Parallel World Game Developer

Chapter 46: Chapter #46: A Dark Promise

"Hahahaha..." The blonde host let out an incredibly awkward laugh.

Behind her, the massive LED screen proudly displayed the final aggregate rating metrics from the live global poll.

Fresh out of the digital oven, the results were a suffocating wall of identical text: [Very Easy].

"Well, why don’t we make the next game just a little bit more difficult for them?" the host joked, her brain completely short-circuiting under the pressure.

The absolute second the words left her mouth, a wave of profound regret washed over her.

She had personally played Ethan Vale’s previous titles.

Regardless of the genre, absolutely none of his mechanics had anything to do with being ’very easy’.

"Okay," Ethan smiled, giving her a firm, polite nod. "I will definitely increase the difficulty of our next project."

"I am incredibly happy that everyone loves these games so much. I will maintain my original design philosophy and continue to bring happiness to the player base," Ethan added, looking directly into the broadcast camera with a bright, radiant smile.

Hearing that specific promise, millions of gamers watching the live feed simultaneously felt a violently cold shiver run down their spines.

The trophy assistants followed Ethan as he walked off the main stage and returned to the VIP seating block.

Carter and Ivan immediately stood up to greet him.

Seeing the dark, profoundly annoyed expression plastered across Ethan’s face, the two executives couldn’t help but burst into laughter.

"Don’t take it to heart, everyone is just messing with you," Carter chuckled, clapping him on the shoulder.

"The community is just being incredibly stubborn. Actually, I have to confess... I voted for [Very Easy] just now, too," Ivan admitted with a massive grin.

Ethan stared at the two corporate titans, looking like he desperately wanted to cry but physically couldn’t shed a tear.

He wasn’t actually angry; he obviously knew the players were just keeping the meme alive.

But it was still incredibly frustrating.

He possessed the intellectual resources to build an absolute gaming empire, yet he couldn’t clear a single, foundational System task.

It was like missing a wide-open layup, and the failure genuinely stung.

"It hurts. It really hurts," Ethan muttered.

"I’m completely serious. I am going to increase the intensity," Ethan said, taking a slow, deep breath. He glanced back at the row of heavy crystal trophies being carried by the assistants.

The player base was fiercely loyal; as long as your game was a genuine masterpiece, they would gladly help you sweep every award in the industry.

Yet, when it came to filling out the difficulty survey, they would stubbornly lock in the exact same lie.

[Very Easy]!

"I will maintain my original intention of designing games. And I sincerely hope everyone maintains their original intention of rating them... just try not to have a complete mental meltdown next time," Ethan said, sitting back down in his plush velvet seat to watch the rest of the ceremony.

Carter and Ivan exchanged a cautious, uneasy glance. The two executives couldn’t help but suck in a sharp breath of cold air.

Winning multiple TGA trophies was supposed to be a good thing, right?

So why did his acceptance speech sound like a terrifying declaration of war?

The TGA ceremony officially concluded, but the mainstream media spent the next several days aggressively hyping up the award-winning titles.

Exactly three days later, just as the post-show fever was beginning to cool, Sprout Studio dropped a massive bombshell.

They released a joint announcement alongside Steam and Xbox.

Hollow Knight.

It was an unprecedented, three-way synchronized marketing campaign. Steam’s promotional push was highly visible but relatively tactful, while Xbox’s marketing division went completely scorched-earth.

In that exact moment, the global player base realized that the previously announced partnership between Ethan and Microsoft was entirely real. The corporate integration was infinitely deeper than anyone had initially assumed.

As long as a user booted up their PC or opened the corresponding platform client, it was physically impossible to escape the name Hollow Knight.

"Judging from these promotional screenshots, the art direction has taken a massive leap forward. The sadist even bragged that almost every single asset in this game was hand-drawn," Silver said, staring intensely at the storefront countdown.

The game was scheduled for a global release right on New Year’s Day, January 1st. Silver sat at his desk, looping the official gameplay trailer over and over again.

The protagonist of the game was undeniably cute. It was a tiny, pale knight wielding a chipped bone nail. The opening shot of the trailer featured the little knight leaping fearlessly off a freezing, desolate cliff face.

The howling wind echoing through the jagged ravine seemed to whisper the tragic history of a forgotten underground world. Looking closely, the little knight’s empty, hollow eye sockets conveyed absolutely zero human emotion.

