Parallel World Game Developer

Chapter 15: Chapter #15: Guest Stream

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"I finally understand why the King went crazy with greed after he conquered the island," Marcus muttered, staring blankly at the digital sales dashboard.

Those terrifying, beautiful million-plus sales figures!

In the span of a single week, Marcus had finally understood what it meant to truly build something from zero.

Based on the profit-sharing agreement Ethan had offered him, Marcus had just earned more money in seven days than the average university graduate would see in a decade.

And the crazy part was, he genuinely felt like he hadn’t done anything special.

He had just followed Ethan’s meticulous design documents, churning out pixel art and animations like a student turning in homework.

The framework, the combat logic, the map generation parameters—Ethan had provided all of it.

Marcus had just executed the vision without having to stress over the big picture.

"So, my friend, what’s the next move? We buying luxury cars? Snapping up real estate? Or just flying somewhere tropical to blow it all on drinks and room service?" Marcus joked, bouncing on his heels with barely contained excitement.

"The next move? We expand the studio and start development on the next game," Ethan replied immediately, without a shred of hesitation.

"The next game?" Marcus blinked, caught completely off guard.

He legitimately hadn’t considered what came next.

In his mind, Ethan had just secured enough wealth from this million-unit smash hit to comfortably coast for the rest of his natural life.

Would a sane person actually want to go back into the trenches and make another game right after escaping them?

But looking at the quiet, unyielding focus in Ethan’s eyes, Marcus instantly knew the answer.

Yes.

That same afternoon, Ethan logged into his official Twitter account to announce their expansion.

[Nova: I’m incredibly grateful that everyone is enjoying Dead Cells. Sprout Studio has officially decided to expand our team so we can build even more interesting projects. If you’re a developer who wants to join us, send your portfolio to the Sprout Studio email. Here’s to a bright future.]

The moment the tweet went live, the gaming community flooded the replies.

[CodeMonkey: Resume submitted! Can’t wait to work with you! (PS: I’m definitely not applying just to find your physical location and fight you IRL)]

[Salty_Tears: Black-hearted dev, pay for my smashed keyboard!]

[IndieFanatic: Hey Nova, how does it feel surviving a Titan Interactive assassination attempt?]

[LoreMaster: You sadistic bastard, please just tell me what the true ending is. I physically cannot beat 5-BC.]

[CasualGamer: Wait, what? A new game already? I just got here and I’m currently getting my skull caved in on 5-Cell.]

[VOD_Goblin: Nexus rn TT: "Who the fuck puts the true ending behind the hardest difficulty and locks the lore away if you can’t beat it?!"]

[SkinCollector: Bro, all these alternate outfits in the game... you seriously let us unlock them for free just by playing? You’re not gonna charge us $5 per color swap? o_0]

Reading through the tweet replies on his second monitor, Silver felt his entire body relax.

It was like stepping out of a suffocating sauna into a cool breeze.

"Alright chat, today is the day I finally give you a hitless Collector run," Silver smiled, booting up Dead Cells for his live broadcast.

Suddenly, a massive, screen-shaking alert took over his stream overlay.

"Oh shit, thanks to Nova for the max-tier superchat! Appreciate it, man—" Silver started his usual auto-pilot thank you, before freezing completely.

"Wait. Nova? Which Nova?" He rapidly clicked the donator’s profile badge in the chat window.

Under the username, the platform had officially verified the account as:

[Nova - Lead Designer, Sprout Studio].

Without a second of hesitation, Silver immediately sent a live Discord voice-call request to the account.

Ethan accepted it instantly.

"You depraved, sadistic bastard! Do you have any actual human conscience, releasing a game like this? You are a cold-blooded sociopath!" Silver immediately started fake-crying the second the audio connected.

God only knew how much psychological torture Ethan had put him through between his two games.

Sometimes, in the dead of night, Silver genuinely wished he had never heard the name ’Nova’.

The most frustrating thing was the retention factor. When other studios made a game brutally difficult, players just rage-quit and uninstalled.

It cured their gaming addiction instantly.

But Ethan’s games were different.

The incredibly tight combat loop and the staggering depth of the build synergies made it physically impossible to put the controller down.

Even when a boss brutally murdered you, the game instantly convinced you that if you just got one different weapon drop, or dodged one half-second earlier next run, you would absolutely win.

The repeated dopamine hits, the rush of breaking past a skill ceiling, the sheer euphoria of flawlessly parrying a boss to death on Nightmare difficulty—it was intoxicating.

And if you didn’t conquer 5-BC, you couldn’t see the true ending. It was the ultimate carrot dangling over a pit of spikes, driving countless players to die, curse the developer’s bloodline, and instantly hit ’Restart Run’.

"Emotions? Hahahahaha," Ethan laughed dryly over the voice call. "Emotions are the cruelest mechanic in this world."

"Besides," Ethan added smoothly, "isn’t the game Very Easy, just like you said?"

Ethan finally let out a long sigh.

It was a bizarre paradox.

The players were currently getting abused to the point of delirium by Dead Cells, yet they stubbornly kept up the joke.

In the dead of night, Ethan couldn’t help but feel frustrated.

People always joked about having ’cheat codes’ in life, but what good was a system that wouldn’t even let him clear the very first milestone because gamers were too stubborn to admit defeat?

Silver was so thoroughly choked on his own words he couldn’t speak for a solid ten seconds.

Meanwhile, the viewership in Silver’s channel was skyrocketing.

The moment the platform’s algorithm detected the verified developer of Dead Cells talking on stream, Surge immediately pushed a mass notification to millions of mobile users.

[The dev behind Dead Cells is currently in SilverShot’s stream! Come watch the roast!]

When users saw the push notification, they almost didn’t believe it.

But upon joining the stream, they found Silver staring blankly at his monitor, his face completely flushed red as he struggled to come up with a comeback.

Finally, Silver just let out a weak, defeated breath.

"Yeah. It’s... it’s very easy."

While still on the call, Silver deliberately dragged the Dead Cells Steam page onto his primary monitor.

He scrolled down to the user review section.

He hadn’t actually left an official review on the platform yet.

He stared at the rating options.

[Very Easy] [Very Average] [Super Difficult]

His face twisted in a mixture of pain and spite. He forcefully slammed his mouse cursor over the [Very Easy] button.

Ding.

The crisp mechanical sound echoed clearly over the microphone.

[Review posted successfully. Thank you for your feedback!]

Seeing him actually commit to the bit live on stream, the chat absolutely lost their minds laughing.

In this twisted psychological war between the developer and the players, it was genuinely impossible to tell who was actually torturing who.

On the other end of the call, Ethan went completely silent.

I just want to clear a single system milestone.

Is it really that hard?

Every protagonist in a transmigration story was supposed to get a golden finger that made their life easier.

But Ethan? He had a system he could only stare at, entirely blocked by the collective stubbornness of the gaming community. He felt a profound ache in his soul.

"I really hope you have that exact same energy for the next game," Ethan finally replied, taking a deep breath.

Hearing the subtle threat in his tone, the stream chat immediately erupted in panic.

[xX_Sniper_Xx: HE’S COOKING AGAIN NOOO]

[GamerDad88: SILVER YOU FUCKING DOOMED US ALL]

[PraiseTheSun_99: bro just triggered the boss’s second phase]