Aiden stared at his laptop’s screen with a fulfilled smile on his lips, palms behind his head as he gently rocked it back and forth.
Reflected on his eyes, were three promotional videos, all of which were rendered majorly for mobile viewing.
The first was a teaser, the second a one-minute trailer and the third, a five-minute extended gameplay trailer showcasing the parts of the game they’d completely ironed out.
That said, Aiden only had plans to release the teaser for now, then as they progressed through the rest of the year, release the other two in the month of January and February next year.
Before he dropped it onto his social media pages though, he forwarded it to his buddies. Minutes later, their messages began rolling in.
-
Theo: These are great, Aiden! Really, they are. Honestly, if I wasn’t so heavily involved in the game’s programming, I’d have assumed it came straight from a bigger indie publisher.
Casper: I’m not even surprised anymore. Just pass the blunt to me so I can inhale some of that inspirational high you always seem to be on these days.
Clyde: A renaissance man, you’re gearing up to be, Aiden. You did an excellent job.
Larry: Yo! That’s our game?! From these videos it looks like it’s a finished product!
Benjamin: The fact that you employed the instrumentals of [Year 5000]... chef’s kiss, man! Wouldn’t even have realized how video-gamey it sounded until I saw how you used it here.
-
Replying to their messages, and then discussing a couple other mundane things with them, Aiden soon placed his phone aside and proceeded to head to bed.
But before he did, he created a brand new ViewTube channel with the name; Crashout Interactive.
At the same time, he decided to create yet another TweetTalk account in their indie team’s name.
Then he uploaded the teaser onto his own personal social media channels with the caption;
Something we’ve been working on for a while...
At the same time, he ensured to also plug in the both the new account’s link and its ViewTube channel link for people who preferred to view their content from the massive video-sharing platform instead.
As usual, Aiden hibernated the system and then shuffled his way into the bathroom.
Whilst in the shower though, he couldn’t help but recall the answer the system had given him when he’d asked that curious question that had been bugging him a month and a half ago.
As a result, though Aiden previously had plans to balance out his stats, he decided to pivot away from it for now.
Even then, he wasn’t planning to completely sideline it. Whenever he had the LPs to spare, he would distribute them as he felt was required.
That said, he’d come to the decision that he needed to improve upon his Mind attribute further.
There were two reasons to this.
One was obviously because of the answer he’d gotten from his system.
The other, was as a result of the upcoming academic decathlon.
Though Aiden’s memory was far above average right now, it wouldn’t be enough to actually get him where he needed.
Considering he hadn’t been prepping with the team from the onset, he needed to get into the primary team and not just the roster of substitutes.
To do that, he needed to expand his scholastic knowledge extensively, enough that he could steamroll students whom had been prepping for it for far, far longer than he had.
The only avenue he had to make that a reality given the limited time he was working with, was to boost his rate of assimilation to brand new heights.
And though Aiden couldn’t help but feel bad for the student whose position he was inevitably going to take, this was a necessary evil in his books.
Not only did he want to give Theo more breathing room and subsequently an avenue to shine brighter, but he also had a quest to complete... which in all fairness, was bound to benefit everyone when all was said and done.
Simply put,
’I need to score the highest points during all team practice tests across all ten event subjects,’ Aiden turned off the shower and headed out with his towel around his waist.
’And that includes subjects that I hate too.’ he said to himself as he dried his hair with another towel.
Thankfully, the youth still had a month and a half to work with before the team practices began in the middle of January next year.
Still...
"S-grade huh..." he muttered to himself as he crashed face first onto the bed.
"Wonder what surprises lay in store for me when I finally take my Mind Stat to that level..." Aiden turned over with a deep glint of curious anticipation in his eyes.
As he was pondering over this, his blanket now wrapped around him, a couple minutes was all it took before the arms of Morpheus embraced him.
*
The rest of the year went by pretty mundanely for Aiden.
Save for his senior year mid-term exams which had managed to give most students sleepless nights in the second week of December, things were as dandy as dandy could be.
Thankfully, the winter break offered them respite from their scholastic endeavors and several of them managed to recharge their batteries with the festive season.
Aiden and his father, simply spent the break together in a mix of a bittersweet feeling.
Afterall, the last half of December was when they’d both lost the most important woman in their lives.
It was also why they barely celebrated Christmas.
