The virtual empire starts from the game

Chapter 695: A Surge of Excellent Works! (Requesting Double Monthly Tickets!)

Qi Huahua was able to experience Lu Jinjin's delicacy and gentleness in "The Legend of Flying Clouds".

The story of "Flying Cloud Chronicles" created by Lu Jinjin is very simple.

The protagonist is a little girl from a village in Lingnan Road during the Tang Dynasty. She ran away from home in a huff after being scolded by her mother for not eating properly, and went to find her father who had gone hunting in the mountains.

But after entering the mountains, they got lost in the thick fog and stumbled into a beautiful yet dangerous magical land.

The main gameplay involves players traversing this magical land, encountering various fantastical creatures and incredible plants, and with their help, crossing this fantastical land to find their father.

Nanaka already knew this main storyline before entering the game.

—Lu Jinjin had already mentioned this during the publicity campaign.

But this does not affect Qi Hua Hua's gaming experience at all.

Because Lu Jinjin's designed scenery is so beautiful, and the talking animals are so cute!
There are also those brightly colored, interesting plants with different functions.

It truly made this journey of "running away from home and accidentally entering a strange land" wonderful and enjoyable.

Lu Jinjin's art style is different from that of Knight Walker and Sofia; it lacks a distinctive personal style that is immediately recognizable.

But after playing for a while, you can feel a wonderfully warm atmosphere from the many details.

And this atmosphere is reinforced time and again throughout the journey, making people unable to help but immerse themselves in it.

Just as Edison broke down in his electronic music, Qihuahua was being carried by a chubby little bear-tailed fox up a tall yew tree.

Lying with the little one on a soft white cloud nestled among the treetops, listening to the birdsong, watching the red beans among the treetops, the azure sky, and the slowly drifting white clouds, I felt incredibly content.

All the stress and worries drifted away with the gentle mountain breeze.

At this moment, Nanaka felt genuinely happy.
-
The brave sniper's experience in "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" is completely different from that of Qi Huahua.

He was extremely nervous!
"The Story of Tiangong City" and "The Tale of Flying Clouds" are two completely opposite extremes.

"Flying Cloud Chronicles" emphasizes simplicity, using as few elements as possible to create a wonderful and beautiful journey for players, allowing them to immerse themselves in the game without even realizing it.

"Tiangong City Affairs" relies entirely on a massive amount of content being continuously bombarded, leaving players no time to think too much and unconsciously mobilizing all their energy to think and act.

Yu Liyan's team had already spent a lot of time and effort on "Tiangong City Affairs" before the creative competition even started.

Most of them have pre-existing plots, missions, character designs, and settings.

Although converting it to a virtual game required major changes or even a complete overhaul, there were also many readily available tools, which saved them a lot of time.

They even had the capacity to develop content originally planned as DLC ahead of schedule and add it to the game.

This results in an extremely large game size for "Tiangong City"!

Role-playing, action combat, crafting and building, simulation management, survival farming, dungeon exploration, ancient crime investigation, official career advancement, folklore and supernatural tales, ancient romance...

There are so many elements it's overwhelming.

But what's most impressive is that this isn't just mindlessly piling on tasks like in an industrial can; it genuinely integrates all these elements naturally into different stages of the game for players.

If you don't like wandering around and exploring, then following the storyline will only allow you to experience about one-fifth of the content.

However, players who enjoy exploring and investigating details will find an almost endless stream of new gameplay and content in this ancient city of Handan!

Like the valiant sniper at this moment, he discovered that although the city didn't seem large, it contained so much that it overwhelmed him with its sheer volume—

One second they were helping the police catch the culprit, the next they discovered that the criminal had run into a brothel.

He was distracted for a moment and was grabbed by the madam of the brothel. Unable to refuse her hospitality, he ended up spending money and became involved in a love story between a scholar and a courtesan.

Halfway through the side quest, the scholar gets entangled in ghostly matters again.

Players can choose to help the scholar and the courtesan, report the brothel madam, help the female ghost clear her name, or even kill the scholar and substitute someone else to take the exam...

Finally, all these tasks and characters will also influence each other.

The various task lines and character relationship diagrams together form a complex web.

As the valiant sniper played, he felt his brain wasn't working properly, so he started opening his notes app and constantly recording various mission clues.

