Game Making: Start By Healing the Player

In the blink of an eye, mid November came around, ‘Outlast’ was currently 70% complete.

The remaining 30% consisted mainly of voice acting, cutscene production and polishing up the finer details.

For Chen Xu, the most significant gain from this entire experience was actually a deeper understanding of the game engine editor.

At the same time, with his current designer qualifications, the resource quota provided by the government platform was completely sufficient for a game like ‘Outlast’. Since there was no need for complex systems such as combat and character customization to be involved.

Besides game development, Nebula Games also silently launched their own gaming platform, with Chen Xu giving it a quick shoutout on his socials.

But this didn’t cause too much of a stir.

No industry giants paid heed to it, and the media wasn’t as interested in it as they were about the upcoming horror game. This piece of info was simply tucked away in the sub-columns and smaller segments of a few smaller gaming news outlets.

In fact, most players wouldn’t even notice it if they weren’t specifically looking for it.

On the Nebula Games platform, there were only 2 entries, ‘To the Moon’ and ‘Undertale’. And the two had a combined sales of 172 copies, with the cumulative playtime of all purchases being only around 50 hours.

Obviously, the people who bothered to make a purchase on this platform were fans who wanted to show their support for Chen Xu by buying an extra copy. The two games had already been out for a while on numerous other, larger gaming platforms.

So Chen Xu was not discouraged, after all, the user base of a gaming platform is not built overnight. It is something to be earned with good service and attractive features, all of which he had plans for.

Time passed swiftly and soon it was early December.

The development of ‘Outlast’ had come to an end. And the marketing for the game had begun.

An update was soon posted on Chen Xu’s socials and official developer blog. Just a simple paragraph and a poster for the game.

[ Only by outlasting, can one save themselves from Hell ]

[ December 15th, Outlast begins ]

The poster depicted a hospital room in disrepair. Rusty, stained medical equipment was scattered all over, and dark stains covered the walls and hospital bed.

On the wall was the title of the game written in a dark, viscous fluid: Outlast.

The scene was viewed through what seemed to be the night-vision mode of a video camera, making everything reminiscent of bloodstains and amplifying the dreadful imagery.

Under the hospital bed, was a person with a gaunt and frightened face, hiding there with his index finger placed on his lips, as if signaling the viewer to stay quiet.

Following this upload, numerous major media outlets began their report on the news, contacting Nebula Games in hopes of arranging an interview before the launch.

‘Outlast’ also appeared on the large official platform in pre-order mode.

The price was 65 yuan, an extremely good price when compared to many other games. After all, it wasn’t a large game with a huge amount of content.

At the same time, the lulling discussions about ‘Outlast’ were stirred up once more in various forums and gaming communities.

Some of which was paid marketing, as Chen Xu’s current renown was still insufficient to cause too much of a buzz, with only two famous titles to his name.

…………

December 15th came and went, ‘Outlast’ was finally launched.

In the gaming section of Shark TV, there was a channel named “Old Boy Commentary”

“Brother Lemon had to make a trip to the hospital today, he hasn’t had a physical examination in a while. He’ll probably be back later, but I’m not sure when exactly, you know how slow hospital trips can be.”

“Thank you for the subscription, and stop hyping up horror games man. Let me tell you, I’ve played so many of these garbage games man, I’m numb. Horror games are completely stress free for me now, playing them is like breathing, they’re really nothing special.”

“Ya’ll just want me to play a horror game cause you think I’ll freak out and then you get to farm clips of me. But there’s something in the way of that plan. I am a wall, physically and emotionally. I’m not gonna crack.”

“Alright let’s do this, I did this before and I’ll do it again. Everyone knows I eat these shitty horror games for breakfast dude. And if it gets boring, we’ll just play something else until brother lemon comes back.”

“Ok ok ok, turning on the camera now. Don’t be disappointed when I get all stone faced, kay?”

“I am a very calm and reasonable person, I’m cool. Mods please timeout anyone that keeps spamming that emote, you know the one. I’m a chill person, unshakable mental fortitude. Horror games? Easy work, easy as breathing.”

Sun Yixie, who was the streamer in question, stared into the camera with an exaggerated deadpan look. The chatroom responded by spamming walls of cheeky emotes.

He repeatedly assured the chat that he was above being scared of shitty little horror games, and he wasn’t completely wrong in this aspect.

After all, making fun of bad horror games with his partner was how they built their channel, it was their main content so they were undoubtedly experienced with the overused tropes in the genre.

So much so that they even had compilation videos of them predicting when jump-scares would occur accurately.

After having some technical difficulties with the official gaming platform, Sun Yixie ignored the chat spamming [ Big brother can’t even open the game by himself ] he finally hit the play button in peace.

A brief fry of static flashed, then the game interface appeared.

The entire screen was tinged in a gloomy shade of greenish blue, the color tone reminiscent of those used in horror and thriller movies from the late 90’s and early 00’s.

There seemed to be a hospital room in the background, but it was sparsely lit. Thick, ominous clouds swirled and obscured the visibility of the background, while eerie music played.

“Ok that made me feel stuff, but only a lil bit, a lil tiny bit. But still, as I’ve said before, playing horror games is like breathing to me, let’s go.” Sun Yixie exclaimed as he read the chat, still feeling quite confident.

“Difficulty selection. Let’s go with normal for now, I think it’s best for the first run through.”

The screen faded into darkness, and a male voice began to narrate as white text filled the screen in accordance with the narration, giving the player a brief introduction of the setting.

“My name is Miles Upshur, an investigative journalist.

I received a tip from an anonymous source, containing disturbing implications regarding a long-abandoned medical institute deep in the heart of Colorado — Mt. Massive Asylum.”

So far, Sun Yixie had zero psychological fluctuations about this. He appeared as calm as he had before.

Most horror games and movies were like this, it was going as expected.

After the narration ended, the screen began to clear up, showing a first-person POV of the protagonist driving a car.

However… There was something about the presentation that was unsettling. The atmosphere was oozing with an unpleasant feeling that prickled the skin, the darkness beyond the car lights was suffocating, and the howling winds that could be mistaken for wolves did not help lighten the mood.

Sun Yixie felt his heartbeat speed up just a tad.

I return from crabby hell. I make zero promises. I apologize. I am shame.

• Crab man

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