model.
But it also had a major flaw: it was easy for a horror game to become an FPS game.
After all, fear came from insufficient firepower. As long as players had enough firepower, they could suppress that fear.
Even Resident Evil from his previous life had gradually gone astray in this regard.
After the fourth game, it increasingly leaned toward nonstop shooting, until the remakes returned to the path of fear and Resident Evil Village handled the overall pacing to near perfection.
Of course, for most players, what they cared about was not how scary the game was or how good its pacing might be.
All their attention was captured by Lady Dimitrescu and her three daughters.
"But CEO Chen, when are we going to start building hype for Outlast? I've seen a lot of players online asking about the new game," Yang Xin said.
Unlike before, when there had only been the three of them in the R&D department, now that new employees had joined the company, they properly addressed Chen Xu instead of simply calling one another by name.
"Yeah, development seems to be progressing quickly. It should probably launch around December," Ruan Ningxue said.
Outlast was not a particularly large game. Most of the workload was concentrated on animations and art asset production.
Its gameplay model was incredibly quick to develop, with almost nothing requiring trial and error.
Development had been smooth sailing all the way.
"There's no rush to spend money on promotion and hype. We'll start around the middle to latter half of November."
"A lot of people follow my Official Blog now. Besides, have you forgotten what tomorrow is?"
Chen Xu smiled.
What day was it?
Yang Xin and Ruan Ningxue froze for a moment, then looked toward the bottom-right corner of the computer screen.
October 30?
"Halloween! I recorded the promotional teaser materials in advance. I was specifically waiting to release them on that holiday."
"After all, players have been waiting for a month. Releasing news of our new game on that holiday is pretty down-to-earth, isn't it?"
Chen Xu smiled at Yang Xin and Ruan Ningxue as he opened a short video saved on his desktop.
The video was not long—only ten seconds in total.
At first, the screen was completely dark. Then an image appeared, but it was not a normal image.
It was a DV camera's night vision mode. A battery indicator could be seen in the upper-right corner, while a red dot flashed continuously in the upper-left, showing that the DV camera was recording.
The DV footage showed Chen Xu's office.
A chair lay overturned on the floor, while the documents on the desk had been deliberately scattered.
The entire video was utterly silent.
Combined with the DV night vision footage, it felt incomparably eerie and unsettling.
At the ninth second, the DV footage suddenly shook, as though the person filming had been attacked. Yet strangely, there was still not the slightest sound. Then the video ended and the screen went dark.
The office fell silent. Yang Xin and Ruan Ningxue stared at Chen Xu for a long time without saying a word.
"CEO Chen, I think keeping things down-to-earth doesn't mean taking them straight into the underworld." After holding it in for a while, Ruan Ningxue slowly looked at Chen Xu and spoke.
This teaser clearly told players that their next game would be a horror game.
But the key is, could this really be considered down-to-earth promotion?
This had probably already gone straight into the underworld.
Releasing it on Halloween, and at midnight no less, with a DV recording specifically filmed like this.
You really were something else, CEO Chen!
Yang Xin could not help saying what she had been thinking as well. "And CEO Chen, didn't you say you were a Warrior of Love? Outlast has nothing whatsoever to do with love, and couldn't we make the teaser a little less hellish?"
"How does it have nothing to do with love? Haven't horror game fans been saying for years that there are no good horror games? Why am I developing Outlast? It's my love for those players! Doesn't that make me a Warrior of Love?"
"As for something less hellish, don't you think this promotion fits Outlast's theme perfectly? Besides, it'll draw far more attention than a normal announcement. We have to seize this wave of hype!" Chen Xu said with a completely serious expression.
Before you continue