No way he could sleep now. He really couldn't.
At the same time, on Blue Star, he wasn't the only one wide awake.
"Guys, I just downloaded this free piano learning app!"
"Holy crap!!"
"Link please! I wanna see if it's still up."
"Holy crap! It's still there! Download it now!!"
"Go, go, go!!"
"I got it. What about you?"
"I already downloaded it, what are you even talking about?"
"What the hell? What did I miss?"
"Snap out of it. You haven't missed anything yet. Hurry and download it! Just search 'Piano Tiles' in the app store."
…
But a few minutes later, the mood in the group chat shifted.
"I don't know why, but I feel like I got tricked."
"Already reported it."
"I even turned on my desk lamp, booted up my PC, got tissues ready—and this is it?"
"Are you sure you're actually here to learn?"
"Not gonna lie, don't you guys think this app is kind of addictive? I haven't stopped playing since I opened it."
"True."
"Instead of a learning app, it feels more like… more like…"
"A game?"
"A game?"
"Damn it!"
"We got played!!!"
…
00:00
"A transfer of 3000 dollar has been received in your account ending in (xxxx)."
Gotta admit, Blue Star moves fast.
[Update]
[Mission: Update the game currently on the store]
[Reward: +1 Reputation Point]
"You're really not gonna let me sleep, are you?" William rolled his eyes.
The mission didn't have a time limit.
But any sane person would know that no one could just calmly go to sleep in this situation. Luckily, the mission came at the perfect time—William couldn't sleep anyway, and just watching numbers go up was getting boring. Might as well do something useful.
Besides, the reward was exactly what he needed right now—reputation points.
Kill two birds with one stone.
His trial for the Cocos2dx engine only had two and a half days left. After that, without the engine, developing games would be a lot harder.
His only option now was to earn reputation points and download the engine from EarthNet.
He'd checked earlier—Cocos2dx cost five reputation points to download, and that was the cheapest engine available.
As for the game update itself, he could follow the original plan and gradually add features, or clean up the code to make it run smoother. But more than anything else, William wanted to add the game's most important feature—leaderboards.
He had already planned to add leaderboards during development, but since that feature required renting a server, and renting a server cost money, it didn't make it into the initial launch.
Now that he's got money, William didn't bother looking for discounts. The leaderboard feature barely used any server resources, and even the cheapest server—costing around 15 dollar a month—was good enough. So he just casually rented one.
After renting the server, he worked on making it compatible with the game.
It didn't take long before he could announce the feature was live.
[Update task completed. Reputation +1]
To test if everything worked properly, William opened the game on his phone.
Before the game launched, it did a tiny update. Since it was a hotfix, it didn't interrupt anyone already playing. Once they finished their current match, they'd get the update notification and be able to use the new leaderboard feature.
He tapped randomly a few times and easily ended up with a failed ending.
After the game over screen, a new leaderboard appeared just above the "Restart" button. Tapping it opened up the brand-new ranking system.
Since William was the first player to complete the update and trigger the leaderboard, he dominated it with a tap speed of 1 coin per second. The game had two types of leaderboards: one for tap speed, and one for survival time.
William also held the top spot on the survival time board with a time of 3 seconds.
He waited a bit and started a new round.
When he checked the leaderboard again, all 100 slots were already filled. The fastest player was hitting 15 coins per second and stood far above the rest.
On the survival board, someone had already managed to last 1 minute and 17 seconds. It looked like someone would complete the full challenge sooner than William had expected.
"Ugh~"
William was too tired to go on. He told the system to take him back to the real world and crashed straight into bed.
Birds were chirping softly in the morning air.
It wasn't even 8 yet.
His phone showed three missed calls, which was unexpected—nobody had his number except for Aunt Lisa, who had helped him get the SIM card.
Come to think of it, the phone had originally belonged to Uncle Zach.
He didn't call back. If it was really important, they'd call again.
He stepped out of his room to see Aunt Lisa tying Jenny's hat strap. Looked like she was taking her to kindergarten.
"William, don't forget to eat your breakfast on the table," Aunt Lisa said as she left with Jenny.
"Bye-bye, Brother William!"
Bang!
William had just raised his hand to wave, but before he could even get the words out, he already heard hurried footsteps rushing down the stairs.
Late again?
He was used to this. Jenny always insisted on practicing piano for a bit every morning. Honestly, he had slept so soundly today that he hadn't noticed the three calls or even the piano sounds.
Dear reader, there's more coming in the next part. Click to read the next page—things are about to get even more exciting!
William sat at the table, sipping porridge while checking the app store on his phone.
For detailed download stats, he had to log into the developer portal on a computer. On the phone, he could only check the data shown by his phone brand's app store.
Rating: 1.9 stars
Ouch, that was rough.
Most of the bad reviews said stuff like "I got scammed." A few were just frustrated players who couldn't help leaving a low rating. William had never expected good scores anyway, so he wasn't disappointed.
But even with all the complaints, the number of downloads didn't drop at all. Just from that one phone brand, downloads had already passed a million. Once the full day's earnings came in tonight, the combined results from all seven brands were going to be insane.
Also, William was really looking forward to launching on iOS today. It had the most users, so the download numbers would definitely be impressive.
After clearing the table and dishes, William didn't go straight back to working on the game. Instead, he walked over to Jenny's beloved piano, sat properly on the bench, and took a deep breath.
He flipped open a sheet of music, glanced over it quickly to memorize it, then closed his eyes and let his fingers move on their own.
As soon as the notes began to play, he became fully immersed. At that moment, it felt like he and the piano were one. No matter which key his fingers landed on, it all felt right, even if the piece no longer resembled the original.
The feeling reminded him of when he used to play guitar—familiar and natural. But that came from over ten years of daily practice. This bond with the piano, on the other hand, felt like it had been there all along.
Strange.
He had never even touched a piano before. The only explanation was the beginner piano skill he had gotten as a milestone reward. But could this really still be called "beginner level"?
You could probably call it master level.
He played five songs in a row, all improvised. William stopped, very pleased with himself.
*Clap clap clap clap!*
Applause?
William turned his head and saw Aunt Lisa standing behind him. He had no idea when she got there.
"Hiding your talent, huh?" Aunt Lisa smiled slyly.
William laughed awkwardly and quickly changed the subject. "By the way, Aunt Lisa, I owe you some money."
"Money?" Aunt Lisa tilted her head and looked at him. "Where would you get money from?"
"I actually picked up a part-time job." As he spoke, William pulled up a text message on his phone.
"1000 dollar?" Aunt Lisa covered her mouth in shock. "You didn't… do something shady, did you?"
"No, no, actually I…"
He was going to say he developed an app, but then he realized he didn't even have a computer at home, and his past behavior didn't really fit that story. So William went with the safest excuse: "Alright, I sold the three piano pieces I played yesterday."
"You sold them…" Aunt Lisa thought for a second, then lightly knocked him on the forehead. "Only a thousand dollar?!"
"If you had told me earlier you wanted to sell them, I would've helped! With how good those songs were, you could've added another zero at the end! Ugh! This is driving me crazy!" she complained, then stared straight at him. "Who did you sell them to? I'll go get them back!"
Well, William hadn't seen that coming.
In the end, he barely managed to calm her down. But no matter what he said, Aunt Lisa refused to take the money from him. After some back and forth, she finally agreed to accept 2,000 yuan a month from him for food and rent—starting next month.