Kapitel 6: Chapter 6 The True Height_1
Fang Cheng's games were always small in size but high in quality, as always.
Seeing the [Horror] tag on the game, Wang Say Games chuckled and said, "Can't brush it off during the day, can't hide from it at night, tonight is a perfect night to play a horror game."
"Wang, don't die..."
"Don't panic, I know my limits. Let's make a rule: if I get scared, I'll go straight to bed. Alright, let's go!"
The title "Towards Death and Life" appeared, set against a gray and murky sky that looked more tragic than terrifying.
A massive, unidentified object soared into the clouds, its spiral body structure resembling the mythological Tower of Babel, reaching towards heaven.
There were no living creatures around, the trees looked dark due to the lack of sunlight, and the place where Wang was standing looked like a huge plaza—only it was devoid of people.
"The graphics are still so good, the details flawless. The various props have created a strong atmosphere of the apocalypse. Fang Cheng is absolutely a master of environmental atmosphere," he praised.
After his moment of appreciation, Wang Say Games began to control his character, executing some moves to become familiar with the character's traits.
Unlike "The Forest's Second Son," "Towards Death and Life" emphasized the character's weakness and vulnerability by deliberately setting their strength very low.
However, to give players a stronger sense of escapism, he gave them robust thighs, allowing them to jump as high as possible.
According to Fang Cheng's idea, upon entering the game, players would immediately see the massive Star-devouring Beast, and its terrifying presence would shatter their sanity, making them feel a profound sense of despair in comparison to its size.
But Fang Cheng had overlooked one issue.
That was the matter of size.
An Immortal with Divine Sense could instantly perceive the enormity of the Star-devouring Beast, but humans couldn't.
In the eyes of the Star-devouring Beast, humans were the size of viruses.
It couldn't even sense the presence of humans and could only wait blankly according to the commands left by Fang Cheng for the so-called "little guys" to arrive.
To humans, the tentacles of the Star-devouring Beast were like a towering Tower of Babel, impossible to fully perceive, unable to feel the horror within.
After getting the hang of the controls, Wang looked around and asked, puzzled, "Strange, what's the game's mission? It doesn't seem like you can gather resources from trees here. Will there be jump scares?"
Jump scares are when something terrifying suddenly appears with a frightening visage, startling the player and causing their heart rate to spike and limbs to chill.
There's nothing wrong with jump scares, but they are being overused lately, with most horror games on the market utilizing this feature, leading to a certain rigidity in game design.
However, Wang Say Games felt that Fang Cheng wasn't that kind of person.
A gaming genius like him should have more interesting ways to deliver horror.
While Wang was scouting his surroundings, someone in the live stream commented, "Wang, look up, there's something on your head!"
Quickly looking up, Wang saw something shining with a green light atop the immense tower, seemingly beckoning him forward.
"Wow, there really is something. It seems like it's telling us to go there."
"How do we get there?"
"Isn't there a tower beside us? Let's just follow the tower."
Wang nodded in agreement and then began to leap continuously, climbing up along the tower.
Minutes later, Wang was growing to like the game even more.
Even without a tutorial for beginners, he quickly understood the gameplay, which was 3D platform jumping.
Usually, 3D platform jumping games have problems with perspective and scale, causing players to misjudge their focus and fail to estimate their landing point, leading to failed jumps.
But in "Towards Death and Life," this issue was perfectly resolved.
Wang Say Games didn't know what the other party's solution was, he only knew that they had perfectly solved the issue of perspective change, allowing players to precisely judge their landing spots, making the previously difficult platform jumping easy and pleasing to the eye.
It was as if... he was truly jumping on platforms.
Although he had fallen a few times in the process, Wang quickly mastered the jumping technique and successfully climbed higher and higher.
By the time he was three hundred meters above the ground, he could see further buildings, the abandoned city, and collapsed landmarks. The ruined sights came at him, making him feel that this was not just any platform jumping game, but one with a world of profound background.
What happened here?
