Chapter 4
Chapter 4
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Translator: Silver Dragon
Chapter: 4
Chapter Title: Curse of Los Altos Hills
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"Huck, is this what you've been working on all this time?"
"Yeah. It's not quite finished yet, but it's playable enough for testing."
"Games are really made this easily?"
Rogers, who had come over to my dorm room, kept letting out exclamations of admiration as he stared at the computer screen.
On the screen was the demo version of Curse of Los Altos Hills, the game I'd created. The sound and graphics work wasn't complete yet, but you could play it.
"Wait, Los Altos? Isn't that our neighborhood?"
"It's the only American neighborhood I know."
"A game based on our neighborhood? That's pretty intriguing."
Rogers, the textbook example of an alpha-male white guy, seemed genuinely fascinated that the game's setting was Los Altos Hills.
For reference, this guy and I were from the same neighborhood—Los Altos Hills.
Once he heard it was based on our hometown, he started showing real interest, even though he'd seen me working on the game several times before without much reaction.
"Wanna give it a try?"
"What? You want me to play a game?"
"Yeah. I'm at the debugging stage now, and even if I check everything myself, I might miss some bugs. It'd be great to have a cross-check."
"Hmm..."
Rogers seemed interested but hesitant, stuck in that ambiguous spot.
"Huck, you know I don't really like games."
"I know. Still, just try it once. It's nothing like the games you played as a kid."
"Haa... Fine. It's not like it's hard, and I'm kinda curious anyway."
I handed him two floppy disks containing the Curse of Los Altos Hills demo. He took them and said he'd play it and let me know, then left my room.
'E.T.'s ghost is still haunting America.'
The reason Rogers hated games stemmed from a childhood experience.
Ten years ago, the U.S. game industry was in its first golden age.
Atari's Atari 2600 console had sold an astonishing 30 million units in the U.S. alone, cementing its place as the first truly mass-market game console...
The problem was just how wildly successful the Atari 2600 had been.
Back then, releasing a game for the Atari 2600 meant tens of thousands of copies sold as a matter of course, and hits could reach hundreds of thousands. Developers churned out games like there was no tomorrow.
It was an era dominated by shortsighted publishers who prioritized pumping out quick cash grabs over quality.
In the process, utter garbage like E.T. got released, traumatizing the Atari 2600's main audience: kids.
Having lost consumer trust, the game industry plummeted straight into the abyss—a dark chapter in gaming history.
Rogers said he'd gotten E.T. as a Christmas present when he was little, and the shock was so bad he hadn't touched a game since.
'Thanks to Nendo, the industry got back on track, but there's still a long way to go.'
In that sense, handing the demo to Rogers wasn't a bad call.
To succeed in the U.S. market, the game had to appeal even to people like him who held negative views toward games.
"When the hell are you giving back that copy?"
"I haven't gotten mine yet either. Damn it, the guys who grabbed it first are skipping lectures and holed up in their rooms—they won't come out."
Lately, more and more Caltech students were ditching classes.
With such brilliant minds gathered here, attendance hardly mattered anyway, so the professors weren't too strict about it.
But lately, the numbers had grown enough to spark rumors of faculty meetings.
"Jason! We know you're in there! Open the damn door!"
Bang!
After pounding on the door like they were gonna break it down and yelling, the door finally creaked open.
"Ugh! How long has it been since you showered, man?"
Even peeking through the cracked door, Jason's greasy curly hair and bloodshot eyes were crystal clear.
"...What do you want? I'm busy. Gotta prep for day 12 right now..."
"You have the Los Altos copy! It's been forever since you said you'd lend it."
"Oh... right. Come on in. Game's running right now—I'll copy it as soon as it's done."
Jason opened the door, revealing the disastrous state of his dorm room.
Blackout curtains blocked every sliver of light, leaving the room pitch dark. The floor was littered with snack wrappers and soda cans.
The only glow came from the computer monitor.
"Hold up, scavenging for weapons? You've already got a chainsaw and shotgun—shouldn't morning be talent search...?"
But Jason didn't care about the pigsty; he sat at the computer, dead serious as he moved the mouse.
Once Jason's mouse clicks stopped, the monitor displayed a message announcing the twelfth night, and tense music began blaring from the speakers.
