Chapter 140: Chapter 139: Tower Defense Frankenstein
Actually, the title *Druid vs. Necromancer* is surprisingly fitting.
Druids advocate for life returning to nature, while Necromancers want to reuse every single corpse.
It’s a fundamental, irreconcilable conflict.
Turning them into Skeleton Soldiers and zombies, using them as materials for casting and alchemy, illegally digging up graves, and engaging in underground trade.
Sucking the very marrow from their bones, in the most literal sense.
There’s a good reason why Necromancers aren’t well-liked.
What’s more, their experiments often destroy the surrounding vegetation.
For the Druids, who are all basically hardcore environmentalists, this is more than just a simple conflict.
It’s a blood feud.
It’s comparable to orcas versus humpback whales—a pure, unadulterated blood feud.
Although the environmental damage caused by Necromancers is negligible compared to industrialization.
But industrialization is an unstoppable trend that the small population of Druids can’t possibly resist. So, they continue to focus their ire on their rivals of a thousand years—the Necromancers.
As they say, a wise man picks his battles, and you always go for the softest target.
The two groups have been fighting nonstop for ages.
Plus, people in both professions are very mysterious, so the conflicts between them have always been a favorite story topic for onlookers.
And that creates a hook.
Nice.
’As expected of the rising star I’ve had my eye on.’
Although Uffie’s role at the Zog Group had always been a technical one—focusing on the server side, where she was responsible for the matchmaking system and game synchronization issues...
The only girl in the server-side Magic programming team.
But after participating in various projects for over a year, she’d picked up some basic marketing principles through osmosis.
Games with huge marketing budgets, or games made by famous teams, can get away with names that are completely incomprehensible even after seeing the ads.
Like *Elden Ring*, *The Legend of Zelda*, or *Pocket Monster*.
The protagonist of *The Legend of Zelda* isn’t even Zelda, and *Pocket Monster* is a made-up word.
And then there are those gacha games whose names alone are enough to start a flame war.
Every last one of them has a bizarre name.
But for games with no marketing budget, you have to try and put the game’s selling point right in the title.
Take *Beat Up The Brat*, for example. The fact that this flash game spread so widely across the Chinese internet was largely due to its translated title.
If it had its literal title, *Dad ’n’ Me*, who would know what kind of game it was?
But *Beat Up The Brat*? Damn, that’s got some punch.
It hit on two explosive points: "beat up" and "brat."
Hating kids is just human nature. It’s that universally despised age where they’re a nuisance to everyone—Zog even wanted to go back and brutalize his younger self.
So, even though *Druid vs. Necromancer* sounded a little cheesy, it was an effective title.
The game started up.
For a demo that had only been in production for a day and couldn’t even be called a half-finished product, Zog was surprised that it actually had an opening animation.
’What kind of productivity is this?’
The opening animation was crude—just a few comic-style rough sketches displayed in sequence to introduce the plot.
An evil Grand Necromancer had invented a new zombie-conversion Magic, with a conversion rate far exceeding all previous Magic of its type.
The Grand Necromancer wanted to use it to rule the world, and a righteous Druid had decided to stop his evil plot.
And so, in this stormy, snowy winter, the Druid’s fight against the Grand Necromancer began.
It had a very "heroic epic" feel.
It wasn’t outstanding, but it made no mistakes. As long as it wasn’t a story-driven game, it would suffice.
Level One.
A winding mountain path appeared. The snow-capped mountains in the background were still a work in progress.
A slow-moving zombie walked up the path. The zombie Illusion only had a head; its body was a stick figure.
Then the tutorial appeared.
Absorb the sun’s power to create Magic Power, then use Casting to summon magical plants.
A willow tree with whip-like branches appeared on the roadside. Once the zombie came within range, it would lash out with its branches.
However, because there were no attack animations yet, the combat scene looked a lot like an early *Pocket Monster* game.
The willow tree twitched, indicating it had attacked.
Then the zombie twitched, indicating it had been hit.
Zog reached out a paw and clicked on the willow tree. A hotbar appeared at the bottom of the screen.
It showed three different types of willows. It seemed you needed to spend Magic Power to upgrade them.
Currently, only the first upgrade was available.
’Such a strong sense of déjà vu.’
Zog got it. This was a chimera of *Plants vs. Zombies* and *Kingdom Rush*!
The plants and enemies from *Plants vs. Zombies*, plus the terrain and upgrades from *Kingdom Rush*.
The bad news: it was a chimera.
The good news? It stitched *everything* together.
If the upgrade paths were a little more diverse, it would have stitched in *Bloons Tower Defense* as well.
You got to experience the best parts of three great tower defense games in one.
’What a talent.’
You have to understand, the Zog Group hadn’t released a tower defense game yet. Uffie’s team was breaking new ground, being the first to develop a whole new genre for them.
But after Zog tried it out for a bit, he felt something was off.
It lacked the satisfying feeling from *Plants vs. Zombies* of setting up your defenses and then sitting back to watch your army of plants mow down the zombies.
And it also lacked the strategic depth of *Kingdom Rush*. It felt like it was caught in the middle, good at neither.
If it were actually released, players probably wouldn’t like it very much.
’This won’t do.’
Zog closed the game.
Since he was going to make a tower defense game sooner or later anyway, why not just have Uffie’s team do it?
They had already developed a tower defense system on their own, and they even had their own plant and monster designs. Zog just needed to set the direction for the gameplay, and they could create Otherworld versions of both *Plants vs. Zombies* and *Kingdom Rush*.
’Makes sense.’
Zog scrambled up from his nest.
It was a Slowpoke nest. After experiencing the joy of a *Pocket Monster* merchandise nest, Zog had started getting attached to them.
He never had this habit before.
So he had someone make several more nests and stuff them inside a Treasure Chest Monster. Whenever he wanted to lie down, he could use a Teleportation Array to summon the Treasure Chest Monster to deliver a Dragon nest.
He trotted all the way to the cabin where Uffie’s team was located.
"Paw-Paw Team."
Zog glanced at the small wooden plaque on the door. This was the place.
To make it easier for staff to check for cheating, locking the doors was forbidden.
Zog threw the door open.
"Surprise!"
No reaction.
The room was lifeless.
After several seconds, Uffie finally turned her stiff neck to look at Zog.
The huge dark circles under her eyes made her look like she was transforming into a Zor.
"Ah, it’s the boss..."
Her flat tone and the long pauses between words reminded Zog of the sloth from that one animated movie.
"Are you here for an inspection...? Please, have a seat..."
The others didn’t look any better, looking utterly miserable and as if they were running on fumes.
’Is this the ultimate form of a game developer?’
"What happened to you guys?" Zog asked, a little concerned.
"It’s nothing, just... just... worked for twenty hours, that’s all. I can still keep writing Inscriptions."
Uffie replied haltingly.
"You can stop writing for now."
"Huh? Are we eliminated?"
"No. I’m personally fast-tracking you to the next round. I’m going to mentor you on how to make your game. For the first step, how about we make your Druid plants a little cuter?"
