WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Potter

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Game Director that Returned from Hell ◈

Chapter 7

──────

Seorim had always been very competitive.

She had been that way since childhood.

Once she started something, she never considered giving up halfway. Even when the task was beyond her, she hated losing more, so she kept pushing until she overcame it.

She had been like that with studying, with sports, and finally, with art.

Seorim always struggled at the start, but the thought, ‘I think I can do this if I keep trying,’ made her stick with it until she finally earned her reward.

That was how she had managed this.

“I beat it!”

“Nice work.”

She had cleared all of Dark Space.

Her total playtime was twenty-one hours.

The game normally offered about fourteen hours of content, but as a complete beginner, she had needed extra time to figure out its mechanics.

At that moment, Seorim felt both relief and a sense of achievement.

She was sick of it, but that didn't mean she hadn't enjoyed it. She had certainly felt a thrill whenever she cleared a chapter, and there had been plenty of visual enjoyment too.

All in all, she could call it a good experience.

“Well, that wasn't so hard.”

As Seorim puffed herself up with pride, Yeonho nodded.

“That was good. You're a fast learner. Though you still got scared.”

“The same thing never scared me twice, you know?”

“You still screamed.”

“Are you trying to pick a fight? Never mind. Just give me the next job. We need to start making the actual game.”

She was feeling just the right amount of enthusiasm.

Now that she understood how design was applied to games, all that remained was putting it into practice.

Yeonho had said she would be making pixel art.

Fortunately, that wasn't a field she knew nothing about.

“Should I start with the character sprites?”

But Yeonho shook his head.

“There's something we need to do first.”

“What?”

“Let's try this one next.”

Seorim's expression froze.

Yeonho had brought out another horror game.

The question slipped out before she could stop it.

“Why?”

“It's necessary.”

“Why don't you play it yourself?”

“You need to do it.”

Click. Yeonho switched on a voice recorder.

She couldn't make sense of that.

Seorim stared at Yeonho.

That expressionless face somehow looked just like a devil's.

* * *

Collecting the screams took a total of two weeks.

“I'm done! I'm not playing any more!”

Han Seorim shouted.

The monitor displayed the words [game clear].

That was her eighth game cleared.

Yes, she'd held out for quite a while.

I'd gotten what I wanted, so I readily agreed.

“Good work.”

If I remixed these recordings, I could get some pretty convincing sound effects.

That wasn't all I'd gained.

‘I'm getting a clear sense of what makes players afraid.’

One thing after another began to stand out as something I needed to change.

There were two things that frightened Han Seorim.

Stealth missions that put her under psychological pressure, and escape missions where an enemy she couldn't fight back against chased her.

A sudden appearance, a jump scare, only worked once.

The more those moments repeated, the more irritated Han Seorim became instead of frightened.

‘I need to tone down the horror elements a little more...’

It would be better to cut back on the jump scares.

I couldn't weaken the excitement of the action just to maintain the survival horror feel. It was a matter of finding the balance needed to blend genres.

‘Stealth would be hard to fit into a game this size. So...’

I would go with escape missions.

I would put an unstoppable enemy into the game.

Examples immediately came to mind: a butcher with a triangular head, a hulking figure with a fedora pulled low, and a school janitor.

The effect of such enemies had already been proven.

Even when they weren't on the map, they remained in the player's mind, keeping the tension high at every moment.

Sometimes, their presence even grew beyond that of the playable character outside the game, turning them into popular memes.

‘That sounds pretty good.’

Ideas came pouring out.

A clear image had formed in my mind.

I pictured it.

‘What if I brought the final boss into earlier missions in an unstoppable state?’

What if it remained an unfathomable presence that tormented the player throughout the game?

That would certainly establish the final boss's presence and the pressure it put on the player.

Taking it further, it would multiply the sense of release when the player finally defeated it.

I immediately revised the design document and decided how to implement it.

After a rough balancing pass, I was pleased with the result.

It still needed some tidying up, but I could work that out during production and testing.

I sat down at the computer and spoke.

“Let's get started for real.”

“What? What about the system design and all that?”

“It's done. Just finished it. From now on, we're building the actual thing.”

Seorim shrugged.

“Well... fine. What do you need me to do?”

“We need the image assets first. Start making pixel art. Let's begin with the playable character.”

Han Seorim gave a casual nod and opened the program.

We already had the software we needed, including the game engine.

There was no reason to put it off any longer.

I'd taught Han Seorim the basics, so she would manage on her own.

I only needed to offer advice where necessary.

The problem was my own work.

‘I can't make this game with the engine's default tools alone.’

The engine's default tools were too limited to handle the mechanics I was planning.

Adding enough functionality and optimizing the game to improve performance required programming.