What lies at the end of the towering Tower of Babel?
Why was the city destroyed?
Where are the other people?
A wealth of details built a world that was both real and detailed, immersing Wang Say Games in all kinds of minutiae.
However, when he reached one thousand meters, the joy of jumping gradually faded, his flow state slowly diminished, and he became sleepy.
"It can't be that I have to jump all the way to the top, that would be too sleep-inducing."
"Exactly, the difficulty is unevenly created, it doesn't seem like Fang Cheng's work," a viewer in the live stream chat agreed.
"Jump another hundred meters, then sleep after that."
Just as he was about to stop the stream and go to sleep, a viewer in the live stream chat suddenly said, "Wang, stop playing for now and watch this video!"
Confused, he clicked on the link sent by the viewer and found it was actually a Bilibili video.
Since it was late at night, the video didn't have many views, but the like-to-coin ratio was incredibly high.
"Thirty minutes! 'Towards Death and Life' clear!"
Seeing this time, Wang felt a pang in his heart.
He had downloaded the game first thing but only played it roughly for thirty minutes. He had to go back to his "hometown" several times and start over, and in the end, he probably had not even climbed a quarter of the way.
But now, someone had already completed the game, gotten to the crux of it—how was that possible!
He hastily opened the video and immediately started watching, only to realize there was a problem right away.
The starting point was different!
His starting location was an abandoned plaza, but the other player's starting location was a dilapidated spaceship. Although the goal was the same for both—to climb to the top of the tower—the entire process was completely different.
He thought this time difference might be key, but Wang soon realized that the other player's gaming concept was different.
This newcomer YouTuber named "Xiao Douzi" had posted many videos, but had only a few hundred followers.
In his gameplay, he never spoke, just purely played the games, and the content was often speedrunning and guide-oriented, showing he was a player who loved to delve into games.
The quality of the videos was high, but because they were too hardcore and didn't include antics, they could never stand out in this somewhat restless era.
But after playing the game himself and then watching Xiao Douzi's videos, Wang only had one feeling.
Brilliant!
Truly brilliant!
Kapitel 7: Chapter 7 The True Meaning of Towards Death and Life_1
Only those who have truly played "Towards Death and Life" can understand how high Xiao Douzi's skill level really is.
Wang already felt his hands were steady, but compared to Xiao Douzi, they were simply not on the same level.
The other player was obviously a professional gamer, whose movements during platform jumps were incredibly stable. In several spots where there was barely any room to land, Xiao Douzi would jump with ease and precision.
Apart from the fluid movements during the jumps, Xiao Douzi's judgment of distances was also spot-on. Many times, when Wang thought he wouldn't make the jump, Xiao Douzi would land exactly where he intended to.
The control was mature, and the understanding of the game even more accurate.
And it was through Xiao Douzi that Wang realized that many objects in the game were not randomly placed.
The decrepit elevators could be operated; if the button light on the elevator was on, then it could be used, saving a great deal of jumping time.
Some inconspicuous places could also be used to move quickly and speed up climbing, greatly saving time.
After watching for a while, Wang kept nodding, impressed that this person seemed born to play games.
But what surprised him was that at a certain platform, instead of jumping directly across, Xiao Douzi took a three-minute detour to activate an unremarkable-looking switch by the roadside.
Once the switch was flipped, a multitude of light particles began to converge, and a palm-sized mechanical sprite appeared next to Xiao Douzi's character, intermittently saying, "We meet again, unknown traveler."
Wang Say Games: "...F*ck!"
He was thoroughly convinced now.
He originally thought it was a horror game, but it turned out to be a platform-jumping game.
He thought jumping was the only option, but hidden mechanics revealed so many interactable items.
He thought that was all there was to the game, but there was actually a storyline.
A small game with so much depth, Fang Cheng, you're quite something!
The sudden appearance of the mechanical sprite gave Wang Say Games a jolt of energy, rousing him from drowsiness and making him watch with renewed excitement.
