Parallel World Game Developer

Chapter 16: Chapter #16: Good News? There’s A New Game. Bad News? There’s A New Game.

Hello there!

Hey, gents and mademoiselles (if there’s any... Comment if you’re one!)!

From now on, the update schedule will be on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.

Also, by Chapter 20, I’m planning to start a P@tre0n. I know, I know, I’m a capitalistic bastard. But I really need some kind of support to keep myself motivated here. Those who have some money to spare can support me there. And those who don’t have... well, me too. That’s all! Enjoy reading!

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"What kind of psychological torture are you planning to hit me with next? Bring it on! I’m completely fearless at this point!" Silver challenged, puffing his chest out to the webcam without missing a beat.

"For the next game, I guarantee the mechanics will be so incredibly easy you won’t even realize you’re playing," Ethan promised over the voice call.

"Oh, you’re that confident?" Silver scoffed, slightly taken aback. "Look, playing games just requires hands. You just need to put in the hours and practice. Like I said, your games are very simple."

"Then everyone should be ready," Ethan replied smoothly.

He didn’t say anything more, but the blueprint for his next project was already locking into place in his mind.

It would be a game designed to specifically torture the player’s conscience.

When forced to view war from the perspective of desperate, starving civilians, what choices would these arrogant gamers make?

They all claimed his games were just a matter of ’skill issues’ and raw reaction times.

But this new game wouldn’t require any mechanical operation at all.

You could literally play it with one hand and a broken mouse.

"I don’t believe you for a second," Silver shook his head. What kind of game could possibly give him trouble if it didn’t require mechanical skill?

[GamerDad88: bro... don’t drag us with you]

[xX_Sniper_Xx: Cursed to death, Silver just lost 114,514 cells]

[VOD_Goblin: skill issue > mechanical issue]

"Alright, I’m logging off for the night. In three months, I hope everyone is ready to welcome our new game with a smile," Ethan said. After saying his goodbyes, he disconnected from the call.

Silver glanced over at his stream analytics and was genuinely shocked.

There were millions of concurrent viewers sitting in his channel! The metrics on Surge were strictly audited; there was absolutely no bot-inflation happening.

Usually, as the top-ranked action streamer on the platform, he pulled in a few hundred thousand concurrents, and that alone was considered the absolute peak of the platform’s ecosystem.

"You guys really swarmed in fast tonight!" Silver frowned, looking at the rapidly scrolling chat.

"Well, as far as I can tell, I’ve got good news and bad news for you guys," Silver said, looking like he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. "The good news is that in three months, we’re getting a brand new game."

"The bad news is that in three months, we are all going to endure a brand new cycle of suffering and torture." His expression twisted into a pained grimace.

At the very beginning, he had just been tortured so badly by Getting Over It that he wanted to bait other players into breaking their setups so he wouldn’t suffer alone.

But he never expected Ethan to actually wage a full-blown psychological war against the player base, let alone follow it up with an undeniable masterpiece like Dead Cells.

On the major storefronts, games were judged by two metrics. The first was the classic numerical aggregate score.

Currently, both Getting Over It and Dead Cells were sitting comfortably above a 9.0 out of 10.

But there was also the developer feedback questionnaire—a survey that asked players to rate the difficulty of the game.

Right below the glowing 9.0 scores, the difficulty ratings for both titles were overwhelmingly flooded with the [Very Easy] tag.

Unsuspecting casual players would see the high praise, glance at the [Very Easy] consensus, and happily buy the games.

Less than half an hour later, they would stumble out of the game in pure, agony, staring blankly at the review page.

[Brothers, it’s a trap. You call this fucking easy?! Do any of you have a human conscience?!]

Even mainstream game critics were getting in on the joke, writing completely misleading reviews.

And whenever a battered new player crawled into the forums to complain about the difficulty, the veteran players would instantly bare their teeth and swarm them.

[You think this is hard? For such a simple game, you literally just need hands. Sounds like a massive skill issue to me. Just gid gud bruv...]

