Chapter 3
Chapter 3
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Translator: Silver Dragon
Chapter: 3
Chapter Title: First Game
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Click.
The only sound filling the room was the click of the mouse.
"I think it's a waste to use high-caliber talent like me on such simple work."
Jason's complaint broke the silence.
Jason stared at his monitor with an utterly bored expression, clicking away at the mouse. Honestly, his feelings weren't hard to understand.
If you asked what part of game development required the most manpower and was the most tedious, I'd confidently say pixel art.
Dot work involved manually filling in each individual pixel—a pure grind that was bound to be boring.
Of course, that very aspect made it simple enough for unskilled civilians to do as part-time work. But for a Caltech student, it was just mindless drudgery.
A rare sight: a Black man and an Asian man sitting side by side, staring at their monitors and clicking their mice.
"If you hate it, find someone else."
I told Jason, who was pulling a bored face and voicing his complaints, that he could quit if he wanted.
"Hmm... Doing this kinda grows on you. It's got its own fun."
"Right? Us engineering students need some cultural activities like this too."
Just like that, Jason flashed an infuriating grin and dove back into the work.
'Worker needed. First come, first served. Helpers get added to my final project team.'
'Me! I want in!'
'I've wanted to crawl between your legs for ages, Huck!'
To recruit help for the graphics work on the game I was developing solo, I'd dangled this semester's final project as bait. They jumped at it without a second thought.
Professor Jonathan's final assignment was genuinely tough.
By my standards, "tough" meant even a top Caltech student would need at least two weeks of all-nighters to produce something decent.
Of course, I could knock it out in a day or two. So when Professor Jonathan announced teams of up to two, everyone in the class turned red-eyed, fighting to claim me like I was a treasure chest.
That left these guys desperately grinding away at pixel art just to team up with me.
"But seriously, what kind of game are you making that needs such grotesque designs?"
Jason seemed focused for a moment, then started chattering again.
His monitor definitely displayed something grotesque—an unidentified creature whose identity was a mystery.
"Zombie defense game."
"Zombie? What zombie?! I thought it was some alien monster!"
"Shut up."
Jason's words hit a nerve, honestly.
Graphics weren't my specialty to begin with, so most designs were pulled from real photos.
Zombies were the only exception; nothing suitable existed, so I'd drawn them myself.
'That took me a week.'
This project was unavoidable, but for the next one, I desperately needed a graphic designer.
"Zombie defense... like Deadzone Survival 3D?"
"No, that's FPS. This is about literally holding off hordes of zombies."
"Games like that exist?"
"They don't. That's why I'm making one."
Jason knew his games pretty well.
The Deadzone Survival 3D he mentioned was Id Software's FPS that dominated the PC market this year—a monster hit with 100,000 copies sold.
'In this era, 100,000 PC copies equals 10 million on consoles in impact.'
In 1992, the market was basically all consoles.
In the US, "Nendo" from Japanese console makers was practically synonymous with "game console."
PC games, meanwhile, were just emerging. Even a masterpiece like Deadzone Survival 3D, later hailed as the FPS pioneer and a must-mention PC classic, only sold 100,000 copies in a tiny market.
But,
'Starting this year, masterpieces will flood out, and the PC market will grow exponentially for the next decade.'
That's why my first game was for PC, not consoles.
Consoles were a no-go for unproven companies anyway, and I needed to stake a claim in the burgeoning PC scene.
"Holding off zombie hordes? That's why it's defense."
Jason's interest piqued; he started peeking at the game programming I'd set up.
"You pervert? How did you subdivide the code this much? And you mixed in assembly? This is gonna tangle for sure."
Jason whistled at the coded lines.
It did look borderline perverse, even to me, with how granular I'd made the code.
But there was no choice if it had to fit on a floppy disk.
I structured the game in C, handling graphics and sound in assembly for the same reason: mixing languages minimized size and maximized performance.
Thanks to that, "Curse of Los Altos Hills" was shaping up nicely.
A defense game I'd chosen after pondering what would sell in '92 America.
Unlike trending FPS or RTS on PC, it was manageable solo and offered fresh shock value.
"But just placing characters without controlling them—will that be fun?"
After I briefly explained the defense genre structure, Jason raised doubts.
"It's fun precisely because you don't control them."
"What?"
'You can't know the joy of auto-play until you've experienced it.'
Defense-like games had popped up sporadically, but the genre's true kickoff came from Warcraft's custom maps later on.
Even then, plenty shared Jason's skepticism.
Was a simple game of placing units or buildings to fend off enemies really fun?
But if it were just blocking foes, defense games wouldn't explode in popularity later.
The core was tiered difficulty balancing and unit synergies.
And the key to that? Randomness.
Didn't wild difficulty swings based on luck define defense games?
Nail that, and the rest fell into place.
'Problem is, it's harder than it sounds.'
Not too hard, not too easy.
Each cleared stage needed to spark achievement without crossing into frustration.
A little irritation fueled competition, but only a little—cross the threshold, and players quit.
So I'd already devised a solution.
Something casual for light users, satisfying for hardcore ones.
"I like this setup, though. Protecting a village from zombie hordes feels kinda thrilling."
Jason grumbled that it didn't match any game he knew, but the Curse of Los Altos Hills concept hooked him.
This was another heavily considered element.
Players needed a reason to block the horde for immersion.
For that, I set the game—tentatively Curse of Los Altos Hills—in a zombie apocalypse.
A zombie virus sweeps America, turning people and collapsing society.
In California's Los Altos Hills village, residents fight to survive against zombies. That was the core.
Americans love defending something with their own hands, so it fit.
Drawing from Night of the Living Dead, zombie classic and pioneer.
I figured they'd eat up a game of peaceful villagers repelling a zombie invasion.
'It turned into unit defense instead of towers, though.'
I'd first envisioned tower defense with buildings.
But towers in a small village felt unrealistic, so I settled on residents as units.
For example, armed sheriff as A-tier; average housewife D-tier; one with a kitchen knife C-tier.
Progress split into morning and afternoon: mornings for recruiting villagers and gathering weapons to prep for afternoon zombie waves.
Afternoons: survive the onslaught. It balanced tension with strategy time.
'Survival period: one month. 30 stages total. Periodic special zombies with waves.'
Hold out 30 days, helicopters appear overhead, clear screen pops, ending rolls.
With structure set, I'd finished the logic and engine programming.
Graphics wrapping up, then NPC/zombie AI, final debugging—done.
"You made this in less than two months?"
"More like one. The rest was planning and balancing."
Jason, ignoring graphics to dissect my code, looked floored.
It was absurd speed, no denying.
Games usually took six months minimum; years were standard.
Yet solo, juggling school, I'd built the skeleton in under two months.
Purely Seon Woo-hyuk's talent.
'No way a study nerd alone makes VR games.'
This body's genius was god-given.
Ideas in my head turned to code like AI—slashing work time.
'Can't wait to finish.'
Progress faster than expected; completion loomed excitingly real.