Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 1277: Chapter 1153: A makeshift team, or a professional assassination squad?_1 Chapter 1277: Chapter 1153: A makeshift team, or a professional assassination squad?_1 The trial play of “Homeward Journey” actually opens up five areas —

[Mushroom Forest], [Underground Stone Forest], [Miner Town], [Surface Station] and [Huang Liang Town].

[Mushroom Forest] and [Underground Stone Forest] are connected and can be considered one area.

The main content is “jump jump joy” — platforming and parkour.

[Miner Town], the theme is exploration and puzzle-solving.

[Surface Station], more “Jump Jump Joy”.

[Huang Liang Town], again is exploration and puzzle-solving.

The difficulty level spirals upward.

Even the upcoming unlocked areas are also arranged this way — with some mix-ups, but focus remains clear.

However, the increase in difficulty for cooperative puzzles is incremental, for Jump Jump Joy, the difficulty level rises exponentially!

And Cheryl has incorporated this increasing difficulty into the five rounds of the game she has designed!

And it is only the difficulty of the main storyline being taken into account.

The difficulty of achievements and items at special locations, “Jump Jump Joy” could easily turn into “Jump, Jump and Cry”, rocketing difficulty!

The trial demo, however, was too short to have all these show up.

Source: AllNovelFull.com, updated on Ɲ0νǤο.сο

The trial part only comprises 20% of the main line of the game, and even less when it comes to all the content that can be explored in the game, barely 10%.

The increase in difficulty is still not obvious.

And this leads to the misunderstanding of the media and players.

Cheryl’s aim is: an easy and joyful experience for early-mid stage players while requiring more effort and attempts for mid-late stage players as they trade their sweat for the joy of completion.

Of course, there are internal trials and the total difficulty is still under control.

If the players find it too difficult, they can also switch to easy mode, exploring alone or together with a partner.

Since they can climb, they are more resistant to falls and can take easier routes.

In essence, finishing the game won’t be a problem.

But mid-late stage players who want to take shortcuts, leave the main line, or pursue particular decorations or tools, or even aim for a complete collection…

Good luck with that!

Come, try to reach the limit of “Homeward Journey”.

Cheryl, while watching the optimistic discussions of players and the media, was slyly laughing to herself, looking forward to the wonderful scenes after the release of the game.

*

That very evening,

“Fried Rice Immortal” Stanley had been busy all day and didn’t have time to log into the virtual world and try out the new game “Homeward Journey” until the evening.

Underground jumping was easy for him.

The puzzles and exploration in the town weren’t a problem, as he randomly got an extremely intelligent border shepherd.

He easily found the old abandoned escape tunnel leading to the surface.

The “Jump Jump Joy” at the Surface Station did take some time though.

According to Stanley’s experience, the difficulty raised from “kindergarten level” to “primary school level”.

Two and a half hours later, he arrived at the deserted Huang Liang Town.

Upon arriving in a new place, Stanley’s first response was to climb and see around.

Therefore, he took his dog and climbed the severely rusted Ferris wheel.

Just this action took him over an hour.

When Lincoln was dragged here by the Little Princess, they had solved the puzzle, restarted the Ferris Wheel, and then rode a cabin to the top.

But Stanley didn’t think about that and simply climbed up, the difficulty was naturally higher.

However, he managed to get the dog tag in the center of the Ferris Wheel.

Of course, that’s not the point.

The real point is: when Stanley climbed to the highest point and looked far at the city, he was hit by a subtle sense of familiarity.

He thought he had seen silhouettes of those buildings somewhere.

Where had he seen them?

He squatted on top of the Ferris wheel, deep in thought, and finally came up with an uncertain answer —

“It seems …

it’s a little like a space-time fragment where I smuggled into?”

“The fragment from Chang’an Heavy Industries?”

It wasn’t surprising that he couldn’t remember clearly, the difficulty of entering the fragment was too high, and with the launch of the new game, he had set it aside for a while now.

But as he speculated more about it, time passed in the game world, the sun went down, and the night grew darker.

Looking at the rising mist and blinking neon lights in the distant steel jungle, he suddenly felt that the two places were very alike.

“If it is indeed the same place, wouldn’t this mean that these game worlds are all interconnected?”

A desire rose in his heart –

To go and check it out.

Although the main storyline of “Homeward Journey” is to climb to the heavenly pet park, it’s not about venturing into a distant strange city.

However, Stanley figured in a typical Cloud Dream’s style, as long as the city appears somewhere in the game, players should be able to enter it if they can get close.

The only problem is: the next stop from Huang Liang Town is to find a way to climb upwards.

How is he going to the distant city then?

The vehicle he had taken during his journey clearly wouldn’t work.

The vehicle had a fixed track and could only shuttle back and forth between the town and the station automatically.

At the station, they had only started the car and didn’t get the right to control it, let alone change its destination.

Stanley, with his dog, roamed around the town looking for usable transportation.

However, after much searching, he only found a push scooter, which was evidently not designed for a kitty…

To walk there on foot?

Who knows how long that would take!

Stanley pondered for a while, deciding to switch games and cross the space-time fragment once again to take a photo over there.

He would then put it alongside the photo from this side, and share his suspicion with the netizens.

He still had work to do; he couldn’t possibly do something outrageous like walking for days and nights in a virtual world.

But there were many talented people online, who definitely had the time and energy to do that.

At worst, wouldn’t there always be video uploaders to fall back on?

Those people, for the sake of video material, are capable of doing anything!

*

The next day, the hype around “Homeward Journey” was still rising.

For one thing, countless players had tried the game, and after completing the exploration of Huang Liang Town found no new areas were open.

Now, they were eagerly hoping for the game to go online.

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On the other hand, many topics had arisen around “Homeward Journey”, with a raft of hot news coming out dramatically, keeping the players always buzzing with something new.

Stanley’s discovery also caused a minor sensation.

Some players, who had completed the entire collection of the “Homeward Journey Demo”, embarked on a journey to verify his speculation.

Matching this heat was the continuously rising presale sales of “Homeward Journey”.

A teacup dog jumped onto the conference table in the virtual office, holding a huge sign, and barked out the number on the sign –

“35 million!”

Passing colleagues clapped and crowded forward, taking the opportunity to scratch Cheryl’s dog’s head.

Only Jason, the team lead of the “A Quiet Place” development team didn’t join in the revelry.

After politely applauding, he quickly returned to his team’s office.

He clapped his hands forcefully to draw everyone’s attention, then loudly announced:

“The presale sales of ‘Homeward Journey’ have exceeded 35 million!

We have to act now!”

The people in the office were instantly on edge.

Their development team was much larger and had much more resources than Cheryl’s amateur group.

But looking at the momentum of “Homeward Journey”, it seemed poised to surpass them!

Although technically speaking, Cheryl’s team at Cloud Dream was an amateur one – since it was hastily assembled from other development teams, it would still be considered top-tier outside.

But Cheryl was making a game for the first time, and her team size was much smaller than theirs, probably less than 50 people in total!

If they get steamrolled, it would be a major loss of face!

So Jason announced, “The ‘A Quiet Place’ development team live streaming carnival is rescheduled to tomorrow!

Everyone prepare yourselves!”

In the virtual office, one by one, expectant gazes turned towards the unlucky ones who had “won” the electronic draw.

Though the unlucky winners weren’t feeling chirpy at all, under the gaze of their colleagues, they could only put on a brave face and smile…