People often say imitation is the mother of creation.
But not every imitation is always forgiven.
Especially with games, as creative works, the line between plagiarism and homage is extremely vague, and since everyone has their own standards, it was honestly difficult to judge who was right or wrong.
Even so, disputes over plagiarism often broke out in the game industry, because imitation was an extremely commonplace act there.
Usually, when one work becomes an outstanding smash hit, derivatives trying to ride on its popularity come pouring out in droves.
The main reason for that lopsided trend was that investors—the money men of game companies—preferred genres that had already been proven in the market.
And the same was true of Slay the Spiral, said to be the origin of roguelike deck-building games.
After StS appeared without any warning and sold a record-breaking ten million copies, becoming an unprecedented hit in the indie game industry, countless derivatives had poured out over the past five years.
So-called StS-likes.
Night Zero Dawn, the game I had spent five years working on as a programmer, was exactly one of those cases, and even now, somewhere on Earth, another game imitating StS might be under earnest development.
Then how should I make a game that would preserve the core fun of the original while creating elements that set it apart from the flood of derivatives that had poured out like mad?
I found the answer in “choice” and “focus.”
***
“So you’re saying you’re only going to make one playable character?”
After hearing the basic concept I had spent several days thinking up, Yang Bibi looked intrigued.
“Yeah. That’s right. I thought about it a bit, and it didn’t seem like there was any need to have multiple protagonist characters.”
In other words, it was a matter of efficiency.
Rather than making three characters of moderate quality, making one high-quality character was far more likely to work in our favor when promoting the game.
“Instead, I’m thinking of having the character’s combat style branch depending on the weapon.”
There were three weapon types I had in mind at the moment.
Sword, spear, and blunt weapon.
The sword was the balanced type, the spear was the speed type, and the blunt weapon was the power type.
“And I’m thinking of making a system where, if two or more cards with the same name gather in your hand, they rank up into a higher-tier card.”
This adopted a method commonly used in the auto battler genre, but in the original game, if monsters had too much HP or the mechanics were too obnoxious, the game tended to drag on.
“You can stack cards with the same name up to three times through ranking up, and when you use a card that has reached its final rank, it shows a dedicated cutscene along with a cool battle animation.”
But my calculation was that if we let the player unleash powerful attacks like this, we could minimize that kind of dragging as much as possible.
Because the longer a turn went on, the easier it would become to create a final-rank card.
“Judging only by what you’ve said so far, it’s not bad.”
Yang Bibi muttered that and nodded.
“Right?”
Hearing from her, someone who clearly knew games, that my idea seemed decent made me happy for no reason.
It felt like my talent had been acknowledged, or something like that.
Then Yang Bibi spoke as if something had belatedly occurred to her.
“But earlier, you said you were going to divide combat styles by weapon, right?”
“Yeah?”
“What if you went one step further and divided the weapons by grade too?”
“The weapons?”
“Like Normal, Rare, Unique, Legend, that kind of thing. You start with a normal weapon at first, and then if you obtain higher-grade equipment from battles, events, or shops, your damage gets stronger.”
…That’s not bad.
“And the higher the grade of the equipment, the lower its appearance rate. For the hardest-to-obtain Legend weapons, you could include exclusive skills and stuff. For example, if you set them to appear at a 1% rate, wouldn’t it feel amazing when you got a Legend-grade weapon?”
“Okay, employee of the month.”
“What are you talking about?”
As expected of a woman who had enjoyed games from all across the universe.
It was an idea she had come up with on the spot, but its quality was undeniably high.
To begin with, since this was a game with no PvP, there was no need to worry about balance.
Rather, she instinctively understood that in the roguelike genre, the greater joy came from completing some absurdly broken build that shattered that balance.
“She got me there.”
This was an answer sheet I had spent several days agonizing over, yet it was on a similar level to an idea she had come up with on the spot.
It seemed I still had a long way to go as a developer.
“So, Captain, when do you think the game’s prototype will be finished? I’m starting to feel like my neck’s going to stretch waiting.”
“If it’s just the lower floors, I can probably make it within two or three days. Sunday is still hard at work making the basic assets for me.”
