The Platformer From Hell

I’m really, really bad at games. After the Tagirion clear video spread across the New Dimension Gallery, my follower count exploded. For a brief, shining moment I actually thought, At this rate I’ll escape the newbie ranks in no time. It took me embarrassingly long to realize how wrong I was.

“That’s all for today….”

Average concurrent viewers today: twelve.

Just four days ago my Tagirion raid stream had pulled an average of eighteen. Somehow I’d lost six loyal souls in less than a week. My follower count had nearly doubled, so why was this happening…?

If I was being honest, I had a pretty good idea why.

Most of my viewers had come from the New Dimension Gallery. Which meant they were already hardcore fans who knew pretty much everything about the game. To them, my stream might have been interesting at first, but there wasn’t much reason to keep watching.

PvP win streaks? Only a small fraction of New Dimension players even cared about PvP. Tagirion raids? They only happened once a week, so the gap between streams was huge. Besides, people had already analyzed my clear videos to death. There were plenty of other ways to beat the boss without copying my weird Priest-less strategy.

In short, nothing I showed them felt fresh or entertaining anymore.

Well… except for the real New Dimension addicts. The ones who’d watch me just breathing in the game world and still call it peak content. According to Tyuni, my current audience was a very special breed of crazy.

Either way, this situation couldn’t continue. My birthday was coming up soon, and at this rate I’d be spending it gluing googly eyes onto a teddy bear for company.

The one silver lining was that my remaining viewers still chatted pretty actively. I didn’t want to find comfort in something so small, but right now I didn’t have much choice.

So. What should I do?

The answer had been obvious from the start.

“B-Bora, what kind of videos do you usually watch on OnTube…?”

“I told you, just call me Bora!”

“I-I’ll try… So, um, what kind of videos do you usually watch on OnTube…?”

Bora puffed her cheeks out at me, clearly displeased. But the pout only lasted a second. She quickly opened OnTube on her phone and shoved the screen toward me, showing off her recommended feed.

“Lately I think these are the most fun.”

Unfortunately, the videos she showed me were nowhere near the answer I’d been hoping for. Cute little characters bouncing around, super casual gameplay… especially the ones where they used reverse capsules for random stuff. It was completely different from what I’d imagined.

Come to think of it, even though I used reverse capsules as a New Dimension launcher, they apparently had tons of other uses. Bora was the whole reason I’d started streaming in the first place, but the kind of content she’d expected was probably nothing like what I was actually doing.

A little disappointing…

“But why are you asking, Lene-noona?”

“I was just curious what you usually find entertaining, Bora….”

“Oh, I see!”

For some reason my answer made her beam. She promptly climbed into my lap and started enthusiastically introducing every video she liked. Honestly, I still didn’t understand what was supposed to be fun about any of it… but at least she looked happy. That was good enough.

Of course, my mental strength took a critical hit in the process.

I think I’m going to throw up…

“H-hello everyone….”

The eleven people who joined the moment the stream started were my precious regulars. Every single nickname was familiar. I wasn’t sure whether to feel sad or comforted by that fact.

Anyway, my beloved eleven immediately flooded the chat with question marks.

“Today I thought I’d try a game that’s trending right now called Jumping Up!”

The reaction was worse than I expected. But I wasn’t going to let it get to me. These eleven people who joined immediately were the real New Dimension lunatics—the ones who’d watch me do literally anything in that game. What mattered wasn’t them. It was the five new people who might wander in later.

So please, just bear with me for a bit…

“Y-yes, you did.”

“I guess that’s true…”

“…Yes.”

“You’re saying my recognition isn’t at that level…”

Tyuni’s assessment that my fame in New Dimension ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wasn’t enough to make people want to watch my stream… was an undeniable truth. I’d never once thought of myself as particularly famous there anyway.

“You mean I should grow my audience little by little by playing trending games, the same way I gained eleven viewers from New Dimension?”

“Hmm… Then what game should I play…?”

“Then I’ll try that one.”

“…Huh?”

“I’m really, really bad at that game though?”

Jumping Up! A platformer where you jump from platform to platform. Among them, Jumping Up is an incredibly simple game where you just keep jumping upward. At least, that’s what the description says. In reality it’s a sadistic test of patience and endurance that has destroyed countless streamers.

It was the spiritual successor to the platformer “Sky King” that had terrorized the streaming world a few years ago—an optimized torture device for content creators.

And right now, a rookie streamer named Lene had begun her challenge.

…Ah. I fell again.

The ones in pain were, for some reason, the viewers.

After forty minutes, Lene still hadn’t cleared the first area. She’d climb a little, fall. Climb a little more, fall again. The same scene repeated endlessly.

Normally that would be fine. The whole point of these games ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠is to watch the streamer suffer and fail over and over while the audience laughs.

But there was one fatal problem.

“This game is pretty difficult.”

Lene’s reactions were completely flat. She said things like “This is hard” and “This is difficult,” but her voice carried zero frustration. The entire appeal was supposed to be watching a streamer slowly break down from stress, yet the streamer herself showed no stress whatsoever.

The broadcast was broken from the foundation.

Maybe she was clearing the game so fast that she didn’t have time to feel stressed?

“Ah. I fell again.”

That wasn’t it either. She still hadn’t left the first area and kept falling off even the easiest platforms. When she’d said she was worried because she was bad at games before starting the stream, there had been zero exaggeration.

No. Calling her “bad at games” was actually an insult.

She was terrible at games. A complete beginner who loved the starting village. It was hard to believe this was the same person who had cleared Tagirion in such a revolutionary way just days ago.

The game made zero progress, the person playing it felt zero stress and reacted with zero emotion, and the stream consisted of the exact same scene on repeat. The only ones grinding their teeth in rage were the viewers.

Thus, a legendary disaster of a Jumping Up stream was born.

And the person responsible, Lene, was quietly thinking to herself:

Oh. We’re almost at twenty viewers.

She was happy that her audience was growing.