Early the next morning, Xie Yunfan went to a real estate agency.

He planned to rent an apartment near the school and use it as a temporary workspace. For one thing, it would make it convenient to go to class. For another, he could stay there in his free time and focus on developing games. If he lived outside, then even when his older brother came back, he wouldn’t be able to meddle, and Xie Yunfan would have much more freedom.

Of course, the studio apartment was only meant as a transition. Once funds became more abundant and the studio expanded later, it still wouldn’t be too late to rent a larger office space.

After viewing several places in a row with the agent, Xie Yunfan finally settled on a one-bedroom loft apartment about ten minutes away from school.

It had floor-to-ceiling windows over five meters high, excellent lighting, a lower level suitable for work, and an upper level for resting and sleeping. It also came fully furnished with appliances, so all he needed was a high-performance computer and he could move in immediately.

After signing the lease, Xie Yunfan personally went to the electronics market and spent tens of thousands of yuan on a high-performance computer and two high-definition monitors.

Once he had moved these “tools” for making games into his new place, he took all the application materials he had prepared and went to the Bureau of Industry and Commerce to register his studio.

At two-thirty in the afternoon, the bureau had just reopened after lunch.

There was already a long line at the business license counters. Xie Yunfan took a number, sat down in the waiting area, and pulled out his phone to open a game folder.

His phone had a 2TB memory card, so storage wasn’t an issue. The night before, he had simply downloaded all ten of the top-ranked mobile games on the charts, wanting to study what players in this world liked.

At present, the number one highest-grossing mobile game was Wilderness Crisis.

This game used the classic battle royale format, dropping one hundred players onto deserted islands in different environments, with ammo and equipment spawning randomly. Whoever survived to the end was the winner.

Xie Yunfan opened Wilderness Crisis and observed while playing.

The game’s visuals were dark, with a gray, gloomy palette that gave players a strong sense of danger. The environmental rendering was highly realistic, the character models were excellent, and the gun system was well designed. The style leaned toward realism, with fewer flashy weapon effects, and the controls felt smooth and fluid.

“Unfortunately, you were headshot by [Number One Killer]!”

“Oh no, you were killed by [BigBroWantsToRankUp]!”

“Oh! You stepped on a landmine planted by [Does Doudou Love Me] and got blown away.”

Once a player was killed, there was no need to wait. They could exit the current match and immediately begin another one.

For this game to reach number one on the bestseller rankings, its design was fairly commendable. It was similar to the chicken-dinner-style shooting games from his own world and clearly had a stable player base.

As a game planner, Xie Yunfan paid more attention to professional elements such as the art style, social systems, and combat model. Being headshot by enemies didn’t bother him in the least, and he simply continued into the next round.

The boy sitting nearby kept sneaking glances at him from the corner of his eye.

Seeing him lose again and again, the boy finally couldn’t help whispering, “Bro, you’re a beginner, right? Want me to carry you?”

Xie Yunfan looked up and met a pair of smiling eyes.

The young man looked about twenty-four or twenty-five. He had heavy dark circles under his eyes, an unshaven face, and a rather worn-down appearance. His chestnut-colored curly hair, messy like a bird’s nest, was especially distinctive.

Xie Yunfan asked doubtfully, “You want to carry me?”

The young man enthusiastically pitched himself. “I’m a professional game booster. One陪玩 round only costs ten yuan. Monthly packages come with discounts too, and every season I can easily carry you up to the 2000-point tier.”

Xie Yunfan: “…”

The young man smiled brightly. “You’ve already lost four games in a row. So? Want to experience what it feels like to get carried?”

Before Xie Yunfan could answer, a girl’s voice called from not far away, “Xiao Hu, it’s our turn. Bring the documents over.”

“Coming!” The young man grabbed a stack of papers from the seat. After taking two steps, he turned back and stuffed a business card into Xie Yunfan’s hand. “If you ever need a gaming partner, contact me anytime. New customers even get twenty percent off.”

Xie Yunfan lowered his head to look. On the card it read:

New Dream Game Studio
Professional game boosting
Fulfilling every boss’s needs
WeChat: XiaoHu7437

Xie Yunfan couldn’t help laughing.

He had just been casually wandering around in the game, and this guy happened to be a professional booster. Seeing him keep losing, he assumed Xie Yunfan was a noob and had tried to promote his boosting services so he could get paid to carry him in ranked matches.

Professional boosters were extremely sensitive to games. After all, they made their living from gaming, so they were always the first to grasp which new games had business potential.

Thinking of that, Xie Yunfan casually added the WeChat from the card.

The other party quickly sent a message: “Hello boss! Need a booster?”

Xie Yunfan asked, “Does your studio only take陪玩 jobs for Wilderness Crisis?”

The other side replied, “Nope. Our studio has a lot of veteran hardcore mobile gamers. Most games we can play. Any kind of task, dungeon, home production, pet feeding—if the boss needs boosting, we can tailor it all to your needs.”

Hardcore veteran players? Their business was pretty broad.

After thinking it over for a moment, Xie Yunfan typed: “Okay. I’ll contact you if I need anything later.”

The other side sent a hugging emoji.

This guy really was socially fearless—promoting business shamelessly on a first meeting like that.

Hardcore veteran players understood all kinds of games extremely well. Naturally, they could also quickly judge whether a game was fun or not.

