OGP CH54 [Vol 3]

The first game produced after the studio’s establishment was of utmost importance.

For a newly formed team, an overly complex large-scale online game would be too difficult to manage. If even a single aspect of the data or skill balancing failed, the early reputation accumulated by Yangfan Studio would be entirely wasted.

Furthermore, the current staff at Yangfan Studio simply didn’t have the capability to develop a holographic game.

Therefore, Xie Yunfan decided to create a refined and highly playable mobile game. It would have no age restrictions, suitable for men, women, the elderly, and children alike. After thinking it over, he decided that the Journey to the West IP was the most suitable for adaptation.

On one hand, Journey to the West features a massive cast of deities and demons, as well as the plotline of Sun Wukong altering the Book of Life and Death, which could cross over with Ghost Realm. At the same time, it would introduce the “Demon” racial category, laying the groundwork for future games.

He had previously mentioned terms like the Ghost Realm, Human Realm, and Heavenly Realm in NPC lore documents; Journey to the West was the perfect vessel to showcase a massive amount of “Heavenly Realm” content.

The Jade Emperor, Taishang Laojun, the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King, Nezha, Yang Jian, the Queen Mother, Chang’e, the Seven Fairies, and more—if all these deities from Journey to the West were implemented, the entire “Ninth Heaven” setting would be incredibly expansive.

Additionally, Sun Wukong was Xie Yunfan’s childhood idol.

The children in this world grew up watching various sci-fi cartoons, their childhoods filled with stories of aliens battling earthlings, and their collections consisting entirely of robot action figures.

It was time for these kids to discover a new childhood hero.

He hoped that in the near future, every child in this alternate world would know the Great Sage, Heaven’s Equal, and have a Great Sage action figure in their home. If that happened, Xie Yunfan would have achieved his goal.

Counting every player in the country, the holographic game market only had about 30 million users.

The mobile game player base, however, was 200 million!

Making a mobile game was actually a much easier way to build a brand name.

During the recruitment period, Xie Yunfan had been constantly pondering how to adapt the Journey to the West IP.

In his previous life, a highly successful adaptation was Fantasy Westward Journey, a chibi-style turn-based game where some whale players would drop hundreds of thousands of RMB just rerolling pet skills and equipment stats.

But Xie Yunfan didn’t want to copy someone else’s ideas, nor did he want to use “random stat” mechanics to rake in cash. His vision was to forge the Journey to the West IP into a “National Mobile Game” suitable for all ages.

If you wanted to make a “National Mobile Game” and successfully promote it across all age groups, the “pay-to-reroll-gear” model definitely wouldn’t work. If kids started dumping tens of thousands of dollars into the game, the parental complaints alone would be enough to ruin him.

The pricing couldn’t be too expensive; it had to be affordable even for kids.

Xie Yunfan planned to use a pay-per-chapter monetization model. The first few stages would be free to attract a large number of downloads. Subsequent levels would be charged as DLCs.

The journey to the Western Heaven involved eighty-one tribulations, making it the perfect fit for a stage-clearing game. Starting development now and taking six months to finish would also give the newly formed team time to synergize.

Once his mind was made up, Xie Yunfan began writing the game proposal. He hadn’t been idle during the recruitment phase; he had consulted a wealth of reference materials and tried to recall the plot of Journey to the West as vividly as possible.

He intended to turn Journey to the Western Heaven into a strategic combat mobile game, using Sun Wukong protecting Tang Sanzang on their journey as the main storyline, infused with rich stage designs and combat mechanics.

Sun Wukong would be the first main character controlled by the player.

Personally controlling the Great Sage and smashing things with a single strike of his staff—that feeling would definitely be exhilarating!

That was exactly why he had told Luo Hang, “The protagonist of this game is a monkey”.

What kind of tricks could a monkey possibly pull off? Luo Hang couldn’t help but ask curiously, “A monkey as the main character? Is it a virtual pet game for kids, or a forest adventure game?”.

Xie Yunfan replied, “It’s a strategic combat mobile game”.

Luo Hang didn’t quite understand: “You’re making a monkey fight?”.

Xie Yunfan said, “Exactly. And this monkey’s combat power is insanely high. The development process will be kept secret for now, but once I make it, you’ll see!”.

Luo Hang said, “Alright, I’m looking forward to your new work”.

He believed that with Yunfan’s boundless imagination, this new game would definitely bring everyone a pleasant surprise.

…

Meanwhile, across the various offices of Yangfan Studio.

The new employees were chatting and getting to know each other.

To their surprise, they realized many of the people present were the same ones they had seen during their interviews. Did that mean Yangfan Studio had absolutely zero employees prior to this recruitment drive?.

