The smell of food still hung in the air, not quite beaten back yet by the usual mix of paper and electronics.
Arthur was already on his feet. The quiet hum of conversation and the clinking of dishes died out all at once.
Every head in the room turned toward him, carrying that brief after-lunch looseness that was already giving way to something sharper.
"Now that everyone's eaten and we can think straight, I've got a new idea. About our first move with the game."
Arthur's voice cut clean through the quiet.
"You all have a general sense of what the prologue covers: Kiana's intro, the Honkai eruption, her first meeting with Mei, Bronya showing up as Project Bunny, Major Himeko's rescue, the evacuation on the Hyperion... The story arc is solid, the emotional pull is real, and the characters land. They feel like people."
He paused, letting his eyes move around the room. "But actually building that entire prologue into a playable demo with any real level of polish? With the team we have right now and where our tech is at? That's not happening anytime soon."
Kiana was the first to say something: "Wait, huh? So what do we do? We're supposed to be making a game. How are we even going to know if it's fun if we never actually build it?"
"That's the thing though, Captain. You can't bake a pie without a pan," March 7th added, her voice soft but pointed.
Dan Heng adjusted his glasses and didn't say a word, but the question was right there in his eyes.
Bronya paused mid-dish, dried her hands on a cloth, and looked over at Arthur.
Mei set her lunchbox aside, already clean, and waited for him to keep going.
Stelle scratched the back of her head. "So... what's the plan?"
Arthur shook his head and set aside the story outline section. "I'm not saying we scrap the prologue. I'm saying we don't need to rush it into game form right now. We change formats and tell the story first."
"Tell the story?" Kiana looked confused.
"Exactly. Through a comic, or a serialized visual novel." Arthur's tone picked up pace, getting crisp and direct. "We take the prologue and tell it through panels, visuals, and clean, tight text as the first real look at the Honkai Impact 3rd world. Then we put it out on some creative platforms."
He looked at Kiana and Mei.
"Kiana, Mei, your job this afternoon, on top of finishing the rough character illustration drafts, is to take the prologue document I put together, zero in on the key scenes and character moments, and draw out the content for the first installment. It doesn't have to be super detailed, but it needs to hit the core beats. It needs to actually land emotionally."
He turned to Dan Heng and Bronya.
"Dan Heng, Bronya, stay on course with the engine foundation and core combat logic research. But you'll also need to carve out some time to put together a bare-bones web framework, something that can show people what we're going for. Nothing fancy. Just something that can display images and basic text and actually look like a real project homepage."
Finally, he looked at Stelle and March 7th.
"Stelle, March 7th, your assignments are changing. First, help Kiana and Mei with basic post-processing and layout on whatever they finish, and get everything ready to go live. Second, and this one matters more: go through every indie game platform, light novel site, and comic community out there with any real traffic. Do a full sweep and write me a report.
I need to know where to publish this and how to publish it so it actually reaches the first wave of readers. Or really, future players."
A whole run of assignments, fired off one after another. The targets were clear. The path was nothing like the "straight into game dev" approach everyone had been expecting.
Kiana blinked her blue eyes and took a second to catch up. "So... we draw a comic first? And just let people read the story? Is that actually going to work? Are people really going to care about our game just from reading a comic?"
"It's more than just getting people interested."
Arthur kept going. "This is the cheapest market test we can run. Through reader feedback, we find out if our characters are connecting, if the story is pulling people in, if the world makes them want to know more. And at the same time, we're starting to build something real, an IP, an audience, even a small one.
Even if only a hundred people like the comic, that's a hundred people who might actually back our game someday. And putting something out gives us a real deadline and something to point to, which is good for everyone's head."
Arthur glanced over at the half-wilted pothos drooping in the corner, and his voice dropped a little. "More than anything else though, if we can't even tell a story that sticks with people, what exactly are we standing on when we ask them to believe we can make a game worth playing?"
Dan Heng gave a slow nod. "Low-cost validation, getting a foothold with an early audience, narrowing down the direction... it tracks. A web framework and a basic showcase page aren't a heavy lift. I can work that in alongside everything else."
Bronya added quietly, "I can help with that. We'll need a unified visual reference doc for consistency."
Mei gave a small nod. "Understood. Leading with visuals really does give people a feel for the world in a way that just talking about the lore never could. I'll stay in sync with Kiana."
Kiana still felt like this was going the long way around, but hearing that Mei was in, and feeling a little spark at the thought of drawing the scenes where "the brightest light" saves the world with her own hands, she felt something click. "Okay, fine! Comic it is! But Captain, if nobody reads it, that's on you!"
Stelle and March 7th promised to do a full sweep of every platform out there.
"We can also look at how other people actually promote their stuff!" March 7th said, giving her chest a confident little pat.
"Good." Seeing that everyone had largely come around, Arthur felt something in him ease up.
This call had come from stacking the current situation against everything he'd learned in his past life. Throwing themselves at full-scale game development right now was a dead end. Leading with story content might be the only crack of light visible in what was otherwise a pretty bleak spot.
"Alright, everyone knows what they're doing." Arthur clapped his hands together. "Kiana, Mei, here's the written script and storyboard notes for the first prologue installment. Start here."
"Dan Heng, here's my rough thinking on the concept showcase page. The cleaner and more polished it looks, the better."
"Bronya, here are the visual style keywords and some compositional references for the key scenes."
"Stelle, March 7th, here's the list of platform types and the specific things I need you looking into."
One by one, the task documents went out, some thick, some light, like stones dropped into still water, each one sending its own ripple spreading outward.
The whole feel of the office flipped in an instant, from the easy drift of a lunch break into the fast, focused rhythm of work.
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~ Push the story forward with your Power Stones