Graaaargh!
"What the hell?! That horrific image?!"
"It's insane! What are those corpse things swarming in?!"
John and Tommy, who had come to borrow the copy from Jason, recoiled in horror at the scene on the monitor.
A week ago, a game called Curse of Los Altos Hills had started spreading around campus.
At first, no one paid it much mind since it was just a game.
'This is one insane game. Out of everything since I got into Caltech, playing this was the most shocking experience.'
Caltech's resident celebrity.
In a place full of nerds, Rogers was famous as the one guy shooting high school movie vibes. His words got students interested in Los Altos.
Just like that, the Curse of Los Altos Hills demo floppy disks Rogers had spread like wildfire among the students.
The weird part? With Caltech's small classes of under 300 per year, it should've been easy to get a copy by now—but plenty of students still hadn't, even after some time.
The reason? Everyone who got a copy was holing up in their dorms like they'd made a pact.
John and Tommy had no choice but to track Jason down to his dorm since he'd promised to lend it but was skipping classes too.
"Damn it!!! Breached again! What more prep do I need?! I checked resource allocation and defense routes this time!"
John and Tommy started worrying Jason might've lost it as he screamed at the FAILED message on the screen.
"Is this game really that hard?"
Tommy, in particular, felt a bit puzzled by Jason's reaction.
He was a gamer who played everything from Nendo's Neo Famicom to PC games.
To him, the idea of a game being "hard" didn't click easily.
'It's just a game, right?'
Truth was, games in this era were mostly pure fun, without the hardcore difficulty or extreme survival mechanics of the future.
"You wouldn't get it even if I explained."
Jason was convinced Tommy couldn't grasp what he was feeling until he played it himself.
'I underestimated it at first too.'
Jason was Caltech's oddball, hailed as a genius among geniuses. He'd been helping his classmate Huck with the game and decided to try it himself—now a full week later, he was still glued to it.
He'd started out wanting to analyze what code a genius like Huck used, but once he began playing, that flew out the window.
Curse of Los Altos Hills had a ridiculously simple structure.
At the start, you placed the basic characters and weapons at the village entrance to fend off incoming zombies, then scavenged for more units and gear. That's it.
Except...
'Every restart gives different characters and weapons.'
A common random start mechanic. Sometimes just three housewives showed up; other times, a sheriff or ex-soldier who could carry you to the end.
The early difficulty swung wildly based on this "gacha," so Jason prayed every run for a good combo.
And the randomness didn't stop there.
Zombie numbers per day were random too. Fortunately, countless retries let him pin down rough min-max values.
The silver lining? Fixed village entrance layout. Jason had optimized his placements and took pride in them.
'In this damn luck-based game, placement is true skill!'
Jason was sure that with a bit better luck, he'd have cleared this frustrating yet impossible-to-quit game by now.
Whirr.
Suppressing the urge to play more, Jason ended the game to make copy disks for John and Tommy. For the first time in ages, he pulled back the curtains to air out the room.
"Kyaaah!"
Sunlight flooded in, dazzling him. He let out a scream worthy of a little girl.
The classic end of a darkness-corrupted gamer.
"This is the graphics limit."
After finishing the demo, I'd thrown myself into debugging and polishing the visuals.
To cut down on size, I optimized the VGA palette and used tile/sprite-based design in tandem—achieving the best graphics possible right now.
The result? Fitting the finished game onto just two floppy disks was an insane feat.
Even Rogers was speechless with admiration for a while after seeing my work.
'Graphics quality is high, but the images themselves feel a bit lacking.'
I wasn't trained in professional design or art direction, so some shortcomings were inevitable.
The character images, referenced from real photos, turned out decent. But for the key zombies, lack of references meant I had to draw them myself—ending up with some pretty bizarre looks.
Still...
'This monster design is the real killer. Scary enough to haunt my dreams. Like it taps into primal fear of the unstoppable unknown?'
The freakish creature born from trying to draw a plain zombie somehow meshed perfectly with the game's atmosphere. Friends who'd actually played raved about it.
'Now to think about distribution... Guess I'll have to send it out myself?'
Final touches on the game would wrap up soon, and debugging was nearly done thanks to reports from demo testers.
Now it was just a matter of figuring out how to sell it.