The few members of the programming team looked at each other in dismay.

Someone whispered a guess: “We’re the only ones in the programming team. Does that mean the boss wrote all the code for Underworld Maze by himself back then? That’s too badass!”

Team Leader Xu Jianshan said calmly, “Indeed. He was only a junior in college when he made Underworld Maze. Back when I was in school… the most I could make was a match-three game.”

Normal people really couldn’t compare to naturally gifted prodigies.

Xu Jianshan added, “Actually, the programming for Music Soul isn’t hard either; we could all write it. But the most important aspects of a game are the gameplay and creativity. We would have never thought to design a rhythm game like that.”

The others nodded in agreement.

That was why they could only be programmers, while Xie Yunfan was the Chief Producer.

They could write all sorts of code, but they didn’t have that wealth of creative ideas and game design concepts. Going forward, working under Xie Yunfan, they just needed to write what the boss asked for.

Next door, the art team had the most people, totaling eight.

Ning Sha quickly assigned workstations, pulled everyone into the art team group chat, and said, “Once the new game starts, our art team’s workload will be extremely, extremely heavy. Everyone, please mentally prepare yourselves”.

“The boss stated that on principle, we don’t work overtime. But if our original character designs aren’t approved, it will delay the entire game’s progress. When the time comes, if we need to work overtime, I hope you guys won’t be too resistant. The boss never mistreats his employees; there will definitely be overtime pay.”

Hearing this, everyone felt a wave of anxiety.

Ning Sha and Chu Yue had worked on the Ghost Realm project team, and the overtime back then had nearly made them go bald!.

There was a period where they practically lived at the company. Fortunately, Luo Hang was very generous with bonuses. With mid-term bonuses over 100,000 yuan and year-end bonuses also exceeding 100,000, no one really complained about the extra hours.

But the situation was special back then. Ghost Realm was up against a competing product, Vampire Legend 2, releasing in the same window. Luo Hang needed to launch ahead of their rivals and was racing against time.

Xie Yunfan had no other choice but to push all the project teams into a frantic crunch.

Who knew how the boss was planning this new game?

Either way, it was better to give them a heads-up! The art team’s workload was going to be massive, though even Ning Sha couldn’t estimate exactly how massive.

…

At 12:00 PM, a message popped up in the main Yangfan Studio group chat.

Liu Muyao: “@All Members, hey everyone, the company has an independent cafeteria on the 3rd floor. Lunch hours are 12:00-13:00. Your employee badges can be used directly as meal cards. Finance has already loaded the cards with a 1,500 yuan monthly meal subsidy. Feel free to head downstairs to eat.”

Seeing this, everyone quickly packed up and headed to the 3rd floor. A 1,500 yuan monthly meal allowance meant that, excluding weekends and calculating based on 22 working days, they had an average of 68 yuan a day. That was more than enough for three meals!

Ji Yan was a massive foodie and was extremely picky about what he ate.

As he followed the crowd to the cafeteria, he was still wondering if the company cafeteria would just serve a standard boxed lunch of three dishes and a soup every day. They definitely wouldn’t have his favorite chicken drumsticks or pig trotters.

If it wasn’t good, he’d just go eat out. There were plenty of good restaurants in the nearby mall.

Ji Yan decided to check out the cafeteria first before planning his future foraging routes. But as soon as he arrived, he was stunned—this was way higher-end than a university dining hall!

The cafeteria counters were clean and brightly lit, lined with trays of prepared meat dishes. Pickled fish, braised pork, spicy chicken wings, spiced beef, braised chicken legs… there were at least a dozen meat options.

The vegetable dishes were even more dazzling, and the pricing was incredibly generous. A meal with three dishes and a soup wouldn’t exceed 20 yuan, and the nutritional balance was excellent.

A corner stall even offered freshly made, steaming hot rice noodles and wheat noodles.

Staring at the dazzling array of meats, Ji Yan swallowed hard and immediately rushed to line up.

Yunfan, isn’t your company cafeteria a bit too generous?

Aren’t you worried the company will lose money on this?

Colleagues who had resigned from other companies were deeply moved.

The company cafeteria was lavish, and they got a 1,500 yuan monthly subsidy. This meant that working at Yangfan Studio didn’t just pay a much higher salary than the industry standard, but they also ate much better than their peers.

An angel boss!

A moment later, Xie Yunfan came to the cafeteria to eat. Many people took the initiative to greet him: “Hello, Boss!”

Xie Yunfan asked casually, “Is the food to your liking?”.

An excited voice rang out from a corner: “It’s too delicious!”

Laughter erupted around the room.

