Parallel World Game Developer

Chapter 54: Chapter #54: A Genuine Vision

In the early stages of every single title developed by Nova, there was always an aggressively hostile sequence designed to filter out casual players.

The community affectionately referred to this brutal initiation as the ’Newbie Killer’ or the ’First Trial.’

It wasn’t just a place where you died once; it was a digital meat grinder where you were slaughtered over and over again, universally known as the place where dreams both began and violently ended.

Yet, strangely enough, the more times a player was subjected to these brutal, introductory deaths, the more flawlessly they executed the mechanics.

The second half of the track titled Love Letters featured a grueling sequence of rhythmic, off-beat triangles, heavily laced with turtle icons indicating deceleration and rabbit icons for sudden acceleration.

Set against a dreamy, surreal cosmic background, the ethereal vocal track drifting through the headset was initially soft and understated.

It felt like an unspeakable, otherworldly wonderland bleeding directly into the player’s ears.

The audio was so incredibly soothing that even when a player’s mentality completely collapsed after dozens of repeated failures, they simply couldn’t bring themselves to rage-quit.

The baseline BPM of this specific stage hovered at a relatively slow 85, a stark contrast to the blistering 150 BPM of the tutorial track.

This metric simply represented the beats per minute, mapping the exact number of rhythmic inputs required within a sixty-second window.

The tempo of the song itself wasn’t inherently fast, meaning that once a player fully internalized the underlying rhythm, navigating the complex traps became incredibly intuitive.

"Did he seriously not disclose any of these audio assets to you before pushing this build live?!" Ivan yelled into his phone, feeling like he was genuinely losing his mind.

Every single track in this seemingly disposable indie game was an absolute masterpiece that could easily stand alone as a certified industry classic.

If Sprout Studio had leveraged their mechanical genius to build a massive, AAA rhythm game layered with gorgeous character models and high-budget visual effects, they could have sold millions of units at a premium price point.

The original soundtrack alone was easily worth double the cost of admission!

"How can he be this unbelievably casual about his game design?!" Ivan groaned, staring at the A Dance of Fire and Ice listing on the Xbox Game Pass storefront.

The total installation size was barely one gigabyte.

The vast majority of that data was purely uncompressed audio files, and while the minimalist cosmic maps were charming, the visual framework was undeniably simplistic.

"Huh? He literally pitched this to us while we were having dinner... did you already forget?" Carter replied over the line, sounding completely helpless.

"Wait... he did?" Ivan pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing his chaotic thoughts to settle as a memory finally surfaced.

He suddenly recalled Ethan casually mentioning over drinks that he was going to ’whip up a tiny rhythm game just to give the players something to do.’

"I just think it’s an absolute waste to dump so many industry-defining tracks into such a tiny, disposable project," Ivan sighed heavily.

Whenever the internal Xbox Game Studios teams pitched a new project, Ivan always had the executive leverage to offer creative feedback and mandate structural changes.

But when it came to Ethan Vale, the Xbox CEO was completely powerless to intervene.

That young designer operated entirely on his own profound, untouchable creative wavelength.

Over at Sprout Studio, Ethan had just formally announced the start of the winter holiday break for his exhausted employees when his personal phone began to ring.

Seeing Ivan’s name on the caller ID, he picked up the call.

"Hey Ethan, can we maybe put a little more strategic thought into our asset management for the next game?" Ivan asked carefully.

"What exactly do you mean?" Ethan replied, genuinely puzzled by the executive’s tone.

"I’m just saying we don’t need to rush these smaller titles out the door. We could easily inject a bit more complexity and premium polish so the final product doesn’t look so... rudimentary," Ivan suggested, cautiously testing the waters.

He genuinely didn’t care about squeezing more revenue out of the market; the actual retail price was completely secondary to him.

He simply felt that such breathtaking, masterful music deserved to be showcased on something far grander than a minimalist grid of floating squares.

"It isn’t rudimentary at all," Ethan replied, shaking his head.

"Besides, maximizing corporate revenue has never been my ultimate goal." Ethan couldn’t stop himself from aggressively grinding his teeth as he said it.

"If your ultimate goal isn’t generating massive revenue, then what the hell is it?" Ivan asked, completely bewildered.

Ethan was an unparalleled, visionary designer who could effortlessly command infinite wealth and global fame.

"...If I told you that my only goal in life was to get the player base to drop a [Super Difficult] rating on my games, would you actually believe me?" Ethan asked dryly.

"Not for a single second," the immediate, uncompromising answer fired back over the phone line.

"Fine. I just want to create games that my players would enjoy from the bottom of their hearts," Ethan sighed, casually regurgitating a generic, sanitized PR slogan he remembered from his previous life in the corporate trenches.

"Wait... so is that the core ideal you’ve been secretly clinging to this entire time?" Ivan asked softly.

The absolute second Ethan’s words landed, Ivan’s mind frantically auto-played a mental highlight reel of the young developer’s explosive, chaotic rise through the industry.