Of course, his situation is not the norm for players of "Tiangong City".

He was acting out his professional habit as a "strategy master," wanting to record as many clues as possible to deduce the most perfect ending.

However, many players attracted by Yu Liyan's advertisements don't pay much attention to the details.

The key to playing it is to do whatever you want.

Robbing caravans makes money.

Throwing money at the courtesan.

Upon seeing a villain, without hesitation, just hack him to death in the street...

As for the courtesan and scholar storyline that baffled even the bravest snipers, many people never triggered it at all.

They watched the girl play the piano and dance with great interest, completely disregarding whether she was a scholar or not.

Some people even said directly, "What's so good about being a scholar? Come work for me."

After saying that, he went to find the madam without any regard for anything else, forcibly redeemed her, and took her home.

Just do whatever makes you happy.

What delighted them was that the world actually responded to their outrageous behavior!
This shows that Yu Liyan's team really considered the players' reckless behavior and had set up feedback mechanisms for these behaviors in advance!
In the hearts of these people, "The Story of Tiangong City" has already vaguely acquired a special nickname—

"Ancient Version of the Sprawling Metropolis!"
This is extremely high praise, representing players' high recognition and expectation of the potential of "Tiangong City".
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The Illusion Moon is much simpler.

He is wreaking havoc in hell.

Or be slaughtered.

The development team of "Hell Ballet" has firmly grasped the core selling point of their game—

The boss is incredibly colorful, and the battles are quite challenging, but once you get the hang of them, they can be incredibly fun.

Players' gaming experience often involves first mowing down small monsters, then encountering a boss and being brutally killed by it.

After practicing repeatedly, she successfully defeated the boss and added him to her harem.

—The player's role is also that of a demon.

To reduce the frustration of players being repeatedly defeated by bosses, the development team adopted two methods—

First: Design a large number of sexy finishing moves for the boss.

When players are defeated by a boss, they should think, "It was worth dying for," rather than, "Damn it, I died again."

Many players, while experiencing the nosebleed-inducing "execution," were also curious about just how many ways the BOSS could execute them.

I will not defeat the boss until I have experienced all the "execution" methods.

Even if the boss only has one hit point left to fight, you must stop attacking immediately and stand at attention to take the hits.

Only when the execution animation started repeating did I decisively take down the boss—after dying repeatedly, I had become quite familiar with the boss's combat patterns.

After defeating the boss, the second measure is:
You can choose to "execute" or "enslave" the boss.

"Execution" goes without saying; just kill them and you'll get an extra experience point.

If you choose "enslave", you can put the boss, who has shed his demonic body and only has a few demonic characteristics left, into your territory to manage your castle and act as your butler and maid.

This design not only greatly reduces players' frustration but also significantly enhances their sense of accomplishment.

It's so addictive that every player is completely hooked!
-
Kabo's entry in XCOM Squad isn't exactly a groundbreaking game. It's a very traditional and classic shooting game.

The main storyline is simple: someone witnessed a UFO incident, followed by a series of disappearances of residents and deaths of livestock in the area.

Players take on the role of a special forces member, traveling with their squad to investigate the sighting location.

What follows is a tense and exciting "Special Forces Superman vs. Biochemical Aliens" drama.

Players fight their way through, collecting clues and upgrading weapons along the way, until they have annihilated all the aliens.

Simple and crude.

However, the pace is fast, and the NPC teammates cooperate reliably, making the game very enjoyable!
Especially after upgrading alien weapons and accessories, the firearms' power is greatly increased, making them ridiculously fierce in combat.

Various methods include penetrating cover, shattering shields, and destroying aliens.

The players thoroughly enjoyed the game and left many positive reviews.

……

……

The numerous highly praised games prove that the "Genesis Engine" is a powerful tool in the hands of an experienced and mature team!
Even small, inexperienced teams can often maintain a decent minimum standard.

For individual developers, however, uncertainty prevails.

Because the works of individual developers are often filled with a strong personal style.

But "personal style" is not always a good thing.

Whether it's good or bad depends entirely on the developer's personal aesthetic sense and ability.

Of course, this doesn't mean that individual developers don't create good works.

In fact, quite the opposite.

In absolute terms, there are actually quite a lot of highly acclaimed individual works!

