Game Development: Starting by Healing the Players
Chapter 48: Horror Games Are as Easy as Breathing to Me
By the middle of November, about seventy percent of the content for Outlast had essentially been completed.
The remaining thirty percent mainly consisted of voice recording, corresponding environment construction, and the various performance sequences.
For Chen Xu, the biggest benefit of developing Outlast was that it gave him a much deeper understanding of how to use the editor.
At the same time, with his current 2048M resource allocation, his monthly quota was more than enough to handle all of Outlast's game content.
Aside from game development, the Nebula Games platform had also quietly gone online during this period.
Chen Xu promoted it on his official blog.
But it didn't cause much of a stir.
There was no industry giant taking notice, no media outlets rushing to report on it—none of that happened.
At most, a few media outlets that genuinely had nothing else to report tucked the news away in one of their minor sections.
Unless someone deliberately went looking for it, they probably wouldn't even notice.
The only games currently available on the platform were To the Moon and Undertale.
As for sales, the two games had sold a combined total of 172 copies.
Their total playtime, however, amounted to less than fifty hours.
Clearly, most of the buyers were Chen Xu's fans. They had simply purchased another copy on his platform as a way of supporting the designer and game company they liked.
Chen Xu wasn't discouraged by this at all. After all, building a platform was not something that could be accomplished overnight.
Days passed one after another, and December arrived.
Development of Outlast had finally entered its final stage.
The corresponding promotional campaign also began rolling out.
That day, Chen Xu suddenly posted an update on his official blog.
The post was very simple: a short sentence and a game poster.
"Only escape can save you from disaster!"
"December 15th—the escape begins!"
Below the text was the Outlast game poster.
From the background, the poster appeared to show a hospital room, with medical equipment scattered all over the floor and tables.
One large character was written on the wall: "Run."
Under the night-vision effect, the characters appeared black, immediately reminding people of bloodstains.
In the corner, there was also a terrified-looking person lying underneath a bed, his right index finger held in front of his mouth.
The whole scene was incredibly eerie.
After Chen Xu's official blog post went up, various media outlets began reporting information about Outlast one after another.
The game was also made available in advance on the official gaming platform.
Of course, it was currently only available for preorder.
The price was 65 yuan, which wasn't particularly expensive.
After all, Outlast wasn't a particularly large game.
At the same time, discussions about Outlast began erupting across various gaming communities and forums.
Naturally, this wasn't entirely spontaneous on the players' part. Although Undertale had given Chen Xu some degree of recognition and To the Moon had won first prize in the Sci-Fi Game Design Competition, his current reputation still wasn't enough to create such a buzz based on his name alone.
The force behind all of this was, naturally, the power of money.
......
As the days passed, Outlast finally reached its release date.
On Shark TV's gaming section, there was a livestream room belonging to a streamer called Old Boy Game Commentary.
"Why am I the only one here? Well, Brother Huang went to the hospital for a checkup. He probably won't be back until later."
"Stop going on about how this is a horror game. I've told you guys already, horror games are absolutely no pressure for me. They're as easy as breathing."
"You want me to stream a horror game because you think it'll be funny watching me get scared out of my mind. But when you see me with a completely expressionless face, just calmly playing the game—you're going to be disappointed, right? You're going to be disappointed as hell."
"Fine, fine. How about this? Everyone knows that horror games aren't any pressure for me. I've played way too many of them in the past. So we'll give this one a try first. If it isn't scary, we'll wait until Brother Huang gets back and play something else."
"Fine, fine, I'll turn on the camera for you guys. But seriously, you're going to be really disappointed when the time comes. Those reactions you're expecting from me? They're not going to happen."
"I'm an extremely calm person. Horror games are as easy as breathing to me."
Sun Yixie was in the middle of commentating on a game recording, looking completely calm and composed as he watched the barrage of comments in his livestream.
He had said "as easy as breathing" three times already.
He was quite confident in his own courage.
He opened the official gaming platform, ignoring the barrage of comments from viewers saying things like, "The streamer can't even launch the game by himself."
After some effort, Sun Yixie finally installed the game, turned on his camera, and entered the game.
There was a brief crackling sound.
Then the game interface appeared.
The entire screen was tinted blue-green, with a color palette reminiscent of old Hong Kong movies and ghost films.
In the background was a building resembling a hospital. The lighting was sparse, with some clouds drifting across the sky.
The whole thing looked extremely creepy.
"I can feel a little something, of course. Just a little. But like I said before, horror games are as easy as breathing to me."
Sun Yixie spoke while keeping his eyes on the barrage of comments.
At this point, he was still quite confident.
"As for the difficulty, let's go with Normal for the first playthrough."
He entered the game.
At first, there was nothing but darkness. A low, somber narration began, accompanied by eerie background music and the crackling sound of a car radio distorted by static.
"My name is Miles Upshur, an ordinary journalist. Deep in the remote mountains of Colorado, a long-abandoned psychiatric hospital has reopened—the Mount Massive Asylum."
"But one day, a mysterious person sent me a letter, telling me that a huge secret was hidden deep within this psychiatric hospital. To investigate the matter, I came here."
As the narration played over the car radio, it provided a simple introduction to the game's setting and background.
Sun Yixie didn't feel the slightest bit nervous.
He remained as calm as he had claimed he would be.
After all, most horror games—or horror movies, for that matter—started out this way.
Once the narration ended, the game screen appeared.
However, the player still couldn't control the character yet.
The protagonist was driving toward Mount Massive Asylum.
The gloomy color palette, combined with the static-filled car radio, immediately established the atmosphere.
Before long, the car arrived at its destination and stopped at one of the entrances to Mount Massive Asylum.
The game's tutorial appeared as well, instructing the player to pick up the camera from the passenger seat along with a letter.
The contents of the letter were the same as the narration from earlier. The protagonist, a journalist, had come to Mount Massive Asylum because he wanted to uncover a major story and investigate what was really going on there.
After picking up the letter, a mission prompt appeared on the screen:
Enter Mount Massive Asylum.
From this point onward, the player was free to move around.
Sun Yixie stepped out of the car.
The darkness of night, combined with the wind blowing through the surroundings and the rustling of leaves, created an unsettling atmosphere.
And then there was the psychiatric hospital itself—a place that sounded anything but friendly.
For the first time, Sun Yixie's heartbeat suddenly quickened, if only by a little.