—Inside the experience store—
Chen Mo tested Lifeline for one last time and said to Su Jinyu and Zheng Hongxi, “Alright, it’s good.”
“Yeah! That’s awesome!” Su Jinyu couldn’t help but be ecstatic.
That was basically a game she and Zheng Hongxi worked together without Chen Mo’s help, so it was particularly special.
(If Chen Mo asking Zheng Hongxi to change the story multiple times didn’t count as helping.)
Zheng Hongxi finally breathed a sigh of relief and let out a smile. Despite being asked by Chen Mo to make many changes to the story as well as several big changes to the story, it was finally over.
This process improved Zheng Hongxi’s understanding of writing for games as well as his understanding of manipulating the emotions of the players.
Now Zheng Hongxi was looking forward to the reaction of the players, will they like his writing?
Chen Mo installed Lifeline onto Chang Xiuya’s phone, “You’ll be our first labrat.”
—
Chang Xiuya was curious.
Everyone knew that Su Jinyu and Zheng Hongxi had been working hard to make an interactive fiction, but they didn’t know what type of game it would be or anything about the story.
There were many interactive fictions in this world and was one of the more classic genres. Many video game designers who liked story driven games would usually have interactive fiction as their first game.
It was partially because that the game was easy to make, all it needed was a good story. Other resources would include getting a good set of artwork and probably outsourcing someone to do the audio as well.
However, as there were so many interactive fictions on the market, it was significantly harder to break through as well.
The interactive fictions of this world were very much similar to the previous world, mostly city life or transmigration to medieval times. This was because most interactive fiction players are female, and they tend to like these themes more.
Chang Xiuya also played interactive fictions, but after playing a million different interactive fictions, most of their story would coalesce into one, making it quite boring after a while.
If the only difference between interactive fictions were their story, they may as well read novels instead.
Chang Xiuya was worried that Lifeline would be similar to other interactive fictions. However, since the manager overlooked this, his games are usually…
Yep, other than I Am MT being a little bit scummy, the other games were quite creative.
The icon of the game was fairly dark, with a small person in it who looked like an astronaut. The top right of the icon had a weird radio wave icon.
“Umm. Is it scifi? That’s fresh.”
Chang Xiuya tapped on the icon, entering the game.
She was then met with a pop-up window, “Lifeline is an interactive fiction that spans over a few days. Your gaming experience might be affected without push-notifications. Please enable push-notifications to enhance your experience.”
Chang Xiuya tapped on ‘Allow’.
A window that looked like a chatting app popped up. Soon, messages started appearing.
Incoming message
Establishing connection
Connecting
“Hello?”
“Does this work?”
“Can anyone hear me?”
Chang Xiuya was a bit shocked after the questioning, but now two different choices appeared in the bottom: ‘Who’s there’ and ‘Yes I can hear you’.
Chang Xiuya felt that these had about the same meaning and wouldn’t affect the story, then tapping on ‘Yes I can hear you.”
“Oh, thank goodness! I was finally able to contact someone!”
“I’ve waited for hours!”
Another two choiced popped up: ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What happened’?
Chang Xiuya thought that it would be better to ask who they were, tapping ‘Who are you?’.
After two choices, Chang Xiuya already understood the difference between this and other interactive fictions.
Lifeline didn’t have any narration or background descriptions, it was set up entirely as a chatting software. But instead of chatting with real people, the player would be chatting with fictional characters from the game.
Conveying the world using a sci fi chatting app improved the immersion. This included sending the player notifications, giving the player an impression that they were talking to a real person.
Chang Xiuya started chatting to this astronaut named Tyler based on what she felt was right.
Through chatting, Chang Xiuya discovered that Tyler was an astronaut on a cargo pod, but crashed on an alien plant. However, he was now completely lost. He was a student who boarded to perform an experiment, and had no experience in dealing with emergency situations like these.
However, Tyler seemed quite optimistic, even making jokes in such dire situations.
Chang Xiuya even laughed at the jokes he made.
“So is the final task to help this astronaut escape? Doesn’t seem too difficult. It’s probably easier than the crazy scenarios from Chinese dramas set in ancient times right…” thought Chang Xiuya.
“There’s a white mountain nearby that’s a few miles out. But this mountain… looks a bit weird, it’s vertically symmetrical so it doesn’t seem quite natural.”
“The crash site of Varia seems a bit closer than the mountain. What should I do?”
There were two choices: ‘Head towards crash site’ or ‘Head towards mountain’.
Chang Xiuya knew that this was a key choice for the plot. As Tyler hinted, the mountain was shaped weird, and it was further away, obviously he should go towards the crash site!
Chang Xiuya chose ‘Head towards crash site’.
“Makes sense, there could be survivors…”
“Alright, I’m heading South. This should take at least one hour. I’ll let you know when I get there.”
Afterwards, the system displayed a ‘Tyler is now busy’ message.
Chang Xiuya was shocked, what is this?
There weren’t any other choices, and Tyler stopped talking as well. The game just stopped without any further notifications.
Chang Xiuya looked back at what Tyler said.
“It can’t be that he’s really going to message me an hour?!”
Chang Xiuya was shocked. It was the first time she encountered an interactive fiction like this, making the player wait for an hour for nothing?!
All Chang Xiuya could do now was wait. She didn’t close the app, however, fearing that she wouldn’t receive the message when Tyler replies.