Instead, they often just reminisced on the good times, visited her grave and simply enjoyed each other’s company by watching her favorite Christmas movies.
Just like that, the festive season whiled past and the new year came around.
By the second week of January, the students of Silverlake High naturally returned to campus.
Aiden and the gang had equally returned most of their focus to ironing out the game and improving upon what they’d already built.
Casper managed to improve some of the dialogue he felt was cheesy and could use a bit more work.
Clyde, Benjamin and Larry added a few new tracks to the game in the form of a radiostation the player could jam to as they wreaked havoc across the city’s maps.
Theo began a proper playtesting of the game from start to finish, fixing any bugs he could find and also optimizing it further so it was lightweight and could run across a wide range of mobile devices.
Aiden on the other hand, oversaw all these, all whilst equally promoting the game on his handles.
The teaser alone, had generated over a million views on TweetTalk, with the likes and retweets in the mid tens.
Clearly, this was as a result of the follower count Aiden had built, one that had already being at an pretty impressive 70K+ before the end of last year.
However, upon his release of the game’s trailer, that count had promptly ballooned up to 100K+ followers.
Even the new account in their team’s name had gotten a follower count of 40K+ that spilled over from his previous account, and likewise its ViewTube channel which currently had 15K+ subscribers.
This was further driven by the fact that Aiden had purposely captioned the trailer’s post across all platform with the words;
[Crashout: Sin City]: A full-fledged, microtransaction-less crime simulator in a bite-sized package.
Given Aiden knew how much gamers loathed microtransactions as he was one himself, he’d purposely baited them with a term that in the grand scheme of things, applied to so many other games across the platform.
However, the fact that these gamers were so used to so many of these mobile games practically forcing microtransactions down their throat with in-game mechanics that subtly coerced them into a pay-to-win structure, [Crashout: Sin City] suddenly seemed like a godsend.
Safe to say, Aiden had successfully drawn attention to the game he and his buddies had built.
Now, he only needed to drip feed them with posts regarding the game’s features and content till he released the game’s actual gameplay trailer come February.
In any case, Aiden arrived home after his morning exercise, his breathing a bit hard.
Ever since his daily quest had updated, his morning exercise routine had started putting some strain on him.
It was also why he wasn’t really surprised when a new notification popped into his field of view.
-
[Stats updated!]
-
Nonetheless, after chugging some water, greeting his dad, eating his breakfast and preparing for school, he pulled up his system panel as he slung his backpack over his shoulder to head out.
-
[Aiden North] – Life Points – [2.9]
⸢Stats
› Mind — B+
› Strength — D
› Stamina — D » D+
› Agility — D-
› Charm — B
⸢Skills
› {Type Designing - A}, {Digital Illustration - I}, {Drawing - I}, {Cooking - I}, {Brewing - I}, {Singing - I}, {Dancing - I}, {Writing - N}, {Lettering - I}, {Programming - I}, {Riding - N}, {Video Editing - I}.
⸢Shop
› Browse Catalogue.
⸢Daily Quests
› {Expand}
⸢Exclusive Quests
› {Expand}
⸢Time-limited Quests
› {Expand}
-
⸢FAQ⸥
-
Considering Aiden had been gradually improving his Mind attribute which had cost him 2LPs out of the 3.5LPs he’d accumulated in the month of December to get it from B- to B+, he had been left with 1.5LPs.
That, in addition to the 1.4LPs he’s gained over the course of the past two weeks, totaled his current Life Points into the current 2.9LPs on his panel.
Without thinking twice though, Aiden dumped both stats into what he felt he required the most.
-
[Aiden North] – Life Points – [0.9]
⸢Stats
› Mind — B+ » A-
› Strength — D
› Stamina — D+ » C-
› Agility — D-
› Charm — B
-
No sooner had he done that, two distinct waves washed over him.
The first was almost as if a quiet vastness had bloomed inside his skull, while the latter was an almost imperceptible sense of weightlessness that suddenly wiped away all the fatigue he had.
At the same time, Aiden found himself smiling ear to ear as he made his way downstairs.
Though he hadn’t tested it, he was now certain of it.
He had gained a photographic memory.
And considering today was when team practices for the academic decathlon was set to begin, he couldn’t help but be excited to exercise that boundlessness his brain seemed just as giddy to harness.
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