Xie Yunfan closed the chat window with the environment artist. Not long after, the character artist, “Shasha”, also sent a message: “Hello Boss, the sketch is finished. Please take a look.”

Xie Yunfan opened the file. As expected from an artist with five years of experience, the character was drawn with incredible detail. The wrinkles on the old woman’s face were extremely realistic, and her bizarre smile was enough to make one’s hair stand on end. She had even added some of her own original design elements to the walking stick in the left hand and the bowl in the right.

However, the people of this world had never heard the legends of the Underworld, so her design didn’t quite match Xie Yunfan’s vision of “Meng Po” (the Goddess of Forgetfulness).

The overall character was drawn wonderfully; the details just needed some tweaking.

Xie Yunfan replied, “Make the walking stick 10 centimeters taller and curve the top. At the curve, hang a lantern using a strip of cloth. Put her hair up in a bun and add some simple, rustic decorations like ribbons or a wooden hairpin. For the clothes, don’t use a mage’s robe like this. She should be wearing a floor-length skirt on the inside, with an open-front long robe on the outside. The sleeves should be wide and drape down naturally.”

The boss’s description was quite clear. It was much easier to work with than her former art lead’s ambiguous demands of, “The vibe is wrong, draw another version.”

Ning Sha replied, “Understood, I’ll revise it right away.”

She opened her drawing software, quickly modified the sketch according to his requests, and sent the revised draft back: “Like this?”

“The style of the lantern still needs a change. I’ll draw one for your reference.”

Xie Yunfan wasn’t good at drawing, but he could manage a simple ancient-style lantern. He immediately grabbed a piece of paper, scribbled a “kindergarten-level” lantern, and sent it over as a reference.

In less than ten minutes, the artist sent back another revised sketch.

It was exactly the Meng Po he had in mind!

This artist, Shasha, had great intuition and understood immediately. Xie Yunfan was very satisfied: “This is perfect. The game’s overall style is horror, so the clothing can be designed a bit more bizarre. Stick mainly to black and dark blue, and color the lantern a ghostly green.”

“Understood.” Ning Sha asked, “Do we need to sign a contract?”

“Yes, I’ll send you the contract in a bit. It will be 9 character concept pieces in total, with a deadline of December 10th. Do you think you’ll have enough time?”

Ning Sha frowned in hesitation. Nine highly detailed game character concepts, plus designing their clothes, props, and so on… a little over a month was a bit too tight.

However, if she got an assistant to help, it was doable.

This boss seemed easy to talk to, communicated clearly, and the pay was to her liking…

Since she had resigned and was sitting at home anyway, it would be a waste not to earn this money.

Thinking of this, Ning Sha said tactfully, “As long as I don’t have to constantly scrap it and redraw from scratch, I should be able to finish it. Whatever requirements you have, Boss, I hope we can communicate them as much as possible during the sketch and line-art stages.”

In game projects, “scrapping and redrawing” was a common occurrence. Often, when dealing with difficult clients or nitpicky bosses, an artist could draw several versions over a month only to realize all that effort was for nothing.

Her concern was understandable. Xie Yunfan’s single-player game didn’t have such overly demanding requirements, and he had no intention of making things difficult for a fellow worker. He readily agreed, “Alright, please send me the sketches for every piece first. If any details need changing, I will make sure to explain them clearly. We’ll keep in touch constantly.”

Ning Sha relaxed: “No problem!”

A moment later, the boss sent over a document containing detailed character settings.

White Impermanence (Bai Wuchang): Tall and thin, wearing a pure white robe, with a ghastly pale face and a long tongue hanging out of his mouth. He wears a tall hat with the four characters “Fortune Upon Meeting” (一見生財) written vertically. In his right hand, he wields a “Mourning Stick”, a wooden club about the length of a forearm, wrapped in strips of white paper.

Black Impermanence (Hei Wuchang): Short and stout, wearing a black robe, with a fierce expression. His tall hat bears the four characters “Peace Under Heaven” (天下太平). He wields a “Soul-Hooking Chain” with both hands—a long black chain with hooks at the tips.

Judge Zhong Kui: Tall and burly, wearing a purple robe, eyes glaring wide. He has a full face of bushy beard and looks extremely ferocious. He holds a large, bloodstained broadsword in his hand…

After carefully reading the character designs, Ning Sha couldn’t help but wonder just what kind of game this boss was trying to make.

The NPCs’ designs were weirder than the last. Long hanging tongues, mourning sticks, soul-hooking chains, bloodstained broadswords… players were probably going to suffer a lot in this game.

As a game concept artist, she could even draw monster bosses completely covered in tentacles; drawing these bizarre NPCs naturally gave her no psychological pressure.

Her apprentice happened to be free lately. Finding a helper and starting work ASAP was the real priority.

Ning Sha took out her phone and sent her apprentice a message, planning to have the highly color-sensitive apprentice help with the coloring.

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After dinner, Xie Yunfan continued writing the maze architecture.

He had originally designed this game right after graduating from college in his past life. Although it was ultimately rejected by his superiors and never fully produced, the game’s design concepts remained clearly etched in his mind.

Rewriting the programming now felt incredibly smooth.

In just three short days, he had finished writing the framework for the entire maze. Next, he needed to populate it with characters, environments, and various gameplay mechanics.

The art side was progressing quite smoothly. Both the character and environment concept artists had been found; he just had to wait for them to submit their drafts and then make revisions.

As for 3D modeling, he had once taken the time to learn simple 3D modeling and environment rendering techniques. Since it was a single-player game, there weren’t many characters and the scenes were simple, so he could handle it himself. It wouldn’t be too late to hire professional modeling engineers when he made larger games with complex environments in the future.

As for the music, he needed to hurry up and find someone.

