[I confess I was suspicious at first, but after playing Runestone and watching this interview, I'm convinced. FrostHaven isn't just another Game Creator, he's revolutionizing the way we see games. And he hasn't even released everything yet! I can't wait to see what's next].
[I always thought games were just boring training, but Runestone has changed my view. Now I understand why everyone is talking about this game...]
[Before I only saw Game Creators talking about their games with complicated jargon trying to sound like more important and smarter people than everyone around them, it was fun to see how Runestone's creator acted naturally while explaining things in simpler ways during the interview].
-----[Yeah bro, I usually only know how to kill monsters and earn money in dungeons, the game creation system is always very complicated and I hardly bother to keep up with Game Creators, but even though Runestone used such complicated things like Neurological False Feedback, I still managed to understand how it works and it makes me stronger!]
Reading the comments on the interview brought a smile to my face.
The interview with Anna Dalton from MorePlayers wasn't the only interview I took part in; to try and increase the hype for Runestone as much as possible, I accepted most of the interviews requested by big sites.
Some interviews I followed a more serious and detailed line, focused on reaching Game Creators and people from the Federation, in others I followed the same style as the interview with Anna, making the complicated concepts of Game Creating more easily understood by Players, which made the engagement of these simpler interviews even greater.
As the popularity of Runestone spread across the internet, the amount of daily Players continued to rise steadily, and with the increase in Players, the income I was receiving on a daily basis also increased considerably.
|-----------------------------------------
| Game Status: Runestone
|-----------------------------------------
| Total Players: 24,783 -> 29,939
| Average Players Online (24 hours): 15.061 -> 18.373
| Game Rank: Rank F
| Mana per Hour (Players): 1 unit
| Mana Stored in Game Core: 3,951 -> 4,653 units
| Mana Yield (24 hours): 902 -> 1,102 units
| Conversion Rate: 80% (New players who become regulars)
|------------------------
| Available Cards: 240 (Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary)
| Cards Used per Match (Average): 17
|-----------------------------------------
Today was Wednesday, just four days after the release of the Runestone update and the number of new players was rising non-stop.
Before the update the game had only 12,000 total downloads and 8,000 online Players on average, now the number of downloads has increased by 18,000 while the average number of online Players has risen by almost 10,000!
But looking at the available money I had, a smile appeared on my face.
| Stored Cash: $14,783 -> $20,013
After spending so many days living in such an empty house just to save up those 20 thousand dollars to buy a new Game Core, today I finally got enough money for it!
'I'll only have $13 left in my account until tomorrow... but it'll be worth it! ' I thought resolutely.
Runestone was already at a stable point with a growing Player Base and a high daily Mana income.
At this point, when I went to produce content for the next update, I could simply use the Mana accumulated in the Game Core and convert it into new Features for the game.
Instead of taking 10 days to spend 2,000 MP based on my current MP total, I would only spend 2 days of the game's MP income, since the game now yielded more than 1k MP every day.
And since the game was only going to get bigger, that number would only go up, making it even easier to develop new features.
Sure, this would delay the time it would take the game to accumulate 100,000 MP to rise from a Game Core F Rank to a Game Core E Rank.
But I didn't see it as an expense, just an investment.
Spending 10k MP to upgrade the game, the equivalent of 10% of the total amount to raise the Game Core Rank, to increase my Player Base by 20% would bring me more profit in the long run.
Having a game with more than 10k Players already put me among the best games in the F Rank, a level that few Game Creators could reach, so I had to work hard to stay there.
Sitting at the kitchen counter of the apartment, where the computer was set up, I started browsing the Federation's website using my Game Creator login and quickly managed to order my second Game Core.
[Your Game Core will be delivered within 60 minutes.]
Looking at the countdown on the screen, I started to get excited.
Picking up my ideas notebook, I started to think again about how the development of the next game would go and began to refine the ideas I had already decided I would implement.
Firstly, even though I wanted to make a rhythm game where the Player fought monsters to the beat of the music and earned points by hitting and dodging attacks to the beat of the music, I needed to do it in a way that the Player actually got better and stronger at the game.
Even if swinging the sword to the beat of the music was fun, it wouldn't be very useful in real battles, since the monsters in the dungeons wouldn't attack to the beat of the music.
'How can I deal with this...? ' I began to think of a solution.
Several ideas were running through my mind, but none were fitting together the way I wanted.
How could I make a rhythmic battle that really improved the Players' skills if everything was already choreographed?
Until I realized.
'I don't need to make the battle choreographed!
Yes, I had been too focused on the standard rhythm games of my previous world where Players had to hit their attacks at the right time in the right place every time that I ignored the freedom I had to make games in this world.
Not only could I be much more creative with my ideas, but the execution of them was also made much easier because of the System.
'Why would the battle need to be choreographed? As long as I programmed the monsters to attack to the beat of the music, but with the most lethal attack for that situation, it would become a real workout! " I realized.
As long as I made the monster follow the rhythm of the music, if the monster punched, attacked with a sword, kicked, bit the Player, or anything like that in the right rhythm, that would train the Player to deal with that monster!
With a clearer mind now, I started to write down all the ideas I was having for the game and how to implement them.
To begin with, I didn't intend to make a huge variety of enemies, as that would be too expensive in MP and I didn't have that much MP to use initially.
So I intended to limit the game to just two initial enemies.
A Goblin and a Wolf.
The Goblin would be the enemy that Players would choose to train in combat against humanoid enemies and the Wolf would be the target for training against quadruped enemies.
In order to keep the frenetic attacks in rhythm with the music and prevent the rhythm of the combat from being cut if the Player killed the opponent, I could increase the number of enemies.
Just like in the rhythm games of my other world, Players could choose different levels of difficulty in the combats, making the battles more and more frantic the higher the difficulty, or simpler for beginners who chose lower difficulties.
The more I thought about this game and the mechanics involved, the more excited I got about writing down these ideas in my notebook.
Without realizing it, time passed so quickly that I came back to reality surprised by the sound of the apartment intercom ringing.
Looking at the clock, I saw that 50 minutes had passed.
'The new Game Core must have arrived! ' I thought excitedly as I went to answer the intercom.