In other words, I needed to write new code.

‘Fortunately, it's not impossible.’

My coding knowledge was at least twenty years ahead of the present day.

Of course, that didn't make it easy, but it wasn't difficult enough to stop me either.

The truly difficult part was something else.

The coding process itself.

What lay ahead was an endless stretch of work that would wear away at my mental strength.

It wasn't like simple manual labor.

In particular, I would have to keep staring at black and white without letting my concentration slip for even a moment.

And if a bug happened to crop up...

‘...Hmm.’

I didn't want to think about that.

So before I began, I offered a prayer.

‘Please, let there be no bugs.’

There was one undeniable truth.

The most important part of coding was faith.

* * *

Time flew, and before I knew it, winter had arrived.

A week before Christmas, the campus settled into quiet anticipation of Jesus's birth.

In the clubroom at its center, Han Seorim rubbed a hand warmer and asked,

“Is this the finished version?”

“A prototype, to be exact. There'll still be plenty of problems. We'll use this as the foundation for full development.”

“But it at least looks like a game now.”

Han Seorim looked genuinely interested.

I could understand that feeling.

Whether you were making your first game or were an experienced developer, this moment was usually exciting.

After all, you were seeing a working version of a game you'd made with your own hands for the first time.

I was happy to give Han Seorim the honor.

“You try it.”

“You're not going to?”

“There are things you only notice when you're watching from the side. Besides, it's the first run. Wouldn't it be more moving to play it yourself?”

Those were my reasons on the surface.

“All right. I'll give it a try.”

Han Seorim readily accepted.

Since the game ran on a PC, she placed her hands on the keyboard and mouse.

Her expression was full of anticipation.

Then the intro began.

[Aaaaaaagh!]

The intro scream rang out.

Han Seorim spoke in a low voice.

“...Seonbae.”

“Yeah?”

“What's this?”

“A scream.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“It's yours.”

“Do you want to die?”

“Quality.”

“?”

“...For the quality of the game.”

Han Seorim's hands trembled.

Fortunately, she seemed willing to let it go for now.

“...We'll discuss this separately later.”

Right. She wanted to see the game first. It seemed I'd timed this well.

Han Seorim soon wiped the sulky look off her face and leaned close to the monitor.

Before long, she was even smiling.

I could clearly see her excitement growing as she began to play.

But I knew.

‘It won't last long.’

This was a look at the bare bones of the game.

In other words...

“...Huh?”

It was the moment when she faced the rough, unpolished game in its raw form.

There would be problems everywhere that she could see precisely because she had helped make the game and created its designs herself.

“Uh...”

Han Seorim was no exception.

The clicking of the keyboard continued for quite a while before she finally closed the game.

Silence settled over us.

I asked,

“What do you think?”

Han Seorim didn't answer right away.

She looked deep in thought.

For a long time, she rested her chin on her hand and tapped her cheek with her index finger in silence. Only then did she speak.

“...It's way too flashy for this game.”

She was talking about the UI and map designs she had made.

She was right.

Han Seorim's designs were swallowing the game whole.

Not because they were so outstanding, but because, as she had said, they were too flashy for the game. They made it harder to understand at a glance.

The reason was clear.

The games Han Seorim had experienced had set the bar too high.

I had only made her play masterpieces, or excellent games that came close.

Her standards were now set at that level, and her understanding of game design leaned heavily toward AAA games.

That level of flashiness didn't suit an indie game, which made everything feel out of place.

On top of that, Han Seorim had worked on the UI, maps, and characters separately. She hadn't been able to see the whole picture at once, and I hadn't allowed her to.

It was a little inoculation.

Before she made a major mistake later, I needed to teach her the concept of designing to suit a game's scale.

“Do you see the problem?”

“Seeing it all together, it's hard to read. Your eyes don't focus on the character, and it's hard to tell what's on the map. The UI's the same. The accents on the borders make it hard to focus on the actual contents.”

“You got it.”

“You did this on purpose, didn't you? To show me.”

“That's right.”

“You're nasty.”

Han Seorim clicked her tongue and looked frustrated.

That was a good sign. To be honest, it was better than I'd expected.

The fact that she could judge this much for herself and view her own work objectively showed how well she understood it.

She truly deserved to be called the mother of [Lost Kingdom].

“Can you fix it?”

“Yes. I'll get it right in the next revision.”

“Good. I've more or less identified the major bugs too, so I'll focus on those.”

“Redo the balance too. Why is a knife stronger than a chainsaw?”

“That's part of the charm.”

“Oh, please.”

Hmph. Han Seorim snorted and went straight back to her computer.

She opened the program.

Then she began working again with angry movements.

At this rate, the next version would be far better than the current one.

