Chapter 114: Feral

True to their plans, the gang rounded up the development for [Gothic Survivors] in a week, which also happened to be the day immediately after their graduation ceremony.

At the same time, Aiden had sent the funds for the production of his beverage to SlurpPAK and was simply awaiting the finished product of his work in the coming month.

In any case, they gang had turned their efforts to beta-testing the game for the next week, opting to work out any bugs or kinks that might’ve slipped by during the development process.

At the same time, Aiden had begun marketing the game across Crashout Interactive’s social media platform and even his own personal handles as well.

This time, his buddies joined in, all of them invested in pushing the game as far as they possibly could.

Casper, Benjamin, Larry and Clyde especially had gone hard on it, practically spreading out their resources across every social media platform available by paying a couple hundred bucks here and there for ads in addition to their own posts.

As the quartet happened to have way too much free time on their hands in comparison to Aiden and Theo whom were handling the more technical side of things, they only felt it natural that they played their own part extremely well.

That said, Aiden didn’t see the need to go overboard with it--though he honestly didn’t mind it as well.

Afterall, though their underlying motivation for building the game was to rake in more cash, when all was truly said and done, they’d mostly built [Gothic Survivors] for fun.

It also helped that it hadn’t been as complex as [Crashout: Sin City], so much that Aiden and Theo had practically breezed through it.

Besides, this was the kind of game that would gradually pick up, solely just off of how infinitely addictive they’d managed to make the core gameplay loop.

With the clear and obvious gothic themes, Casper had created ten different characters to play as.

Draven, The Eternal Vampire.

Franken, The Unfinished Frankenstein.

Gertie Graves, The Grave-Eating Ghoul.

Mirror Doppel, The Faceless Doppelgänger.

Pharaoh Tunkat, The Cursed Mummy.

Mordercai Wraith, The Unseen Specter.

Banshee Wail, The Death Singer.

Morgana Hex, The Black Witch.

Alaric Grimwood, The Dark Magus.

Dr. Erasmus Vile, The Mad Scientist.

Each character clearly had their own their perks and a heathy amount of lore to them.

In fact, at some point, Casper had considered cutting it down during the development process but Aiden had told him to leave it be nonetheless as some people would definitely be interested in it.

That said, the moment the game itself begun, the player would be dropped into a dangerous battlefield with nothing but a basic weapon, throwable or a spell, with a single objective to survive for as long as they could as the invisible thirty-minute timer ticked down.

With no complicated combos to memorize as the playable characters were programmed to attack automatically by unleashing attacks at nearby enemies, the player would be tasked with focusing almost entirely on movement and positioning their characters for the best chance of survival.

Then, with every passing second, hordes of monsters would swarm from every direction, growing larger and more relentless as time goes on.

Enemies that were then defeated by the player’s attacks would in turn, leave behind experience gems, each one having shiny, various colors that scaled to the exp of the hordes they were killing, further appealing to several gamer’s crow mentality of equally looting everything in sight.

Collecting these shiny gems would, naturally and gradually, fill up an experience bar until the character levels up.

That, exactly, was where the addictive loop began as each level-up would present a handful of three randomly selected weapons or passive upgrades, complete with beautiful flashing lights and the casino slot machine sounds to really sell the illusion of a winning roll.

Naturally, that segued into giving the player a tiny hit of dopamine as they choose one of three power-ups that would strengthen their existing arsenal or introduce an entirely new ability for them.

For one, a simple projectile could become a rapid-fire weapon, while another upgrade might increase movement speed, damage, health, or attack range, amongst other things like lightning smiting, fireball hailstorms, nuclear detonations, and so much more.

Safe to say, with every upgrade, the playable character would become stronger and stronger to constantly give the players a thrilling rush of OPness.

Yet, that OPness would be met with stronger enemies as well, drawing the player into an overall sense of relentless danger that would never let up given the tiny health bar their character had.

Before long, the battlefield would’ve slowly transformed into an almost controlled chaos.

Along the way, defeated enemies might also drop special treasures, healing items, and other rewards to keep things fresh.

Certain weapon combinations could also eventually evolve into vastly more powerful forms, turning a modest build into a devastating killing machine for players who loved min-maxing.

Hundreds, then thousands of enemies would also fill the screen, forcing the player to weave through narrow gaps while their automated weapons tore open paths through the swarm.

If they survived long enough that the invisible timer ticked down to zero, then a region boss would appear.

Defeating the region boss meant that a portal would appear to take them to the next stage et map.

