Chapter 1 Idle Game
It is getting dark and the city has entered sleep mode.
Li Chengqi checked the doors and windows of his store, then took a box of instant noodles and two ham sausages from the shelf and went upstairs.
Turning on the computer and looking at the dazzling array of games in the game library, Li Chengqi felt a little uninterested and didn't want to touch anything.
At this time, a notification of a new email pops up on QQ in the lower right corner. When you click on it, it says "Congratulations on qualifying for early testing" and a download link is attached.
The email did not contain the name of the game, nor did it include any pictures.
Li Chengqi doesn't have much focus on playing games. He will try out any genre. He often fills out applications to play games that are not on the shelves. For a while, he really can't remember when he applied.
Anyway, if you have nothing to do, just click on it and take a look.
It's just that the email looked a bit like a virus. To be on the safe side, Li Chengqi turned around and took out an old laptop from the drawer and plugged it in and started it.
This thing was called an ultrabook at the time and could be used as a laptop or tablet. When I was in school and there was no internet, I relied on it to play stand-alone games to pass the time.
But after all, it was already ten years ago, there is no personal information in it, and even if there is a problem with the computer caused by a virus, I won’t feel bad.
Send the download link and click to download. The speed is quite fast. With the maximum speed of the broadband, the download was completed in a short time.
Li Chengqi saw that the installation package was only over 700 MB, and he was a little disappointed. He estimated that it might be an unknown domestic stand-alone independent game.
The good thing is that my ultrabook from ten years ago should be able to play games with hundreds of megabits.
Unzip, install, run.
A dark picture first crowded on the screen, and then three large characters 'AAI' popped up.
Li Chengqi was still not impressed, so he clicked the mouse to enter the main menu.
Although I was mentally prepared, I still couldn’t help but complain when I saw the main menu:
"This is too crude!"
The game name 'AAI' is still on the top of the dark interface, and (AnyoneAnythinganyIdea) is written in English below.
It feels like another game that is planned to be a framework and wait for the game content to grow out of the creative workshop.
Under the game name, there are three clickable buttons that read ‘Magic’, ‘Martial Arts’ and ‘Science Fiction’ respectively. A row of red text below the buttons says ‘Please select the type of script you want to generate’.
To be honest, this UI design is not as good as a flash game, it's like it was made casually with a drawing tool.
Not even three seconds after he clicked on the game, Li Chengqi's expectations for this game had already dropped to the lowest level. He thought that he had already pretended, but he still had to see how bad it was, right?
I casually clicked on the martial arts button in the middle, and a line of prompts popped up that said '50,000 gold coins are required to unlock'.
Li Chengqi understood clearly that this routine was still a pigeon game. He kept repeating a set of game procedures to gain points and unlock new content.
After changing hands, he clicked on the magic, and this time he successfully entered. The screen prompted 'World Generation'.
Taking advantage of this time, Li Chengqi tore off the lid of the instant noodles and filled the electric kettle with water. By the time he came back, it had been loaded.
The picture that appeared on the computer screen made his eyes light up.
This game adopts an exquisite high-definition pixel style, and the characters are all Q-versions with two heads. Compared with blindly stacking 3D, this pleasing style is the favorite of independent game production groups.
The screen shows a group of little people riding horses entering a city protected by a high wall. Because it is shown with a 45-degree squint and a lot of details are made, it does not look like a pixelated scene even though it is pixelated. Simple.
After the cutscene passed, Li Chengqi moved the cursor to the pixel-style city. Depending on the moving position, some prompts such as 'Palace District', 'Residential District', 'Business District' and 'City Wall District' popped up.
Perhaps because it is an early version, there is no novice guidance at all, but for the time being, only the palace area can be clicked, and Li Chengqi clicked in easily.
When the picture turned, it looked like a pixel-style church, with a row of pixel figures kneeling on the ground to worship.
At this time, a character portrait popped up first.