[Sorry bro, your princess is in another castle.]

[Git gud.]

As the hardcore players pushed deeper into the brutal 5-Boss Cell difficulty, the true plot of Dead Cells slowly unraveled, revealing a profound sense of twisted, black humor. Everything was dead.

The island was utterly destroyed, the promised elixir of life was a myth, and hope was entirely eradicated.

And yet, the King’s wish had technically been fulfilled. He had achieved eternal life, regardless of the horrific cost.

Then, the headless, green-sludge protagonist had awakened, and history began to repeat itself.

The lore rooms painted a grim picture.

The former King had ruthlessly strip-mined the island’s subterranean caverns for red crystals, desperate to synthesize the Philosopher’s Stone.

But the caves weren’t just full of gems; they were choked with toxic gas and nightmarish monsters.

Blinded by arrogance, the King fully trusted the Alchemist’s promises of immortality. At first, the Alchemist applied the raw red crystals directly to fresh corpses.

When the bodies failed to reanimate, they were unceremoniously dumped into the island’s cemetery, buried alongside massive piles of hazardous crystal runoff.

The volatile mixture of rotting flesh and red crystals mutated the local flora.

The infection spread rapidly from the cemetery, creeping into the Slumbering Sanctuary and gradually seeping into the island’s sewer system.

The seeds of the Malaise had taken root.

But the King and the Alchemist ignored the warning signs, pushing forward with their research.

If dead bodies didn’t work, they needed living test subjects. The King authorized the use of the prison population.

Players pieced this horrific timeline together through scattered lore fragments.

Deep in the dungeon biomes, the protagonist could find a bloodstained note resting on a surgical table.

[Applying the crystals to the corpses has yielded no results yet, but I cannot give up. The experiments must continue!]

Beside the note sat a transparent glass vat, bubbling violently with a reactive mixture of red and blue chemicals.

Because the toxic waste from these horrific live experiments was dumped directly into the sewers, the island began to breed aggressive, mutated monsters.

The starving prisoners in the lower cells ate infected rats and crows out of desperation.

When their relatives visited the prison, they unknowingly carried the virus back to the Stilt Village.

Soon, the entire kingdom was gripped by the Malaise.

When the epidemic finally breached the prison walls, the King acted to suppress the truth and protect his legacy.

He ordered any villager who had visited the prison—and anyone showing suspected symptoms—to be quarantined immediately.

Anyone who disobeyed the lockdown was executed on the spot.

At first, the villagers simply tried to bury their dead. But before long, the dead started rising, and the citizens were forced to fight off the mutated corpses of their own neighbors.

And the King? The man who was once hailed as the hero of the island simply locked the gates. He chose to fortify his own castle, completely abandoning his people to the slaughter.

His royal guards manned the high ramparts, watching the kingdom burn.

With the infection raging unchecked beyond the walls, the royal jailers grew bored.

To pass the time, they invented sadistic games—stringing up exhausted prisoners by their necks, or tossing condemned inmates into the bottomless pits just to listen to their desperate screams fade into the dark.

The King had two primary enforcers: the Hand of the King and the Giant.

The two massive warriors absolutely despised each other, but they shared a mutual, burning hatred for the Alchemist.

The Giant still possessed a shred of honor and justice. He repeatedly warned the King that the spreading infection could no longer be ignored, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.

Finally, the Giant led a massive prison revolt—an event the lore dubbed the Night of Bloody Riots.

That night, the sky burned blood-red. Corpses piled so high there was no room left in the cemetery to bury them.

The bodies began to violently mutate, and the entire island officially collapsed into anarchy.

The King abandoned the prison entirely, retreating to the highest peak of his mountain castle to sit safely on his throne.

The island fractured, transforming into a horrific, inescapable hellscape crawling with monsters.

In an act of sheer desperation, the King summoned the Alchemist one last time.

He hoped the mysterious scientist could somehow save the kingdom, or at the very least, save the King himself.

Up until the very end, the King never once doubted the Alchemist.