Naturally, Aiden had made several gothic-themed maps to accommodate for that.

A total of twenty to be exact, all of which had a distinctly simple but nonetheless eerily-beautiful yet haunting style of their own. In fact, he still planned to add more, but that could always come later.

That said, the final minutes of most runs for each player would ultimately become a frantic test of everything they had accumulated thus far.

Survive long enough, defeat the final threat, move to the next level, rinse and repeat till eventually, the player lost...

...only for the most addictive part to follow afterwards.

The player returns to the beginning, wiser, a bit more experienced, hopeful of a good RNG and ready to try another build with any of the ten playable characters.

Simply put;

’Just one more run...’

That said, even despite having created twenty different stages in sync with a new map, each one notably scaling in difficulty from the former, the gang had been pretty certain that some sweats would definitely reach the last level in a single day.

Not that it mattered though. It would just return them to the very first map again with the difficulty dialed up even higher.

Aiden was ironing out a bug that had to deal with one of the playable characters getting an infinite number of projectiles when his Pops who rarely--if ever--let out a low cuss;

"Shit!"

"I almost had it!" he added without even realizing what he’d done, his nose buried into his phone as he kept ’beta-testing’ [Gothic Survivors] for the gang.

Considering they were both seated in the living room, Aiden whipped his head over to face the man, his expression one of stunned disbelief. Then he managed to ask a moment after;

"Which level, Pops?"

Richard simply raised five fingers, the man already restarting a new run as Aiden chuckled in amusement whilst shaking his head.

’If even he was roped into it within an hour... I dread to think of what it would do to actual gamers.’ the youth mused to himself.

Speaking of gamers, Aiden soon minimized his current tab and pulled up Crashout Interactive’s TweetTalk page.

Considering most of his audience was now aware that he was both @AidenDraws and essentially the head of Crashout Interactive, a good chunk of them had naturally migrated over to following the account as well.

As Aiden had expected, they were the most shameless set of perverts on the internet... though he honestly couldn’t blame them.

He had literally posted five eye-catching illustrations of [Gothic Survivor]’s playable characters, two of whom happened to be Banshee Wail and Morgana Hex.

Giving the... ahem... proportions that they had, well...

-

Dommy_Mommy: (Licks lips with zest, rubs hands like a shady drug dealer, grabs sketching pad!) I never thought I’d see the day, young padawan! My frontal cortex is in overdrive!!!

Gooner4Life: Oh my days @Dommy_Mommy and @AidenDraws! This the collab I’ve always wanted! The gooning community is about to get baptized with her Holiness’s work! It’s enough for me to release a white tear down my thighs!

DaFuk: Da fuk @Gooner4Life! Stop it, get some help.

Area69: The game ain’t even out yet and R34 is already working overtime!

Johnny Sinners: Forget King Arthur! Snapping the infinitely gauntlet itself won’t pull me out!

HexedAndHorny: Morgana Hex could tell me to walk directly into a swarm of demons and I’d be like "Understood, My Queen. Will you step on me when I’m done as well?".

Gothic Gooner: Day one buy! No questions asked!

Staring Respecfully: I have studied Morgana Hex’s and Banshee Wail’s character art extensively for research purposes. Please respect my privacy during this difficult time. Thank you very much.

UnholyBuild: An addictive roguelike with attractive gothic women sprinkled on top?! My wallet is bussin’ right now!

ChronicallyOnline: Crashout Interactive knew EXACTLY what the internet would do when they posted those five illustrations. Absolute menace behavior.

-

Aiden promptly ignored that last message like he didn’t see it.

Granted Casper was the one who came up with the character sheets, he had actually been the one to draw out each character based on the descriptions.

As for why the characters had said proportions...

...Aiden casually screenshotted the top comments and forwarded it to his girlfriend with the caption;

-

Aiden: Your ’quality’ inputs have caused the internet to go feral, Your Highness.

Her Highness: As they should (˘ ˘ ˘). There’s now way in hell you’re making gothic women without making them drop dead gorgeous! Not on my watch!

-

Chuckling to himself upon reading that, Aiden sent a reply then placed the phone aside, promptly resuming fixing the bug from before.

With [Gothic Survivors] set to release in two week’s time, it was only natural that he wanted its launch to be as smooth as possible.

That said, Aiden also had plans to begin marketing his drink before they even started rolling out, part of which would require him to visit his former workplace--Haute Cuisine--in the coming weeks.