In his previous life, Xie Yunfan had a very professional game beta-testing team made up of hundreds of veteran online players. Before every new game went officially live, he would have that team run large-scale tests, find bugs, and offer suggestions, making it easier for him to collect feedback and optimize the details.

No game could be made perfectly from the start, so a professional testing team was absolutely necessary. At present, Xie Yunfan didn’t yet know this “Xiao Hu” well enough, but he could add him for now. He might come in handy later.

“Number 017, please proceed to Counter 4.”

Hearing the number announced over the speakers, Xie Yunfan picked up his materials and went forward to complete the registration process.

By the time he walked out of the Bureau of Industry and Commerce, it had suddenly started raining outside.

Winter in the south was damp and cold. Pulling his coat tighter around himself, Xie Yunfan hailed a taxi by the roadside and said, “To Binhu District, Twin Towers Apartments.”

The driver quickly steered onto the expressway.

Xie Yunfan had just taken out his phone to continue gaming when it suddenly rang. The caller ID said “Brother Tao.” Frowning, he searched through his memories and quickly remembered who it was.

—Xu Tao, one of the friends he had met in college.

A few days ago, they had been racing on a mountain road and nearly driven the car off a cliff. They had been caught by traffic police and given a serious lecture, which was also the reason his older brother had flown into a rage.

Xie Yunfan answered the call in a familiar tone. “Brother Tao, what’s up?”

A teasing voice came through the phone. “Yunfan, we’re partying all night at the bar tonight. You coming?”

“I’m not going.” Xie Yunfan sighed helplessly. “After that street-racing thing, my brother found out and beat me up pretty badly. He even cut off my allowance.”

“What?” Xu Tao sounded disbelieving. “Isn’t your brother always all bark and no bite?”

“This time it’s different. He really made up his mind to discipline me. He even sold my sports car.” Xie Yunfan paused, then said seriously, “Don’t come looking for me for a while. You know my family company had an accident. My brother’s in a bad mood. If I don’t behave, I’m afraid he’ll cut ties with me completely.”

“That serious, huh…” Xu Tao laughed. “Alright then. Once your brother cools down and stops controlling you, come out and find us again.”

“Okay.”

Xie Yunfan didn’t want to waste time with these fair-weather drinking buddies, so he could only make excuses not to attend their gatherings. The bankruptcy of the Xie family company was common knowledge, so it made sense that after being chewed out by his brother, he wouldn’t dare go out and play around for a while.

After hanging up, Xie Yunfan closed his eyes and sank into thought.

The studio registration materials had already been submitted, and the process would take no more than three days. He had rented the apartment and bought the computer…

Now the question was: what should his first game be?

If he wanted to make a small game, there were already many successful examples in card games, match-three games, and casual games.

For instance, the once wildly popular Sheep a Sheep had been a very simple 3D tile-matching game that made a fortune from ad revenue. And there was also Plants vs. Zombies, a casual battle game with a highly distinctive style, which had easily made its designer financially independent.

These casual games were all low in production difficulty. With his experience and skills, he could make one in a week.

If he wanted quick money, there were plenty of successful cases from his previous life that he could directly copy.

However, he had been reborn once and accumulated rich experience in game planning. He had come from another world, and his mind also held a large store of historical knowledge.

Under those circumstances, if he still copied games from his original world and made quick money with a guilty conscience…

that would be far too spineless.

How would that be any different from simply copying someone else’s exam paper?

An excellent game designer ought to make games with his own style and creativity—

not just eat someone else’s leftovers.

He didn’t want to throw away his principles just for money.

He had his own convictions.

Ever since he had chosen to become a game planner, the goal he had set for himself was to create fun, original games. Now that he was living a second life, that original intention still hadn’t changed.

Wait… back then…

Suddenly, Xie Yunfan remembered a game.

It had been the very first small game he independently designed when he graduated from university. Because company leadership believed that such a game was “unlikely to make money,” it had been vetoed at the big meeting.

Later, as he got busier and busier with work, his own personal time became scarcer and scarcer, and so that game had never been fully completed.

Now that he had both time and money, why not finally present the game he had planned all those years ago in its complete form?

Underworld Maze.

A single-player maze escape game. Based on the eighteen levels of hell, it would incorporate rich gameplay elements such as Meng Po soup, the Mirror of Reincarnation, and punishments from the Judge.

The maze would have a total of eighteen floors. In easy mode, a smooth clear would take around eighteen hours. Hell mode, on the other hand, would be brutally difficult—pitfalls at every step, and if you lost, you started over from the beginning. It would be pure “psychological torture” for players.

A game like this was bound to be niche, but the players who loved challenge and sought thrills would definitely enjoy this kind of intense maze survival game.

Since it was a cold niche theme, he could take the word-of-mouth route. It would also work perfectly as a practice product, helping him familiarize himself with the game production process in this world.

The maze environments wouldn’t require much budget to build, and the character models didn’t need to be especially complicated either.

Money-saving, trouble-saving, and on top of that, the game prototype was already there in his head…

Wasn’t this the best possible choice for him right now?

__

Author’s Note:

Our Yunfan is not going to be a “copycat plagiarist.”

I think directly copying successful game cases is really low.

So the games in this novel will be as original as possible. The author is a hardcore gamer with over ten years of experience and a very active imagination, so just relax and enjoy!