Parallel World Game Developer

Chapter 20: Chapter #20: Throwing Down a Rope

Hello there!

Double Chapters for today because I wasn’t able to upload yesterday! Also, be sure to check out my P@tr30n page if you’re up to reading some advanced Chapters!

p@tr30n. com/Chaos_King

Don’t forget to leave a comment and tell what you think of the story! Also, a review would help. Enjoy reading!

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"That’s how he signed this contract with you?" Marcus asked, having just learned the full context of the meeting after Carter left the building.

Marcus genuinely couldn’t believe the regional director had casually handed over a ninety-ten revenue split just to secure a corporate transfer out of a dead-end division.

"Still, putting a hard deadline to release a brand-new game before October is insane pressure," Marcus said, letting out a helpless breath.

As a fellow game design major, he knew firsthand that building a game from scratch was a grueling, unforgiving process.

He had always assumed the flawless mechanical framework of Dead Cells was the product of Ethan secretly grinding away at a design document for years.

If Ethan planned to maintain that level of prestige, they absolutely couldn’t afford to rush their next release.

A studio’s reputation with the player base was fragile; one bad game could ruin everything.

"Why don’t we just make Dead Cells 2?" Marcus suggested, pacing anxiously across the office carpet. "Sure, it’s basically milking our own IP, but the hype is still massive. There have to be millions of players dying to know what happens to the protagonist after he escapes the time loop."

Ethan looked at him, slightly bewildered. "What do you mean? Didn’t we already agree on the timeline? Our next game drops in three months."

It was only April. Three months from now would be July. They had more than enough time to beat the October deadline.

"Exactly, so let’s push out a sequel while the iron is hot," Marcus nodded emphatically. "Now that we have thirty talented people in the studio, we can easily scale up the map size, complicate the lore, and accelerate the development cycle."

"No. We aren’t reheating leftovers," Ethan said, firmly cutting off his roommate’s train of thought. "We’re building an entirely new game."

"Wait, do you already have an idea? A design document?" Marcus looked at Ethan in surprise.

"Yeah. I was planning to hold an all-hands meeting to pitch it to the new hires today anyway, but since you’re asking, I’ll give you the preview." Ethan stood up, walked over to his heavy oak desk, and pulled a printed dossier from the top drawer.

The cover page featured a few crisp, bold words on plain white A4 paper.

"This War of Mine?" Marcus read aloud, his brow furrowing. "What is this? A military shooter?"

"Yes and no," Ethan shook his head. "Haven’t the players been endlessly bragging about how our games are ’Very Easy’? This time, I want to break them. I want them to hit a wall so hard they have no choice but to admit they are completely out of their depth and lack the mental fortitude to survive."

"And I have plenty of other ideas lined up after this one," Ethan added casually. "Do you remember the lore book you can inspect in the starting zone of Dead Cells, right near the hanging glass tubes? The one titled Legends of the Indies?"

Marcus nodded slowly.

He had seen that specific background asset countless times during his endless restart loops.

He had only interacted with it a couple of times during the early alpha builds and hadn’t thought much of it since, but he vaguely remembered the cryptic text.

The book contained bizarre, seemingly disconnected flavor text that players had spent weeks trying to decipher on Reddit, to no avail.

"Do you remember the exact text?" Ethan asked, a faint smile playing on his lips. "It read: This entry is called Hollow Knight. How many consecutive downward slashes can you chain together? When players read that, they were totally confused, wondering if pogo-slashing was some hidden mechanic they hadn’t unlocked yet."

"Wait, stop," Marcus held up a hand, feeling a sudden headache coming on. If he was understanding this correctly, Ethan already had multiple fully fleshed-out game concepts mapped out in his head, and he had been quietly seeding them as easter eggs in their previous titles.

"Are you seriously human?" Marcus stared at Ethan, feeling like he was looking at a complete stranger. When did his slacker roommate suddenly turn into an omniscient industry oracle?

"I’m perfectly human. So you really don’t need to stress about our production pipeline," Ethan laughed.

"But... why are you even keeping me around?" Marcus muttered, looking down at his shoes. "I don’t know advanced coding. My grades in the design program were garbage..."

He knew how ruthless Ethan had been when screening resumes for the new hires. Ethan had exclusively poached top-tier talent.

Yet, Marcus had been handed a one percent equity stake in Sprout Studio for doing basic asset integration.

Even at just one percent, the sheer volume of dividends from Dead Cells was a staggering amount of wealth that most people would never see in a lifetime.

Ethan walked over and lightly punched him in the chest. "Back when I was completely broke, when I couldn’t even afford rent, you covered my meals without asking questions. What did you tell me back then?"

Ethan had fully assimilated the original owner’s memories. He knew their shared history.

Throughout their entire college career, Marcus was the only one who genuinely had his back.

When Ethan had rejected the massive buyout offer from Titan Interactive, Marcus was the only one who got genuinely angry, purely because he thought Ethan had thrown away a life-changing opportunity.

"Technical skills can be trained. Experience can be bought," Ethan said softly. "My brother might climb the mountain a little slower, but I’m sitting in a helicopter right now. Throwing down a rope isn’t exactly a problem."

Marcus let out a long breath, a genuine smile breaking across his face. "Alright, I’m done overthinking it. Who am I to argue if the universe decided I’m destined for the good life?"

He turned and walked out of the private office, waving the design document in the air as he stepped into the main developer bullpen.

"Alright, everybody stop what you’re doing! Lead Designer Nova wants to hold a quick all-hands meeting."

He tapped the folder against his palm.

"The new project officially starts today."

The room went quiet as all thirty developers raised their heads.

Over the past few days, they had only been familiarizing themselves with the engine and pushing bug fixes for Dead Cells.

Everyone assumed they’d be coasting on maintenance duty for at least half a year before touching a new IP. They were moving this fast?

By the time Ethan walked into the glass-walled conference room, the entire team was already seated around the long table.

He walked straight to the head of the table and plugged his USB drive into the presentation laptop.

"Today, I’m going to walk you through an anti-traditional war game," Ethan announced.

As he spoke, the massive projector screen behind him flickered to life, displaying a single piece of high-resolution concept art.

The image depicted the interior of a ruined apartment. The walls were riddled with deep, jagged cracks, the plaster peeling away to reveal raw brick. Every surface was choked by a thick, suffocating layer of gray dust.

In the center of the room, a woman held a man tightly in her arms.

A massive, bloody blast wound was hollowed out of his chest, staining their tattered clothes a brilliant, terrifying crimson.

The woman rested her forehead against the dead man’s temple, weeping silently into the dark.

Against the far wall, another man sat slumped on the floor, his face buried in his grimy hands in a posture of total despair.

There was no electricity.

The only light in the oppressive space bled through a few splintered wooden boards hastily nailed over a shattered window.

In the corner of the room, a filthy, hollow-eyed child stood holding a teddy bear missing half its limbs, staring at the horrific scene with dead, indifferent eyes.

"In this game, the player is not a super-soldier," Ethan’s calm voice cut through the heavy silence of the room. "You are a civilian. And your only objective is to survive in a city tearing itself apart."