The cinematic trailer rapidly flashed through various biomes, showcasing the staggering depth of the subterranean kingdom. It revealed glowing crystal mines, dangerous acidic green caverns, and the corrupted, aristocratic bugs wandering the rain-slicked streets of the City of Tears.

This entire world was populated by bugs. It was a sprawling, insectoid civilization.

"The sadist is getting more and more meticulous with his world-building," Silver muttered. There were only ten minutes left until the official launch, and he was already camping the Steam store page.

The final countdown timer had officially started ticking down. Through the official press releases, Silver already had a solid grasp of the game’s core premise.

The narrative was set within the intricate, decaying subterranean ruins of Hallownest. The protagonist, the little knight wielding the bone nail, would embark on a massive adventure through this buried kingdom.

Players would need to utilize unlocked traversal abilities to explore the ruins, slaughter hostile infected monsters, and befriend the surviving NPC bugs to uncover the truth.

"The price tag is sitting at $8.99. If the entire game is genuinely hand-drawn frame-by-frame, that pricing feels incredibly cheap," Silver noted, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

"But honestly, I feel like the low price is just proof of the sadist’s sinister intentions. He just wants to bait as many casual players into the meat grinder as possible," Silver theorized.

He immediately remembered Ethan’s chilling promise at the TGA ceremony.

The developer had explicitly vowed to drastically increase the intensity.

Silver stared at the cute, diminutive character model on his screen.

The longer he looked into those hollow, black eye sockets, the more a deeply unsettling, chilling sensation crept down his spine.

The stream chat was equally hyped and chaotic.

[GoonSlayer99: I swear I’m not leaving a review until I beat the game. But once I clear it, I’m dropping another Very Easy just out of spite.]

[Pixel_Prophet: It’s a 2D side-scrolling platformer. How hard can it realistically be?]

[Salty_Tears: I think you guys have completely forgotten the sheer terror of 5-Boss Cell difficulty.]

[LoreMaster: The title Hollow Knight was literally teased in a lore room back in Dead Cells. I just want to know how far ahead this dev actually plans his games.]

[xX_Sniper_Xx: Three minutes left! Get your wallets ready!]

Silver refreshed the browser tab as the countdown entered the final three minutes.

For some inexplicable reason, he realized his palms were completely slick with sweat.

In his entire gaming career, he had never anticipated a single designer’s release with this much pure, nervous energy.

Watching the digital clock strike exactly 12:00 AM, he instantly clicked the purchase button and authorized the transaction.

The total file size was roughly 9GB, meaning the download would take a few minutes to complete.

Taking advantage of the brief wait, Silver refreshed the storefront page. He clicked directly into the game’s backend download metrics.

While standard players couldn’t see raw revenue data, the concurrent download tracker was publicly visible. In barely sixty seconds since the channel had opened, the global download count had already shattered the 100,000 mark.

But Silver wasn’t the person most intensely focused on the launch data. Across the world, Ivan was currently glued to his executive dashboard.

After the game officially went live, he continuously refreshed his administrative portal. Aside from tracking digital software sales, his interface also monitored the physical retail pre-orders for the Hollow Knight console editions.

Furthermore, he had direct access to the live download traffic hitting the Xbox Game Pass storefront. The telemetry data he possessed was infinitely more comprehensive than what the PC players were seeing on Steam.

"Boss, the hardware telemetry just registered a sudden, simultaneous spike of one thousand console units sold," a subordinate immediately reported over the comms channel.

Ivan froze, momentarily taken aback. He didn’t believe in coincidences.

While moving a thousand hardware units wasn’t a massive, industry-shattering figure on its own, the sheer suddenness of the spike was highly irregular. Could the digital launch of Hollow Knight actually be driving physical console hardware adoption?

It was a baffling correlation, and Ivan struggled to understand the consumer psychology behind it.

But for a hardcore gamer like Silver, the logic wasn’t difficult to understand at all. He had literally just picked up his phone and placed an order for a brand-new Xbox console himself.

"Look, I’m not exactly short on cash. The sadist’s upcoming games are going to be strictly exclusive to the XGP ecosystem and the PC platform," Silver explained to his chat, casually tossing his phone back onto his desk.

"I might as well just buy the hardware now. It’s really not that big of an investment."

"Given how insanely popular Nova’s titles are getting, I wouldn’t be surprised if Xbox consoles actually become incredibly hard to find in the future," Silver predicted with absolute certainty.

— — — — —

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