Not even twenty minutes after the interview ended — before Lucas even made it back from the game department to Nebula Games — the media already had their reports published.
"Exclusive Scoop: Nebula Games' Next Game Might Be…"
"Lucas: I Think I'm a Warrior of Love"
"No New Game Yet, But Lucas Hints That Nebula's Next Title Could Be a Heartwarming Love Story!"
"Rising Indie Dev Star: The 'Warrior of Love' — Lucas!"
The buzz around Project Odyssey hadn't fully died down yet. To the Moon was still on the official platform's front page.
These interview pieces also helped more players get to know Lucas.
Even the official account saw a big boost — followers had hit 800,000.
At the current pace, hitting a million was just a matter of time.
And in the official profile for the verified account, his portfolio now included To the Moon and a new label: "Warrior of Love."
Under the interview posts, players were busy chatting:
"Warrior of love? What kind of title is that!?"
"Actually… when you think about it, he kind of is. Take Mirror for example — every character had a sweet love story, even if the darker stuff was pretty wild…"
"And then there's the peaceful ending of Undertale — full of love. And now To the Moon — the whole game is literally about love."
"When you put it like that… it actually makes a lot of sense!"
"I'm more curious about what Lucas's next game will be."
"Probably something really heartwarming, right?"
"Of course — he's the warrior of love, after all."
......
But Lucas didn't really pay much attention to all the online talk.
At the moment, he had just arrived at the Nebula Games office and was doing a gacha draw alone.
Golden lights flashed in front of him.
The special effects looked pretty flashy.
But the thing was — it felt too real.
Fifty pulls in one go.
Out of them, he got 37 regular skill books — covering story writing, music, level design, and more.
Four rare skill books — one for architecture, one for psychology, and two for music.
The remaining nine were memory capsules.
"There's one more pull left. Might as well just use it," Lucas said, seeing he had just enough points. Without thinking too much, he went ahead.
As another golden light flashed, he was surprised — something new actually dropped!
It wasn't a rare skill book, but a special item, similar to a memory capsule.
"Single pull miracles? Is it really that superstitious? But this thing?" Lucas paused for a moment.
[Fear Converter] (120 days)
Effect: Turns the player's fear into ten times the points (up to 6 million).
It was clearly a limited-time item—basically a capped double XP card, but only for fear.
Also unclear was whether the cap applied before or after the conversion.
Lucas guessed it was probably the latter.
"And this item is different from the memory capsule—it's time-limited. Are they hinting that I'm supposed to make a horror game next?" Lucas was speechless.
He was still thinking about what kind of game to make next.
It definitely wouldn't be a small project like before. This time, he wanted to aim for a 3D game.
But the scale couldn't be too big either.
Even though game development in this parallel world was much easier than in his past life,
that didn't mean you could skip building up your technical skills.
It was like building with blocks—everyone had access to the same pieces, but what you built depended on your own skill.
Same thing with games, especially for FPS or action games.
Take action games, for example—the most important thing is how the hits feel.
So how do you make hits feel real?
Sound effects, controller feedback, visual effects, UI screen shake... and all kinds of collision detection.
But the core of it all is the freeze frame.
Same goes for FPS games.
So for the next project, Lucas didn't plan to make something too complex.
"If I think about it this way, maybe a horror game isn't a bad idea. I could add in some action elements, and in horror games, action isn't the main focus anyway." Lucas rubbed his chin, thinking.
Even though he had a rough idea, he didn't start right away. Instead, he first looked online to check out the state of horror games in this parallel world.
In short, not too different from his past world.
Whether in film or games, horror titles rarely got big budgets.
Most were small games trying to make it big.
But compared to his past life, the market for pure horror games was a bit bigger here.
Some single games had even sold close to ten million copies.
Of course, these were older games, heavily discounted during every holiday, and had been out for years.
Interestingly, for VR horror games—which seemed like a perfect fit—not a single one existed.
Because the cost of VR game development was huge.
And horror games were already a niche genre.
Unless someone had a deep love for horror, no one would take the risk of making one for VR.
The risk was just too high.
On PC, horror games fell into two camps: low-budget indie types,
like Undertale or To the Moon,
or small-to-mid-sized projects.
After getting a good grasp of the horror game market and trends in this world,
Lucas made up his mind quickly.
He'd go with a small-to-mid-sized project. Thanks to the income from Mirror, Undertale, and To the Moon, Nebula Games had enough funding.
And even though horror games were niche, that only applied when compared to big genres like FPS or RPG.
If done well and it caught on, horror games could still sell big.
Now the question was—what kind of game should he make?
When it came to horror games, Lucas actually had quite a few directions he could take.
But after thinking it over, he decided to go with Outlast as the next project.
Mainly because it was a good fit.
In terms of size, Outlast takes about five hours to finish. Of course, if you speedrun it and just follow the main path, it can be done in under an hour.
Compared to other horror titles like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, or The Evil Within, Outlast had a clever twist.
In this game, the player takes on the role of a reporter who can only run and hide—he can't fight back.
For Lucas, Outlast was really a way to help the team get used to working together—and a chance to test the engine more deeply.
As for the action and combat mechanics, those would mainly be shown through the monsters in the game. The player character would just need to run, climb, and perform basic movement.
All in all, Outlast lined up well with what Lucas had in mind.
The only thing he was a little worried about was the review process.
Unlike Eastern-style horror games like Silent Hill or Fatal Frame, Outlast is full-on Western horror—meaning it's pretty gory.
Even though the review system in this parallel world is very complete, whether it passes or not still depends on what the Game Division says.
(End of The Chapter)
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