In the meeting room, Lucas was explaining Undertale to Anna and Rachel.
As for Mirror, there wasn't much to worry about — they just needed to follow the previous setup and add new character art and dialogue.
Most of their time from now on would be focused on developing Undertale.
Undertale was originally made by a solo indie developer in Lucas's past life.
But it touched players all over the world and became a classic meta game.
Unlike other meta games like Pony Island, ICEY, or The Stanley Parable, Undertale combined meta elements and RPG elements in a way that changed how players saw traditional RPGs.
Its core idea was pretty clear.
The heart of Undertale was the story and the way it played with meta elements — gameplay was more like a side dish.
Still, Lucas planned to improve a few things from the original version.
For example, the art style — compared to the original, the visuals definitely needed an upgrade.
The pixel graphics and hand-drawn lines in the original Undertale weren't a creative choice — it was just because the developer had no money.
After the game blew up, critics and the media started praising its "unique" art style, but that was just nonsense.
Pixel graphics aren't always low-budget — take Octopath Traveler, for example, which used pixel art to mix a modern and retro look. Other nostalgic games use it on purpose too.
But for a story-focused meta game like this, better visuals would only make the experience better.
Games like Minecraft use pixel graphics because it fits the block-building gameplay.
But Undertale's look clearly wasn't about supporting the gameplay — it was just a compromise.
That said, Undertale's story and music were truly great.
The final battle theme with Sans, Megalovania, and Undyne's Battle Against a True Hero were both unforgettable.
After explaining some of the key elements of Undertale to them, Lucas also showed Rachel the character design sketches.
There was the kind and gentle "goat mom," the king who looked friendly at first but turned into a trident-wielding war god in battle, two skeleton brothers — one tall, one short — and a smiling flower who looked cute but was totally twisted inside…
Lucas would personally take charge of the main character designs.
As for the regular monsters, those would be handled by outsourced artists. As long as they met the standard, he'd approve them.
Next was the story structure — there were several paths: normal route, pacifist route, genocide route, and hypocrite route.
Lucas used the memory capsules he drew from the system to rebuild the story for each path.
The rest of the job would be for Anna to fill in the details.
Once everyone knew their role, Lucas sat back down and started working in the official engine's backend, setting up the foundation for Undertale.
"Rachel, was this how you guys developed Mirror too?"
Anna was still a little shocked as she looked at the super detailed draft in front of her.
Rachel, who was already sketching based on the character reference sheet, looked confused. "Yeah. Why? What's the problem, Anna?"
"The problem is — this is way too smooth! The plan is so clear!" Anna's eyes widened, though she kept her voice low.
Even though Undertale felt like a small-scale game…
It all felt so organized — almost like even a dog could help make it.
Thinking back to the chaos in her last company's projects, Anna suddenly wondered if all those people she hired were just pretending to work.
While letting that thought stew in the back of her mind, Anna quietly read through Undertale's story draft, thinking about how she should fill it in.
.........
Meanwhile, Lucas wasn't thinking about any of that.
He was busy testing things out in the official game engine.
Compared to before, the amount of computing power available to him had increased by about twenty times.
Right now, the system shows 0/1024MB of usable resources.
In the old world's terms, that's about 1GB. But Lucas had already gone through the tutorials and updates.
In this parallel world, that amount of resources was actually more than enough.
If you wanted more, though—
You'd either have to raise your designer rank, or spend money.
And how do you level up? Either you slowly grind it out—which basically means gaining experience over time—
Or you earn well-known awards, or do something that really moves the game industry forward.
In a way, the release of Mirror did push the adult game scene toward something new.
After getting a rough understanding of everything, Lucas shook his head and stopped thinking about it.
He turned his focus to developing Undertale.
As far as indie games go, this one wasn't too hard for Lucas.
With the tech level of this parallel world, building a game like that wouldn't take much time or effort.
The real time sinks would be the story text, character art, and music.
Because in Undertale, the music is genuinely great.
That's something you see a lot in other indie games too.
Story, music, and creative gameplay—these are the three key weapons of indie games.
"Anna, who is this guy trash-talking us?"
"Some troll looking for attention. He's probably jealous of Mirror's sales, and now that his own game is about to release, he's using this to stir up drama. He's done this kind of thing before."
Lucas noticed the noise coming from Anna and Rachel's side and got curious: "What's going on?"
When he walked over, Anna picked up Rachel's phone and handed it to him: "Here, this guy's just trying to start trouble."
Lucas took the phone. It was showing a reposted video by a media outlet called Game Times.
He clicked play. On screen, a middle-aged man was reviewing a game—with the character art from Mirror, though fully clothed.
"To grab players' attention, some game designers these days will stoop to anything."
"This is vulgar. Incredibly vulgar."
"Game development is an art. Calling something like this a game is an insult to the industry."
"Do designers like this actually push the industry forward?"
"No, they don't."
"If something like this appeared in my upcoming game Blossom, I'd be too ashamed to show my face."
"That's why I hope more game designers stop chasing cheap tricks, and instead focus on how to make real quality games, not this kind of garbage just to boost sales."
The whole clip was about two minutes long, filled with his self-righteous rants.
But when Lucas scrolled through the comments, he found the interesting part.
Aside from a few fans cheering the guy on, a lot of people were roasting him.
"Bell The Blabbermouth, at it again?"
"Vulgar? Guess I'll have to check it out myself!"
"When others make a game—it's trash. When I make a game—it's art!"
"Come on, just say it—when's your new game dropping?"
"Dude upstairs, clearly you weren't paying attention. He already slipped it in—Blossom is the name."
After watching the video, reading the comments, and listening to Anna's breakdown,
Lucas pretty much figured it out.
The guy's name was Buzz Bell, a designer under the FlowArts Studio brand. Though actually, he was the studio's owner.
His reputation in the gaming world was very mixed.
To be fair, he had made some decent games in the past.
In recent years, while his games haven't exactly blown up, the quality has never been bad either.
What really ruins things is how Bell acts as a person.
He often goes out of his way to pick popular and controversial games just to talk trash about them—using that attention to promote his own work.
And it's not just Lucas—plenty of other game developers have been targeted by him too.
(end of chapter)