If literally any other corporate publisher had uttered that hollow PR slogan, Ivan would have sneered, completely writing it off as a cynical ploy to harvest goodwill and empty consumer wallets.

But because those words came directly from Ethan Vale, the executive didn’t doubt them for a second.

Why would anyone actually want a [Super Difficult] rating?

What kind of absurd, nonsensical excuse was that?

No sane designer would ever intentionally sabotage their own market metrics for a meaningless survey stat.

So, when Ethan claimed his only true motivation was to bring happiness to the global gaming community, Ivan believed it with his entire soul.

Even though Ethan had clearly tossed the phrase out as a casual, sarcastic deflection, the Xbox CEO interpreted it as a profound, fiercely guarded artistic truth.

"You absolute legend. I promise I will never question your creative direction ever again," Ivan declared passionately.

"You are undeniably destined to become the greatest game developer in the history of this medium! Only you! And literally only you, my besto friendo!"

"Huh?" Ethan half-opened his mouth in total bewilderment, pulling his phone away from his ear to stare at the screen.

What kind of psychiatric breakdown was happening on the other end of the line?

"I firmly believe in your vision! I will back this philosophy to the absolute end!" Ivan stated with unwavering conviction, gripping his phone tightly before abruptly ending the call.

A Dance of Fire and Ice had violently broken out of its niche target audience, going massively viral across the mainstream internet.

It might have been fueled by the insane cash bounty, the dirt-cheap price tag, or the sheer, undeniable beauty of the soundtrack that convinced casual outsiders of the developer’s artistic sincerity.

Whatever the catalyst, millions of non-rhythm gamers were aggressively purchasing and downloading the title after watching a few viral gameplay clips on social media.

The most notorious, highly debated stages circulating online were universally known as ’Final Hope’, ’Snowflake’, ’Final Destination (FD)’, and ’Rush E’.

The specific stage was titled ’Final Hope’, yet for anyone actually playing it, the screen was an endless ocean of pure despair.

At a specific crescendo in the track, the entire visual map suddenly vanished from the screen, prompting a tidal wave of confused question marks to flood the chat of every streamer broadcasting the run.

The heavy background music continued to blare, demanding flawless inputs on every single beat despite the complete lack of visual UI.

On the screen, the road ahead had been completely erased, yet the frantic, rapid-fire drum fills indicated that the gauntlet was far from over.

On the brutal, grinding march toward the final cash bounty, wave after wave of ambitious challengers were slaughtered.

Over on the official Sprout Studio community hub, players were frantically uploading their verified completion runs.

Every single stage featured a dedicated upload portal, but only the validated footage for the final, ultimate track qualified for the grand prize pool.

[StormBreaker_99: Watching the later levels, I finally believe that these guys aren’t just doing this for the cash bounty anymore.]

[NeonSamurai_X: Honestly, these absolute mad lads deserve every single penny of that reward!]

[PixelPusher_22: It took me an hour and a half to barely scrape through the first five levels. It then took me another hour and a half just to reach 40% on level six.]

[CactusJuice_00: Casuals might watch these speedrun clips and think they look pretty cool, but us actual rhythm game veterans are literally worshipping these players as deities.]

[VoidWalker_77: I’m convinced the top-ranked players are just closing their eyes and playing entirely off the auditory rhythm at this point.]

[MechaPilot_88: How the hell did human evolution leave me this far behind?!]

[0_o67: Let me tell you a hilarious joke: The store page calls this a "One-Button Game," but I literally can’t keep up even when I’m mashing with all ten fingers at once.]

[therogue69: A Dance of Fire and Ice: A beautiful journey from entry-level excitement to permanent psychological surrender.]

[Glitch_Wizard_33: I have genuinely never seen this many max-level, mechanically flawless humans gathered in one place in my entire life.]

[goonermx: Thanks to ADOFAI my girlfriend have experience the hidden talent of my fingers...]

[flbrgstd: @goonermx Yo...]

The further the community pushed into the punishing late-game stages, the fewer completion videos populated the digital leaderboards.

Ivan sat at his desk, meticulously reviewing the hyper-speed footage of the final levels.

It was only then that he finally understood exactly what Ethan had meant when he coldly stated, ’It isn’t rudimentary.’

Sure enough, a game designed by Nova was fundamentally incapable of being ordinary.

While the casual players saw an impossibly steep, towering staircase leading to the pantheon of rhythm gods, Ivan saw something entirely different.

He saw a lone, visionary developer flawlessly ascending to the absolute throne of the industry.

Later that afternoon, the CEO of Xbox logged into his official corporate social media account and posted a single, profound sentence.

"I just want to create games that my players would enjoy from the bottom of their hearts"

- Ethan Vale, a.k.a ’The Sadist’.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Can someone please give me some stones? I wanna try to be in the rankings for once! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF!!! i’m beggin’ ’ere

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