She has simple and capable short red hair, and two sword eyebrows on her beautiful face, which makes her look heroic. She wears a breastplate on her upper body and a red long sword on her waist. She has the style of a paper knight. Li Chengqi understands that some game production teams like to use paper figures to attract players first, but he doesn't understand why in a pixel-style game, the characters are drawn in a realistic style, which feels completely inconsistent.
Then I thought about it, maybe the production team was too poor to hire an artist. Eighty percent of the vertical paintings were generated by AI. Anyway, they look pretty good. If it goes against the grain, just go against the grain.
The name tag on the vertical painting reads: 'Viola Avarus', which should be her name.
Then a dialog box popped up, which said, "I offer this body as a sacrifice and pray to the Demon King and God to give us strength." It felt like the story of the game was told in the voice of a female knight.
Li Chengqi was too lazy to read this, but the game didn't have fast forward or skip functions, so he could only press the space bar in boredom and read roughly what the female knight said.
To put it simply, there is a country called the Demon Kingdom of Avarus that was attacked by the surrounding demon kingdoms. Viola's father and brother died in the battle. As a princess, she rushed to the last moment when the capital was breached with the legendary ability. After getting in touch with the Demon King's treasure, he fled to the most remote territory with the guards and remaining soldiers, planning to make a comeback.
The player is the 'Devil God' mentioned by Viola. No wonder the game does not allow you to enter the player name, it has already been set.
Li Chengqi has also played several games in which players play the role of gods, so the setting is not unusual.
After telling the plot, there was a bar on the left side of the screen that said ‘Faith Value’, and the number was five hundred. Resource windows such as wood, gold coins, and stone appear on the top, and the date is on the right.
Up until now, it felt like it might be an SLG game similar to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but Li Chengqi clicked around and couldn't find any operable part.
On the contrary, when things got messy, I saw pixel villains carrying lumber to repair damaged buildings in the city. There was also a group of two-headed soldier villains training with spears under the city wall.
"I've been working on it for a long time, and this is just an idle game?"
The graphics are obviously very beautiful, but just hanging up is meaningless.
Li Chengqi was about to turn off the game and pour hot water for instant noodles. At this time, a red warning dialog box popped up on the screen, saying 'bandits are approaching'.
Then he saw the villain who was busy training quickly running up the city wall, and the game camera also moved outside the city wall.
Li Chengqi released the mouse:
"Since the painting style suits my taste, I'll just play with it for a while longer."
A large group of NPCs crowded together appeared outside the city wall. They were carrying swords and spears and were dressed in rags. It was indeed possible to recognize them as bandits at a glance.
The soldier villain on the city wall began to shoot arrows downwards, while the bandit villain displayed dialog boxes such as "Charge" and "Kill", and quickly moved towards the city wall. After a while, he was blocked under the city wall and began to Put things like ladders on the city wall.
Apart from anything else, the high-definition pixel style graphics of this game are really good. It would be great if there were more control areas.
Just when he thought of this, Li Chengqi saw a hand-shaped icon appear on the ladder set up by the bandits on the city wall, and it said 'tap'.
“Isn’t this game a port of a mobile game that couldn’t get a version number?”
Just pick up the mouse and click, and each ladder will take several clicks before it breaks or falls over, and it seems endless.
And the rough and continuous clicks also caused the mouse of the same era as the computer to declare a strike. This is not a big problem. One of the selling points of ultrabooks is that the screen can be operated by touch.
So Li Chengqi put away the mouse and stretched out his index finger to touch the screen.
"What the hell?"
The moment his finger touched the screen, there was a suction force coming from the screen, and Li Chengqi's finger sank directly into the screen.
For a moment, Li Chengqi thought he had seen it wrong. He shook his finger, and the fingers on the screen also shook.
Surprised, Li Chengqi retracted his hand and pulled his finger away from the screen.
At this time, there was a slight tingling sensation on the index finger, and there were many fine cracks on the skin, which looked like cracks caused by being too dry, and there was a slight bleed.
"What's going on?"
(End of chapter)