By mid-November, about 70% of Outlast's content was completed.
The remaining 30% mostly involved voice acting, scene building, and cutscenes.
For Lucas, the biggest takeaway from working on Outlast was gaining a much deeper understanding of how to use the game editor.
At the same time, the game's content still fit well within his monthly 2048 resource limit, so he had no issues there.
Besides game development, the Nebula Games platform also quietly went online during this time.
Lucas promoted it a little through his own social media.
But it didn't make much of a splash.
No industry giants noticed. No big media coverage. None of that happened.
It was just a few smaller sites that had nothing better to write about, so they shoved the news into some subcategory.
If you didn't go looking for it, you'd never even see it.
The only games available on the platform right now were To the Moon and Undertale.
As for sales? The two games had sold a total of 172 copies.
But total playtime? Not even 50 hours combined across all users.
Clearly, the people buying were mostly Lucas's fans, just showing support by buying an extra copy through his platform to support a developer and company they liked.
Lucas wasn't too discouraged by this. He knew a platform wasn't going to take off overnight.
Day by day, December rolled in.
Outlast's development was now nearly complete.
Promotions had also started to roll out one by one.
One day, Lucas suddenly posted an update on social media.
The post was short. Just a single sentence and a game poster.
"Only by escaping… can you survive!"
"December 15 – Outlast begins!"
Beneath the text was a game poster.
The background looked like a hospital room, with medical tools scattered across the floor and tables.
On the wall, two large words were written: Outlast.
Under night vision, the letters appeared black—making it instantly look like blood stains.
And under the bed in the corner of the room, a terrified person lay crouched. His index finger was pressed to his lips.
The whole image gave off a seriously creepy vibe.
After Lucas made that post, tons of media outlets jumped in to cover Outlast.
The game also went up early on the official platform.
It was still in pre-order mode.
The price was 15 dollar—not expensive at all.
After all, Outlast wasn't a very big game.
At the same time, discussions about the game exploded across gaming forums and online communities.
Of course, this wasn't something the players started themselves. Even though To the Moon gained some attention thanks to Undertale, and even won first place in the sci-fi category...
Lucas's name alone wasn't strong enough to create that kind of buzz.
The real reason behind all this was, obviously, money power.
...
Time passed day by day, and finally, Outlast was ready to launch.
In Shark TV's gaming section, a livestream called "Old Boy Commentary" was on.
"Why only me? Mike went for a medical checkup, he probably won't be back until later."
"Stop bringing up horror games. I already told you, horror games don't scare me at all. It's like breathing."
"You want me to stream horror games because you think I'll get super scared, right? But if I just sit there with no expression—like it's nothing—you'll be so let down. Right? You'll be so disappointed."
"Alright, here's the deal. You all know I don't feel anything when playing horror games. I've played way too many already. So let's try it out first. If it's not scary, we'll play something else once Mike is back."
"Okay, okay, I'll turn on the camera. But I'm telling you, you'll be disappointed. That face you're all waiting to see? It's not gonna happen."
"Because I'm super calm. Horror games are as easy as breathing for me."
Sean was commentating on a game video, sounding very calm and chill while looking at the chat.
He said it three times—as easy as breathing.
He was very confident about how brave he was.
He opened the official game platform, ignoring the chat spam saying "bro can't even launch the game on his own."
After some fiddling, Sean finally installed the game, turned on the camera, and launched it.
A quick "zzzz" static noise played, and then the game screen appeared.
The whole screen had a bluish-green tint, like those old-school horror movies.
The background looked like a hospital building, dimly lit with moving clouds, giving off a creepy vibe.
"There's a little bit of a feeling now... just a little. Still, like I said before, horror games are as easy as breathing."
Sean spoke while watching the chat.
He still looked pretty confident at this point.
"For difficulty, let's go with Normal for the first run."
The game started in darkness, with a deep voiceover and a creepy background track mixed with static-filled car radio sounds.
"My name is Miles Upshur, just an ordinary reporter. In the distant Colorado mountains, an abandoned mental hospital has reopened—Mount Massive Asylum."
"But one day, a mysterious person sent me a letter, telling me there's a huge secret hidden deep inside this asylum. So I came here to investigate."
With that narration playing through the car radio, the game quickly explained its world.
Sean showed no change in emotion—just as calm as he said he'd be.
Because honestly, most horror games and movies start off exactly like this.
After the voiceover ended, the game screen kicked in.
But it was still not interactive yet.
The main character was driving toward Mount Massive Asylum.
With the dark colors and the static radio in the background, the mood was already set.
The car soon arrived at the entrance of the asylum.
A tutorial popped up, telling the player to pick up a camera and a letter from the passenger seat.
The letter repeated what the voiceover said before—the main character, a reporter, came to Mount Massive Asylum looking for a big story.
After picking it up, the game showed the first task: Enter Mount Massive Asylum.
Now the player could finally control the character.
Getting out of the car, with the wind blowing and leaves rustling in the night, and the creepy setting of a mental hospital—Sean's heartbeat started to speed up just a little.
(End of Chapter)
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