Xie Yunfan smiled. “I hired an amazing head chef. As long as you guys enjoy it, that’s what matters”.

The head chef he hired was the very same “Auntie” who had taken care of the brothers for years. Auntie’s cooking was phenomenal, and Xie Yunfan offered her a very high salary to come to the studio and oversee their daily meals.

Xie Yunfan grabbed two meat dishes and one vegetable, and after eating, headed back to his office for a short nap.

At 2:30 PM, he took the elevator up to the 18th floor.

The game production team’s workspaces were all located on the 18th floor to facilitate meetings and discussions. Departments completely unrelated to game development, like logistics, finance, and marketing, were placed on the 19th floor so they wouldn’t disturb each other.

By the time Xie Yunfan walked into the conference room, most of the seats were already filled. Everyone was highly motivated for their first meeting. Xie Yunfan swept his gaze across the room and said, “Team leaders, do a headcount. Is everyone here?”.

The team leaders’ voices echoed sequentially: “All present.”

Xie Yunfan opened the PPT he had prepared and said, “The main purpose of calling everyone here today is to assign tasks for the next phase. Yangfan Studio’s next game is called Journey to the Western Heaven. It’s a strategic combat mobile game, and my goal is to build it into a ‘National Game’ suitable for all ages.”

Everyone: “…”

A National Game? The boss’s ambitions were way too big!

However, given that he had already produced three massive hits, everyone still had a lot of confidence in him.

Hearing this, they all quickly sat up straight, perking their ears to listen to Xie Yunfan’s presentation.

“I’ll first introduce the main storyline. Our game’s first protagonist is a monkey born from a stone.”

Everyone thought this was highly unusual.

They had never seen a game with a monkey as the main character!

And a monkey that popped out of a rock, at that?

This kind of setting should be really popular with little kids, right?

“This monkey is named Sun Wukong. He has exceptionally high innate talent and monstrous combat power. Because he was born from a stone nourished by the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, he has no parents. He hasn’t experienced the ways of the world, doesn’t understand the rules of human society, does whatever he pleases, and breaks all the rules. People also call him the ‘Brazen Monkey’.”

“The place he was born is called the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, which is home to a massive population of monkeys.”

“The monkey troop didn’t have a leader. One day, they saw a river, and an elder monkey declared that whoever could find the river’s source would be recognized as their king.”

“Our protagonist is incredibly gifted. Born stronger than the other monkeys, he leaped and flew everywhere, quickly locating the source at the Water Curtain Cave and becoming the king of the troop—the Handsome Monkey King.”

“Later on, a little monkey died. Sun Wukong had no concept of life and death; he didn’t understand what ‘dying’ meant. The elder monkeys told him that humans and animals all have their own lifespans, unless they cultivate the Dao and become immortals. In this world, only deities live forever.”

“So, he made up his mind to become a deity. He set out to find a master and learn martial arts and magic, eventually taking a master named Patriarch Subhuti.”

“He learned many skills from his master, but he was a monkey after all. Inherently mischievous, he never followed the sect’s rules. He jumped around all day causing trouble and couldn’t calm his mind to cultivate. In a fit of anger, Patriarch Subhuti expelled him from the sect.”

“Sun Wukong returned to the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. The Bull Demon King, who also lived there, came knocking to fight for territory. Wukong realized the stick he was using wasn’t very handy, so he ran to the Dragon Palace, stole someone else’s Compliant Golden-Hooped Rod to use as his weapon, and also looted a ton of rare equipment from the Dragon Palace.”

“Overjoyed, he drank too much alcohol and died. The Ghost Realm sent emissaries to harvest his soul, claiming his lifespan had ended. Refusing to accept this, he caused an uproar in the Palace of the King of Hell, beat the underworld officials until they begged for mercy, grabbed the Book of Life and Death, and crossed out his own name.”

Everyone: “…………”

This monkey sounded a bit too overpowered, didn’t he?!

He even crossed over with the Ghost Realm and altered the Book of Life and Death?

Anyone who had played Ghost Realm knew that the Book of Life and Death recorded a person’s mortal lifespan. Once it ran out, they died and became ghosts waiting for reincarnation. Everyone had their allotted time. Yet Sun Wukong directly charged into the underworld, rewrote the book, and forcibly increased his own lifespan? You could do that?!

Acting entirely on his own whims, going his own way, fearing neither heaven nor earth… Moreover, this Monkey Brother was incredibly stubborn. Just based on the story so far, he had already offended a whole lot of people…

Xie Yunfan continued, “He offended the Dragon Palace and the Underworld. They collectively filed a complaint to the Heavenly Court. Left with no choice, the Jade Emperor of Heaven dispatched heavenly soldiers and generals to arrest him.”

