Inside a hot pot restaurant in Magic City's MixC Mall.
Lucas was having hot pot with Rachel and Anna.
Beef, tripe, omasum, beef rolls…
You can't call it hot pot if there's no beef.
"You're amazing! The game community is going crazy, and the players are loving it too!" Anna, who now knew Lucas pretty well, looked excited as she stared at the news on her phone.
"Anna, don't call me amazing. I'm not anyone special. Just call me Lucas," he waved it off.
She was hyping it up, but Lucas knew clearly: the so-called buzz was really just within the niche circle of gentleman game developers.
As for the overall game industry?
At most, it made a small splash in the indie game space—and not even a big one.
Lucas was very clear about that.
"I feel like I shouldn't have said 50,000 sales at the start." Rachel spoke up, but she was smiling.
Hearing that, Lucas put down his chopsticks and smiled back. "Well, that's on you. You set the goal yourself, didn't you?"
"Ugh, I even wanted to invite you to join my company… but now it feels like I was dreaming," Anna said with a bit of frustration.
"Please, leave my junior out of your mess. Your three games tanked worse and worse each time," Rachel stabbed right into the wound.
"Okay, sure, those three games flopped, but I had my reasons, alright? I only handled the story and writing. The rest was outsourced. And to be fair, players did say the story parts were solid!" Anna protested.
"By the way, Lucas, can you help me figure out what went wrong with those three games?" Anna asked hopefully.
"Poor focus and bloated systems," Lucas said, glancing at his phone. After watching a few short videos online, he already had a good idea.
"Huh...?" Anna looked confused.
"Put simply, Anna, your games tried to include a little bit of everything. But you're making small-budget indie games, not AAA titles. Even big games mostly add features to support the main idea—not to be the main dish," Lucas explained.
Anna nodded with a look of sudden realization. She kind of understood… maybe not fully.
Still, even if she didn't totally get it, she felt too awkward to keep pressing the issue at the dinner table. So she switched topics.
"So, what are your plans next, Lucas?"
"I'm thinking of starting a small game studio," Lucas said with a smile. It wasn't a secret—it had been in his plans for a while.
"You're starting your own company?" Anna was a little surprised.
"Yeah." Lucas nodded.
Anna sat there thinking for a while, then made up her mind. "Lucas, what do you think of me? Could I join you and help make games together?"
She still really loved game development.
It's just that after three failed projects, she was feeling a bit discouraged.
But now she realized something.
Just because she hadn't made a hit game yet—did that mean she wasn't cut out for this?
No, not at all.
It just meant she hadn't found the right way to succeed yet. And finding someone strong to team up with? That might be the key.
She had looked deeply into Mirror before coming here.
And from that, she came to a conclusion: this game's success definitely wasn't just luck.
After hearing Lucas's thoughts on her three games, she understood a bit—though not completely.
But there was one thing she was sure of: this underclassman her best friend mentioned, making a game for the first time, definitely had the potential to become a top-level developer!
Some game designers might make one great game thanks to a flash of inspiration, then fade into obscurity.
But others have a clear vision of what kind of game they want to create.
Lucas was clearly one of those people.
Failing three games in a row made Anna face reality about her own skills.
Listening to her talk, Lucas—still sitting across from her—fell into thought.
He briefly looked at the three games she mentioned.
Just like Anna said, the story was the main highlight.
Most of the negative reviews were about the gameplay design, while most of the praise was about the story.
And it wasn't just one game—all three followed the same pattern.
That clearly pointed to good writing and story planning.
If Lucas wanted to make more games in the future, he knew he couldn't do it all by himself. Things like the main story and overall structure—those he could handle.
But writing out a full script?
Even with a system to help him, doing it all alone wasn't realistic.
In his past life, games like Red Dead Redemption 2 had over 2,000 pages of main story text. If you stacked all the written content for the full game into A4-sized pages, it would be 2.4 meters tall.
For something like Mirror, he could handle it solo. But for larger games with way more text, there was no way he could cover everything.
"Of course, no problem. If you're serious, Anna, once I get the company stuff sorted out, we can definitely talk more," Lucas said to her.
"Alright then, I'll wait for your message, Lucas!" Anna replied.
"Okay, okay, if you two don't eat, I'm finishing all the beef," Rachel chimed in from the side.
"Hey Ningxue, how about you join us too? With our skills, we could build something big together!" Anna said with a cheerful smile, glancing at Rachel.
Rachel took a sip of her milk and gave Anna a quick glance but didn't respond.
"I wonder how popular Mirror can get in the end… Maybe break a million copies in the first month?" Anna guessed.
"Cut that in half and it might be possible. Anything more than that is probably out of reach," Lucas said with a smile.
He had a pretty clear idea of what to expect—after all, it was an 18+ game, which came with a lot of restrictions.
The group continued chatting and eating until around 9 PM. Lucas then saw both girls off at their apartment complexes before catching a ride home.
(End of Chapter)