As I said that and pointed at the computer screen, where coding was being done automatically, Yang Bibi let out a hmph through her nose.
“Well, considering Sunday’s computing power, I guess it would take about that long. Then I’ll wait without getting my hopes up.”
“You’re not getting your hopes up?”
“It’s not the finished product, it’s a prototype. At that point, it’ll practically just be a lump of code. How am I supposed to look forward to that?”
Her words were harsher than I expected, and I almost felt discouraged, but a man’s pride would not allow me to back down here.
“Just you wait. I’ll make it so fun you’ll be shocked.”
“Hah, listen to you saying amusing things.”
Saying that, Yang Bibi looked up at me with half-lidded eyes.
“If the words ‘this is fun’ really come out of my mouth, then when you make the next game, I’ll help you myself instead of leaving it to Sunday.”
“Are you serious?”
“Unlike someone, I’m not the kind of woman who says two different things with one mouth.”
“Okay, call.”
When I was being underestimated this much, it only made me more stubborn.
“I’ll make sure the words ‘this is fun’ come out of your mouth.”
Saying that, I looked down to my heart’s content at Yang Bibi, who was much shorter than me.
***
The game’s opening began with a blond elf lying on an old bed, coughing up blood.
Cough! Cough!
The sickly elf’s name was Cynthia.
Although she was an elf, a long-lived race, she lived a terminal life where she never knew when she might die because of an incurable disease she had been born with.
Unable to keep watching Cynthia’s condition worsen by the day, her lover, Ash, swore a knight’s oath that he would bring back, no matter what, the golden fruit said to grow at the top of the World Tree for the sake of the ailing Cynthia.
In the next scene, Ash left the cottage where Cynthia was recuperating and looked up at the sky. The screen showed a golden tree piercing through the clouds and rising endlessly into the heavens, then faded to black.
“For now, the animation for the prologue scene is all finished…”
After that, using assets Sunday had made while automatically hunting all night, I created the dungeon for the lower section.
“Let’s make the backgrounds for floors 1 through 20 bright pastel tones.”
Just because it was a dungeon didn’t mean it had to be dark and gloomy.
Instead, to emphasize the setting of being inside the World Tree and the fairy-tale atmosphere, I inserted flowers and trees of various sizes here and there.
“It’s an early dungeon, so there’s no need for too many types of monsters. Should I just put in squirrels, rabbits, slimes, and maybe boars?”
Since I was using already completed assets, the monsters were copied with just a few clicks.
After inputting their respective values, I set the random encounter rates.
“Roughly 50% battles, 20% events, 20% shops, and 10% treasure should be fine.”
For everything else, I introduced random numbers.
Once I had completed the logic for floors 1 through 19 like that, the last and most important task was creating the 20th floor.
While looking through the monster assets Sunday had made over the past few days while diligently sucking up electricity, I found one monster that looked suitably strong and seemed like it could be set as the tutorial boss.
“Rune Golem.”
Its body was made of huge rocks engraved with mysterious blue characters, and the moss growing over it gave off the feeling of a “guardian” no matter who looked at it.
Since I planned to use backgrounds like an ancient temple starting from the section between floors 20 and 40, the Rune Golem was, in a way, the most appropriate choice.
After that, since it was the first boss the player would meet in-game, I was wondering how to set the difficulty. But since I knew that the one playing it wouldn’t be an ordinary person anyway, I decided to set it high.
“Well, if it’s too hard, she’ll give me feedback on her own.”
Even while thinking such irresponsible thoughts, I had a vague feeling that if it was her, she would be able to clear it no matter how hard it was.
Because Yang Bibi was the kind of person who, while saying with her mouth that she hated trash games and doomed games, would, once she really got started, sit there and play from the moment she turned it on all the way to the final boss.
In any case, after finishing the prototype of Project Ash by adjusting the parameters of the 20th-floor boss, the Rune Golem, I realized that a faint red light was already seeping in through the window, and I yawned long and wide.
Maybe because I had pulled two all-nighters to keep my promise with Yang Bibi, I felt half-asleep.
In this state, I didn’t think I could have a fair duel with Yang Bibi, who would still be sleeping, so after saving the completed prototype, I went into the bedroom to get some sleep.