It wasn't just him; a bunch of users on Bilibili also exclaimed "F*ck" on the bullet comments, causing the entire screen to lag for a second before the video could continue playing.
At that moment, Wang was certain that Xiao Douzi was the first person to discover the storyline within the game.
Xiao Douzi didn't speak during the stream, but the palm-sized sprite certainly had a lot to say.
It appeared to be a semi-transparent little person, its body blurry due to mechanical faults and occasionally glitching, effectively conveying its damaged state.
Floating beside Xiao Douzi, it intermittently said, "It has been an hour since we last met."
"Pleased to see you, unknown climber. Let me introduce myself again, I am your climbing aid tool; you can call me Alpha."
"This climbing path was built to commemorate the 1100th birthday of the Republic. The whole course is 5 kilometers long, and you can appreciate the magnificent scenery along the way. If you feel tired, you can use the elevator to get to the top. However, according to my diagnostics, the elevator has broken down, and I have already contacted staff for repairs."
"I have learned your language, which I find very interesting. Its intonation rises and falls like music, very pleasant to listen to, and I like it a lot."
"Why don't you speak? Is it because you dislike my explanation? My apologies, it's been thousands of years since I've seen a living being, and seeing you makes me overly excited."
The sprite chattered ceaselessly while Xiao Douzi climbed in silence, letting the sprite relate everything around them.
Although occasionally there would be a harsh noise, the sprite's voice was very pleasant.
Through its explanations, players learned a lot of information.
An ancient kingdom fell due to war, and terrifying biological weapons ultimately destroyed the entire civilization. Unknown monsters descended from the sky, began devouring this planet, which no longer bore signs of civilization, and sent the climb path built to commemorate the Republic into the air.
Civilization was destroyed by its own people, all life was wiped out, and only the mechanical beings from the last days of civilization dedicatedly carried out their prior orders, one of which was Alpha.
The story wasn't long, but after everyone heard it, they felt somewhat choked up.
What initially seemed like simple environmental design, after the truth was unveiled, had a powerful emotional impact. The dead civilization presented itself to the players in this way, letting them hear, through their screens, the last echoes of that civilization.
At last, in the video's finale, Xiao Douzi finally reached the endpoint, a small room at the top of the tower.
After entering the room, the sprite flew onto Xiao Douzi's shoulder and happily said, "Congratulations, you are the first and second person to reach the top after a thousand years. We have prepared a fine gift for you, which you can collect from the administrator after descending the mountain."
Then the ground began to tremble, and the massive Star-devouring Beast finally sensed the presence of the "little one" and, following Fang Cheng's orders, lifted the little one into the sky with its tentacles.
As the altitude climbed, the tentacle pierced through the atmosphere and the dust layer overhead, finally reaching outer space where the endless cosmos unfolded.
There, they saw the vast universe, the greatness of the cosmos and their own insignificance starkly contrasted at that moment, giving everyone a new interpretation of the game's name, "Towards Death and Life."
This civilization had died.
But it still left something behind, lingering in the hearts of the players after death.
In the end, Alpha turned its head towards the screen and smiled, saying, "Thank you for participating, I hope you found the journey satisfactory."
"...And thank you," Xiao Douzi finally spoke his only line in the video.
Just that simple sentence broke through the defenses of everyone watching.
The playful and adorable sprite was like a little angel; behind her optimistic and cheerful demeanor was a millennium of lonely waiting, but luckily, fate had not abandoned her.
Xiao Douzi had also become the voice for the players, finally expressing what they had all been wanting to say.
The original triple-digit follower count exploded before their very eyes as a flood of gamers rushed to the Steam platform to download the game and tagged it with a "recommended" review.
Wang Say Games was no exception.
After turning off the video, he purposefully restarted the game and located Alpha's switch during the gameplay. Accompanied by the sprite, he climbed tirelessly until he finally reached the end.
After watching the ending scene, standing in the dawn's light, he couldn't help but reflect,
"This world is truly beautiful."
Geschenke
-- Geschenk
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