Little Pepper has finally found the female-oriented romance game she's been dreaming of.

While she skillfully navigated relationships with a handsome second-generation rich kid from an old-money family, a top male college student from a prestigious university, a top male idol in the entertainment industry, and a melancholic pianist uncle, she excitedly shared this thrilling news with all her sisters and enthusiasts.

"Sisters, the good days have finally arrived!"

"We really can't rely on virtual otome games to build our dreams; we sisters have to do it ourselves!!!"

But there's actually a misunderstanding here.

The developer of this game is a man who lives in Jincheng.

Of course, she also has her own boyfriend, so calling her "sister" isn't wrong either.

……

Since there are games that are geared towards women and offer fan service, there will naturally be similar games geared towards men.

And only a little more.

The situation has also become more complex—

A modern-day scumbag simulator, an ancient-themed story of being a prince in the Song Dynasty, a disaster-themed desert island harem diary, and a cultivation-themed story where a Daoist partner helps me achieve immortality...

That was incredibly diverse and colorful.

Moreover, this aspect further highlights the powerful influence of "personal aesthetics" on individual works—

Once players have played the game for a while, they will quickly understand the developer's fetishes.

This isn't a question of whether it can be hidden or not.

Many developers never intended to hide it in the first place!

Even their act of making the game itself wasn't for the purpose of winning a prize or making money in this creative competition.

Their sole purpose is to use this opportunity to satisfy their sexual fetishes!

For these developers, the biggest regret is not the game's completeness, or how others evaluate it.

Rather, even the Genesis Engine cannot make them strip naked and truly satisfy their desires in every way, achieving a sublimation of spirit and flesh!

……

Of course, in addition to these highly acclaimed XP-oriented games, there are also many high-quality games developed by individuals that are suitable for all ages and are intended for normal audiences.

They often have a great idea, and they are also very self-aware in controlling the scale of the project, focusing their talents and energy on what they do best and what they are most distinctive in.

Ultimately, the game was successfully presented as a unique creation with novel gameplay and no obvious weaknesses.

For example, a game called "Kaleidoscope" that revolves around "optical illusion".

In this game, players will find themselves inside a kaleidoscope-like building and need to discover and create new passages and connections by changing their viewing position and angle.

You can also use props such as mirrors, flashlights, vertical walking boots, etc., to create more dazzling visual spectacles in this spatially displaced building.

Another example is a game called "Alchemy Garden".

This game was developed by a genetics master's degree holder, and its core gameplay revolves around "plant hybridization".

Players need to study the characteristics of various magical plants, distinguish which are dominant traits and which are hidden traits, and what effects these traits will have when used to make potions.

Then, we tried to hybridize and optimize it to create better new varieties.

It may sound a bit dry, but the developer has packaged this gameplay well and added a lot of believable details, successfully creating a unique magical world.

Players can truly feel their own progress while playing this game, as if they have really grown from an "alchemy apprentice" to a true "alchemy master"!
—But in reality, it was just a little bit of recalling the genetics knowledge I learned in my high school biology textbook.

Just as players feel they've "become more powerful," the plot gradually deepens, drawing them into the conspiracy surrounding the Earl's death.

Players must use their botanical knowledge and alchemy skills to resolve the crisis...

The gameplay, world-building, and pacing of the story are all handled perfectly.

The only regret is that it's not big enough.

Even if players take their time, they can complete the main story in two days. After that, they can only manage their greenhouses and shops while waiting for future updates.

Of course, this does not affect the fact that everyone gives it extremely high praise.

……

……

As time went on, player reviews gradually emerged.

The landscape of the sea of ​​creativity is beginning to change dramatically.

Some world bubbles grow larger and rise, some shrink and sink, and some are even more unlucky and shatter directly.

Of course, there are also some rather unusual situations—

Some world bubbles expand rapidly while sinking at an extremely fast pace!
This means that a large number of players are coming to play this game, but the reviews are terrible. However, these extremely negative reviews do not stop even more players from coming to try it out...

This unusual situation quickly attracted the attention of more players, who then flocked to that location.

Even Edison, the electronic music enthusiast, was curious and drifted towards the world of "Overcoming Difficulties with Boss Dream!"

(End of this chapter)