In that case, I should leave it to her and focus on my own work.

‘The biggest bug is the immortal boss monster's AI.’

It only had a handful of patterns, barely enough to call it AI, but there were quite a few situations where those patterns got tangled up.

There were also minor bugs involving monster placement and item looting. Above all, I wasn't satisfied with the interactions between the playable character and the map.

I looked at the calendar.

It was December 19.

We'd made enough progress that it was about time to set a deadline.

Practical considerations demanded it.

‘I need to finish it this winter.’

At the very least, I needed a decent result before I returned to school.

Once I went back, I wouldn't have enough time.

* * *

There was no need to say any more about the tedious development process.

To skip to the result, the game eventually reached a state where it was ready for external testing.

Overall, it wasn't bad.

Today was January 22, the day we finished the test version.

We had successfully implemented every element I'd originally planned.

I'd fixed every bug I could find within the scope of our testing, and I'd firmly addressed the weapon balance issues that could arise during progression.

In each chapter, the game would give players weapons that left them wanting just a little more power. They would use those weapons to fight tense, close battles against their enemies.

With one exception.

‘The final boss. This thing is the problem.’

I looked at the massive monster on the monitor.

Cancer Giant.

That was the name of the boss monster that tormented the player throughout the game, then faced them as their enemy at the very end.

Until the player entered the final boss room, no weapon could kill it.

It had a thousand times its normal health, and getting hit by it meant certain instant death.

The intention was clear.

[Don't fight this thing before the boss room. Just run away.]

But had there ever been a time in human history when everyone followed the rules?

Every age had its rebels, and the internet was no different.

Those rebels would answer,

[Don't wanna. I'm gonna kill it. At level 1. With no gear.]

It might sound like a lie, but it was true.

There were players in this industry who enjoyed games in unnecessarily hardcore ways.

Every game had them, but action games like this were especially full of players with that kind of twisted taste.

A pair of underpants and a toothpick.

Those were the only two things they needed for a challenge.

‘Cancer Giant would make good prey.’

After all, even a hit worth one point would reduce its health, and the health bar would show it.

They were certain to focus on the fact that they could kill it somehow.

Of course, that was a good kind of curiosity.

As a developer, it was important to be able to create opportunities for gamers to feel that curiosity and act on it.

I would gladly welcome them, if I could solve just one problem.

‘Every challenge in a game should have a fitting reward.’

It was a well-known saying in the industry, and that saying was the problem.

In short, I needed to give players an item worthy of their efforts, but choosing that item was incredibly difficult.

The reward had to be something special.

Gamers willing to find and complete an Easter egg clearly enjoyed the game that much. How could I let down a fan base that was only just beginning to form?

But I couldn't create an item that broke the balance for that reason.

This was a game where weapons were the only way to change the player's abilities.

Considering that core identity, a balance-breaking weapon would clearly leave players who hadn't completed the Easter egg feeling deprived.

There was another problem too.

‘Nothing fits.’

I'd already balanced every weapon, right down to how they interacted with each other, and created weapon combinations, or combos. Forcing an item that didn't fit into that system would clearly be a mistake.

I thought about it for a long time.

What weapon would work?

What weapon could fit into the game without harming its balance?

After all that thought, I finally came up with one solution.

‘No choice, then.’

I'd have to do ‘that.’

“Seorim.”

“Yes?”

“Let's make one more weapon.”

“...What?”

“Yeah. I need a weapon that only drops from that thing. There's something bothering me.”

“But that's the final boss. The game ends when you kill it. Do we need to make one?”

“It's for players who kill it before the boss fight even starts. An Easter egg.”

I explained the weapon's concept to Han Seorim.

Doubt appeared on her face.

“...Can we really do that?”

“It's an Easter egg. All we can do is hope people find it as late as possible. Actually, who knows if anyone will find it at all?”

That was the truth.

This was a game made by an unknown college student developer. Even if I released it right now, there was no guarantee it would be an instant, stunning hit.

From the start, this had been a foundation-building game, made with only a tiny portion of the ideas I'd come up with when I first saw hell.

I expected this game to find success later, when a future game made with a bigger budget succeeded and people took a fresh look at my career.

Only then would people start taking an interest in its Easter egg, so there was no need to worry about it right now.

“I don't know either.”

I had to accept that no matter how hard I worked, I couldn't control every aspect of a game.

Anyway, with the Easter egg added, the game was complete.

All that remained was an evaluation under the name of testing.

Beta Test

Footnotes:

“Seonbae” is a Korean term for someone ahead of you at school or in a shared organization.

The pursuing enemies evoke Pyramid Head from Silent Hill, Mr. X from Resident Evil, and the janitor from White Day: A Labyrinth Named School.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried