Although it had happened many years ago, some things remained vivid in Pan Long's memory.
For example, there was a mobile tower-defense game that had been delayed for years and buried under bad reviews, only to soar after its official launch, winning both acclaim and revenue.
The game had lived on his phone for years. Even after its servers shut down, players made private servers where everyone could gather and have fun.
Many years later, phones had been replaced by new tools for communication and entertainment, and even computers had become history. Yet people still mentioned that game when looking back on the history of domestic games.
Pan Long no longer remembered many of its finer details, but plenty of its characters and storylines remained crystal clear to him.
For instance, he recognized this hulking man with the black mask and the horn on his forehead.
A fire-brigade captain and the ultimate utility operator. He cost little to deploy, could block plenty of enemies, and had high defense and health. Though he was a low-rarity character, he was perfect for plugging a gap when needed and buying five or six crucial seconds.
Aside from the hard limit of "our side isn't strong enough," the difficulty in tower-defense games often lay in moving troops around fast enough. Fail at that, and an enemy would slip through into your base.
And this big fellow, who called himself "I" in his rustic dialect, was just the one to hold the line at a critical moment, giving the player a chance to catch his breath and deploy reinforcements.
As for the man himself... being knocked out of a fight would not actually kill him, so what was there to worry about?
What was that game called again? Next Year's Ark, I think?
Pan Long