Xie Yunfan didn’t like the sound effects from public asset libraries. He wanted original background music paired with various environmental sound effects. By combining audio and visuals perfectly, the player’s experience would feel much more novel.

Thinking of this, Xie Yunfan started searching online for music studios.

Famous music studios and composers only collaborated with major projects. They had an endless stream of custom commissions for movies, TV shows, and games, so they definitely wouldn’t look twice at an obscure, no-name project like his.

He could only look for newly established or lesser-known studios.

After searching online for a while, Xie Yunfan found a website that caught his eye.

The website was named “Ding Dong Music Studio”.

Description: An original music studio founded by a group of young people. We undertake all kinds of music-related business, including game music production, songwriting, film and TV scoring, recording, mixing, post-production tuning, etc. Collaborations welcome.

Studio Principles: We advocate and support original music. We have plenty of time, are serious and responsible in our work, and will use the most professional attitude to custom-tailor wonderful tracks exclusively for you.

Contact: dingdong@mzhy…

Xie Yunfan carefully read the profiles of the studio members. There were three people: one specialized in composing and arranging, and two specialized in various instruments. They were all young folks in their twenties who had recently graduated from music conservatories.

Being so young, they definitely didn’t have much experience producing game music.

However, what he valued was the studio’s claim of “advocating originality” and “having plenty of time.” Young people had creative passion and were more receptive to fresh ideas. Maybe he could try working with them?

With this in mind, Xie Yunfan sent an email to the address listed on the page.

“Hello, I am a game designer. I’m currently developing a horror-style game and would like to commission custom background music and some environmental sound effects. If you are interested in collaborating, please contact WeChat: Yfan_xxxx.”

At that moment, inside the recording booth at Ding Dong Music Studio.

A baby-faced guy wearing headphones sat at the console, eyes closed, bobbing his head as he listened to a track. Next to him, a cool-looking girl was looking down, tinkering with her guitar.

After finishing the track, the guy took off his headphones, squinted, and said, “The song I wrote is seriously so good!”

The girl looked up at him and said coldly, “Ding Huaian, can you stop being a narcissist for a second? The studio has been open for half a month and we haven’t landed a single gig yet. Do you want to keep surviving on thin air next month too?”

Ding Huaian scratched his head and said guiltily, “Sister Qing, starting a business isn’t that easy! I’ve already put our info up on the website. I’m sure some boss with a good eye will recognize our talent. It’s just that this perceptive boss hasn’t appeared yet…”

Right at that moment, another chubby guy pushed the door open and walked in, smiling brightly. “Speak of the devil! A boss actually reached out to us today!”

He opened the email app on his phone and handed it to Ding Huaian. “Little Ding, look. It’s a game developer. They want to commission original game background music.”

Ding Huaian quickly scrambled up, rubbed his eyes, and took the phone, reading the email carefully. “…A horror game? That’s easy! It’s similar to a horror movie score; I can whip it up in a week.”

The girl leaned over to glance at the email and said, “It’s rare for someone to reach out to us proactively. It might just be a small project casting a wide net with mass emails, but let’s add them as a friend and see.”

Ding Huaian immediately perked up and added the WeChat ID from the email.

The other party’s avatar was a small sailboat. After the friend request was accepted, they asked politely, “Hello, is this Ding Dong Music Studio?”

Ding Huaian sent a handshake emoji. “Yes, hello Boss! I’m the studio founder, Ding Huaian, stage name Ding Dong. Our studio strictly produces original music, and we’ve done game soundtracks before.”

Xie Yunfan asked, “If I may ask, what game projects have you worked on previously?”

Ding Huaian said shamelessly, “The combat music for the casual game Monster Brawl.”

That game was an absolute flop, buried deep in the ground. Its name couldn’t even be found within the top 500 of the Mobile Games Hub rankings, and its player base was estimated to be under 50,000. Producing music for that kind of game definitely wasn’t difficult.

However, Xie Yunfan didn’t mind the other party’s lack of credentials.

After all, he had just transmigrated to this world and was still a university student. In the eyes of others, he was also a rookie game designer with “zero credentials.”

Rather than being nitpicked and made miserable by those famous studios, it was better to collaborate with people who were willing to listen to his directions.

Seeing that the boss hadn’t replied for a while, Ding Huaian hurriedly tried to save face: “That was a casual game, so the music leaned towards being lighthearted. But we can also do horror-style game soundtracks! We will do our absolute best to meet your needs, Boss.”

Xie Yunfan replied, “I’m making a maze escape game. I need a main background track with a gloomy, terrifying vibe, and I also need a lot of environmental sound effects.”

Environmental sound effects? That was simple!

Ding Huaian said confidently, “We can produce all types of sound effects. Why don’t you tell us your requirements first?”

Xie Yunfan listed: “For example, an eerie laugh whispering right by the ear, miserable crying echoing from a distance, unintelligible muttering, and agonizing screams from both men and women. For these human voices, can you record them yourselves?”

Record them themselves? Not using voices from an asset library but recording all human vocals from scratch… that could definitely be considered striving for perfection!

Ding Huaian braced himself and said, “No problem, we can find people to record them.”

Xie Yunfan continued, “There are also other sound effects. Like the sound of a neck being snipped by giant scissors, the sound of raw meat being tossed into a boiling vat of oil to fry, the bubbling sound of a pool of blood corroding flesh, the crackling sound of a roaring fire charring a corpse, the sound of a giant boulder crushing someone into a meat patty, and the sound of skin being peeled off inch by inch.”

Ding Huaian: “………”

Holy crap!

Did a mental patient escape from the asylum?

__

Author’s Note:

Xie Yunfan: Friends from another world, don’t panic. I just want to make a game. ^^

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