“However, his combat power was simply too high. Wave after wave of generals sent to fight him were defeated.”

“Unable to beat him by force, the Heavenly Court resorted to appeasement, inviting him to Heaven to become an official.”

“At first, they gave him a bogus, low-ranking title called ‘Bima Wen’, which essentially meant he was raising horses for the Jade Emperor. Sun Wukong was naive and thought it was a high-ranking position, proudly playing around in the Heavenly Court for a while… Later, he found out he’d been fooled, and in a fit of rage, went back to the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit.”

“He declared that he would live as long as heaven and earth, crowning himself the ‘Great Sage Equal to Heaven’!”

“The Great Sage’s combat power was too great; leaving him at the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit was a disaster waiting to happen. The Heavenly Court approached him again, promising to formally grant him the title of Great Sage Equal to Heaven. But the people of Heaven were arrogant and looked down on this monkey in their hearts. They built a fake mansion, slapped a ‘Great Sage Equal to Heaven’ plaque on it, and continued to humor him.”

“Bored out of his mind, he caused trouble every day. The Jade Emperor had no choice but to give him something to do, assigning him to guard the Immortal Peach Orchard. As a result… when a monkey sees peaches, of course he’s going to want to eat them.”

“The immortal peaches in the orchard were incredibly precious and guarded by the Queen Mother’s attendants. Sun Wukong couldn’t care less how precious they were. In one breath, he ate all the biggest peaches.”

In the audience, many colleagues were holding back laughter.

He really was a “Brazen Monkey,” causing chaos everywhere he went!

“Hearing there was good food at the Immortal Peach Banquet, the clever Sun Wukong used a trick to deceive all the attendees into leaving. He snuck into the banquet, gorged himself, and even packed up a bunch of delicious food to take back to the monkeys at the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit.”

“Hearing there were immortal pills in Taishang Laojun’s alchemy furnace, he swung by and wolfed down a massive amount of them.”

“Well, that did it. He turned the entire Heavenly Court completely upside down.”

“Furious, the Jade Emperor sent out troops to deal with him again. Sun Wukong attacked the Heavenly Court directly, and shockingly, across the entire Heavenly Realm, not a single person was his match.”

“And that is the first chapter of our game—Havoc in Heaven.”

The more the audience listened, the more bewildered they became. This monkey was practically lawless, wasn’t he? No one could defeat him; he was even more overpowered than the protagonist of a wish-fulfillment novel.

Initially, when everyone heard Xie Yunfan say the main character was a monkey, they thought he was making a little animal care game. But it turned out this monkey was no ordinary creature. This level of combat power… it was insane!

Making this into a hot-blooded combat game sounded incredibly thrilling just thinking about it.

Xie Yunfan said, “What I just described is only a rough outline of the early plot. Our game is a stage-based strategy combat mobile game, and the first chapter focuses on Sun Wukong’s personal journey.”

“Sun Wukong is the character the player primarily controls. Players can control him to climb the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, explore the Water Curtain Cave, go to the Underworld to alter the Book of Life and Death, and head up to the Heavenly Realm to fight various deities.”

“The preliminary plan for the first chapter is divided into seven stages.”

“The level design team will be responsible for this. Stage One: The Mountain of Flowers and Fruit will be designed as a challenge stage where players control Sun Wukong to climb the mountain and find the Water Curtain Cave. Finding it triggers the Handsome Monkey King storyline.”

“Stage Two: Seeking the Dao. He becomes Patriarch Subhuti’s disciple, is named Sun Wukong, and acquires the skills ‘Somersault Cloud’ and ‘Seventy-Two Transformations’, which will be core abilities later on.”

“Stage Three: Battle with the Bull Demon King. This is a single-player boss challenge stage where Sun Wukong duels the Bull Demon King.”

“Stage Four: Treasure Hunt in the Dragon Palace. This will be structured like an instance dungeon where players fight mobs, find treasure chests, and ultimately defeat the four Dragon Palace bosses to acquire his signature weapon, the Compliant Golden-Hooped Rod, along with equipment like the Cloud-Stepping Boots, Purple Gold Crown, and Golden Armor.”

“Stage Five: The Book of Life and Death. Sun Wukong storms the Underworld, fights the Ten Kings of Hell, and alters the Book of Life and Death.”

“Stage Six: Great Sage Equal to Heaven. The Heavenly Court sends troops to capture him, and he beats them back several times. This will be a pressure-survival stage where players must continuously repel waves of heavenly soldiers and generals.”

