When Hector said that, Lucas gave a knowing smile.
He didn't say a word—just quietly placed a Black Knight with a huge sword on the Road of Sacrifices map.
Was the game too hard?
Lucas had already thought this through carefully, even before starting development, and had done market research.
Why not follow the game's story order and make Dark Souls 1 first, but choose Dark Souls 3 instead?
Because in terms of difficulty, DS3 was much friendlier for new players.
And Dark Souls wasn't some game made just to make players suffer.
Once you got the hang of it and played it a couple of times, then beat your enemies through your own effort, you'd realize this game was insanely fun—pure joy from start to finish.
The only thing was… that joy came at a bit of a cost.
But Hector clearly didn't know that yet.
From Lucas's look and actions, Hector could tell he had no intention of making changes.
All Hector could do was quietly mourn for the future players.
Players, I tried my best!
At worst, when it came time to design the death screen, he'd tell the art team to make the "You Died" text look nice.
And for every monster, boss, or trap that killed the player, they'd add more close-ups of the death scenes.
Might as well make sure players' deaths had some style and variety.
...
After so long in development, most of Dark Souls was basically done.
What was left was mostly the final touches and testing.
This meant checking all the levels and testing how the player's character fought bosses with different weapons.
Then, based on the test results, they'd decide whether to tweak the details or just release it as it was.
And during this time, besides working on Dark Souls and entering Valiant Hearts: The Great War into the competition, work on Legends of the Three Kingdoms and Fall Guys was also moving along.
For Fall Guys, the main follow-up work was the operations team handling different crossovers for items and skins.
As for maps, besides the official theme maps, the creative workshop played a huge role in keeping Fall Guys popular. Compared to the last lifetime, Fall Guys also added several new modes.
There were team races, solo races, casual stage modes, and rooms where players could set their own rules.
But compared to its peak, Fall Guys had lost quite a bit of heat, with peak daily concurrent players now down to about 150,000.
On the other hand, Legends of the Three Kingdoms had very high player loyalty. Compared to its launch numbers, the player count had actually gone up.
Besides new modes, they also released single-duel matches, 2v2 four-player matches, and some new skin events.
Nebula Games didn't run any big cash-grab top-up events for revenue.
But with a growing player base, the money naturally went up.
Monthly revenue stayed steady at 11 million, and it was clear that for a long time to come, Legends of the Three Kingdoms would be a steady cash cow.
For Fall Guys, the plan was to keep operating it well and keep the community active.
It wouldn't be as hot as launch, but it could have a long lifespan.
The same was true for Legends of the Three Kingdoms — as a card board game, it could also last for years.
At the Nebula Games experience store, Lucas and his team were getting ready for the next stage of warming up the promotion for Dark Souls.
In the project room, all the staff who worked on Dark Souls had gathered.
Hector was reporting on the game's completeness, the pros and cons found in testing, and areas that could be improved.
At the meeting, Hector again brought up the difficulty issue he'd mentioned before.
With a complicated look on his face, he looked at Lucas and hesitated for a while before speaking. "Boss. Lucas, are you really not going to adjust the boss stats for Dark Souls?"
As soon as he said it, not only Hector but also the staff working on combat systems and level stats all nodded without meaning to.
They really felt strongly about it.
Once all the boss parameters were set and the monsters and bosses were placed according to Lucas's requests, they became the first group of testers.
From the start of the game, everyone had played through it.
They knew the game would be hard — after all, the numbers, monster placements, and all the traps in the maps were already there.
But when they actually played it, they realized they had been way too naive.
The difficulty they imagined was nothing like the real thing.
The result was that just the first boss, Iudex Gundyr, blocked most of them for a long time.
Only a few with real talent managed to beat him after a few tries.
And that was only the beginning.
It wasn't just the bosses — even regular enemies like the crystal lizard or the katana guy killed most of them the first time they saw them.
Even the Crestfallen Warrior in Firelink Shrine, after being provoked by three attacks in a row, gave them a serious beating.
It made them question life.
Then came the Lothric Knights on the High Wall — sword ones, spear ones, the mimic chest, the fat winged knight, and the pus of man.
Aside from the hollow skeleton grunts, everything else felt like a boss.
And even those skeleton grunts — if two or three attacked together with some undead dogs — would most likely kill you.
When they heard Hector's words, Rachel, Anna, and the others working on music, scenery, and other parts of the game all looked surprised.
Was this game really that hard?
Were people questioning Boss Lucas's stats?
In their eyes, Lucas had a huge reputation, and this wasn't just a small detail — it was the core of the game: the numbers.
"I'll test it myself later," Lucas said with a smile to Hector.
Hector scratched his head, then went on with his report.
Ethan from marketing took notes on everything.
About twenty minutes later.
Lucas, Anna, Rachel, and Ethan — who needed to see the actual gameplay to plan marketing — came to Hector's project group.
The first thing they saw on the big demo screen hanging on the wall were two big words: You Died.
Clearly someone had died while testing and hadn't quit yet.
Seeing those familiar words and the gray-and-dark-red UI, Lucas smiled.
"Let me take a look."
Pulling up a chair, Lucas sat at the computer, quit to the menu, and started a new game.
Hector and the others beside him were also watching Lucas with eager eyes, wanting to see the moment they'd been waiting for.
(End of The Chapter)
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