“Stage Seven: The Immortal Peach Banquet. Sun Wukong wreaks havoc in Heaven. This will be a one-versus-many high-difficulty combat stage where the player controls Sun Wukong against a massive amount of NPCs.”

“Ultimately, left with no other options, the Jade Emperor invites Buddha to intervene. Buddha makes a wager with Sun Wukong, betting that Wukong cannot escape his palm. Sun Wukong loses the bet and is suppressed beneath the Five Elements Mountain.”

“The first chapter concludes here.”

Xie Yunfan opened the stage list in his PPT.

Seven stages, complete with detailed data on bosses, mobs, background settings, and specific requirements. Seeing this, the level design team exchanged panicked glances.

Scaling mountains, diving into the sea, ascending to heaven, descending to earth…

Monkey Brother, you’re having the time of your life, but our level design team is going to go bald!

Writer Ye Xiang grew more excited the more he listened. He had written so many scripts, but this was the first time he’d seen such a fun character concept as “Sun Wukong.” The monkey had incredible nerve—fearing nothing in heaven or earth, and whenever anyone bullied him, he simply fought back!

In human society, you had to follow rules for everything: listening to your parents when you were little, listening to your teachers at school, listening to your boss at work… But Sun Wukong? He didn’t listen to anybody.

He even demanded control over his own lifespan!

He even wanted to live as long as heaven and earth, crowning himself the “Great Sage Equal to Heaven.”

A protagonist so entirely “transcendent of worldly conventions” would absolutely be adored by kids. And adults would be able to see the courage to break rules and his straightforward boldness in him as well.

As a writer, Ye Xiang absolutely loved Sun Wukong.

Meanwhile, looking at the character design documents in the list, the art team couldn’t help but inwardly groan—sure enough, Sister Ning Sha hadn’t been trying to scare them when she said the art team’s workload would be heavy. This was way too heavy!

Sun Wukong was the focal character and obviously needed to be drawn perfectly.

The Dragon Palace required the Dragon Kings of the East, West, South, and North Seas? And some Turtle Prime Minister.

The Heavenly Court was even more absurd. The Jade Emperor, Queen Mother, Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, the Seven Fairies, plus the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King, Third Prince Nezha, Taibai Jinxing, Taishang Laojun…

Oh my god!

Just these NPCs alone made up a massive pile of work.

And that wasn’t even mentioning the mobs. For the monkeys on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, they’d have to draw at least a few dozen big and small variations, right?

The shrimp soldiers and crab generals of the Dragon Palace, the heavenly soldiers and generals of the Heavenly Court, the various ghosts and monsters of the Underworld, the Bull Demon King’s lackeys… Just based on the first chapter Xie Yunfan described, the sheer volume of original art required was not even on the same magnitude as their previous games, Underworld Maze and Music Soul!.

The scope of this game was simply too massive. No wonder Xie Yunfan was so confident it would become a National Mobile Game.

The programming team was also tearing their hair out right now.

Once the levels were designed, they had to write the code. Just the first stage of climbing the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit to find the Water Curtain Cave—this kind of dynamic event wasn’t easy to script. The player controlling a monkey climbing a mountain… how exactly do you code the climbing? What if he falls off halfway? Then there were the later one-on-one duels and one-versus-many combat stages. There were so many details that needed processing.

The data team felt the same pressure. They had to carefully calculate all the different boss ultimates and exactly how much HP Sun Wukong would drain with a single swing of his staff. Even though Sun Wukong’s combat power was off the charts, he couldn’t just one-shot a whole group of enemies with a single hit, right? That would be too simple and crude, and players wouldn’t feel a sense of achievement.

It needed a certain level of mechanical difficulty, while simultaneously making the player feel incredibly powerful…

That balance was not going to be easy to grasp!

Seeing the conflicted expressions of the people in the audience, Xie Yunfan smiled faintly and said, “Everyone, don’t worry. We’re not rushing the schedule for this game. We are striving for a masterpiece, so we can take our time. My plan is to release the first chapter during the summer holidays, and then release a DLC every half a month until the end of the year”.

“We have plenty of time, so we’ll take it step by step. HR has already arranged it; tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM, everyone will gather downstairs. We’re going on a field trip to Mount Qingqiong.”

“We are going to visit a real monkey mountain to observe the monkeys’ living habits and find some inspiration.”

Everyone: “…”

Boss, you’re truly something else!

Taking the entire development team to a monkey mountain to look at monkeys while making a game? Who even does that?

But then again, the protagonist of this game was a monkey, so he naturally needed to possess monkey-like personality traits and behavioral characteristics. Going on-site to observe real monkeys… perhaps they really could find some inspiration!