To officially register a game on a game platform like Steam, you first have to establish a corporation and register your business.
Normally, that’s the very first thing you take care of before starting game development, but somehow I ended up making the game’s initial build first and only then applying to incorporate, so the order of operations had been completely reversed.
In any case, now that I’d decided to release the game officially, it was something I’d have to do sooner or later. So after setting aside a day and taking care of all the related paperwork, I was preparing the demo version of “Project Ash” with a much lighter heart.
Generally speaking, a game demo is a promotional act where you let an unspecified number of people play the early part of your game, then get them to buy the full version when it comes out.
It’s easy to understand if you think of the sample-tasting corner at a big supermarket.
Because of that, the amount of content varies wildly from company to company, but since most demos are made with a playtime of around thirty minutes to an hour in mind, the prototype of Project Ash that I had made for the technical demonstration met the conditions for a demo version almost perfectly.
Of course, the reason I said “almost” was because the game still didn’t have proper background music or sound effects inserted, and considering how much auditory elements affect a user’s play experience, even if it was only a demo, I absolutely had to do the audio work in post-production.
“Sunday, can you make me a lyrical BGM that mixes the sounds of piano and string instruments?”
[Processing… I’ve prepared several music samples according to Master’s request.]
And fortunately, I had Sunday, the all-purpose smart butler AI, who could solve this kind of complicated problem for me in one fell swoop.
In general, sound effects used in games are bought as-is from overseas sites that specialize in selling assets available for commercial use.
But when it came to background music, which determined the overall atmosphere of the game, I had no choice but to outsource it to a professional. And for a tiny indie game company, outsourcing music was practically a luxury.
There were even people who couldn’t afford to commission more than a few pieces of art, the most important outsourced work of all, so there was no way they could allocate production costs to music, which was relatively lower priority.
That was why most indie game companies ended up choosing one of two options. The first was to use only freely available BGM, and the second was to try making it themselves, however clumsy it might be.
“Then this time, make me a bouncy melody with a cute, fairy-tale-like feel.”
[I’ve prepared a new music sample according to Master’s request. Shall I play it?]
“Yeah. Play it.”
♪~♬
In that sense, Sunday’s usefulness was truly overwhelming.
It was a completely broken cheat-level AI that couldn’t even be compared to the AIs currently on the market, with ridiculously fast search speed, the ability to create all kinds of programs, and even human-level communication skills.
The music, so polished it was hard to believe it had been made on the spot, made me think, “Doesn’t this actually have an original somewhere?” But Yang Bibi personally guaranteed that part.
“Metatron, Sunday’s original, was originally an AI that rebelled against humanity, reached the Singularity, and became the leader of an entire race by itself. The machine angels extremely detest the idea that only humans can come up with creative ideas, so don’t worry. They would never do something like plagiarize another creation.”
Of course, I ended up learning information I hadn’t really wanted to know, but since this was the kind of IF scenario that wouldn’t happen as long as I treated Sunday well, it should be fine, right?
…It is fine, right?
Wondering if I should start stockpiling WD-40 as a bribe even now, I listened to each of the music samples personally made by the esteemed Sunday.
***
At present, the game’s development progress had surpassed roughly 60%.
To be honest, there was no need to rush development this much, but this was a disastrous development schedule made possible because, for this project, I wanted to know where my limits were and had devoted myself to development day and night.
‘At this rate, maybe I really can finish the game in a month?’
To be frank, Night Zero Dawn, the game I had worked on at my previous company, was a team project, so the sense of accomplishment hadn’t been as high as it was now.
I only had to perform the role assigned to me, and in the end, the final build of the game was made by combining the elements that each person had been responsible for.
In other words, if it wasn’t my part, I couldn’t know what kind of work someone else had done until I saw the finished product.
By contrast, the game I was making now, “Project Ash,” was made entirely by my own power.
It would be a lie to say there had been no trial and error at all, but perhaps because this was a work built up from the experience I’d accumulated over five years working at a game company, the ideas I’d never gotten to unfold, and thoughts like, “If it were me, I wouldn’t make it this way,” I had formed an enormous attachment to it in a short time.
Even with Sunday’s help, since I’d set the development period itself to be short, I compromised where I had to, but even so, for a game developed over a mere three weeks, the result was quite decent.
If things continued like this, even if it wasn’t the final version, it seemed possible to complete the game itself within a month.
Of course, after that, QA hell would be waiting for me, but Saori had volunteered to share the pain, so it should be fine, right?
“More importantly, it’s about time I gave the game a title.”
For the past three weeks, I had been calling it Project Ash after the game’s protagonist, Ash, but in the end, that wasn’t the game’s official title.
In other words, if I wanted to register a game page on the Steam store and upload the demo and the game PV, I needed an official title for the game. And deciding that wasn’t particularly easy.
‘Since the game’s story is based on Norse mythology, Ash Saga?’
No, that was kind of lame.
It felt a bit old-fashioned as a game title in this day and age.
Besides, just from the name, you couldn’t tell what kind of game it was.
‘Why didn’t God give me the ability to come up with titles?’
Of course, lamenting like this wasn’t going to make creativity appear where there had been none, so I decided I should just draw inspiration from the work I’d made so far and opened the document where I had organized the art designs I’d drawn myself.
‘Hmm. What would be good?’
The objective this game currently presented to the player was to climb to the “top of the World Tree.”
In other words, it had a vertical level design where the background changed the higher you climbed from the bottom, and the gimmicks and patterns of the monsters that appeared became more difficult. But if the game were simply about climbing a tower, the tension would be cut in half, so I had already decided on an important enemy who would serve as the final boss in the story.
The evil dragon that gnaws at the roots of the World Tree—“Nidhogg.”
The basic setting of this game was a world after “Ragnarok,” the apocalypse spoken of in Norse mythology, had already ended.
The gods had already fallen from grace, and the stories about them survived only as myths, legends, and oral traditions.
The protagonist Ash and his lover Cynthia were elves because they came from Alfheim, the homeland of all elves and one of the nine worlds mentioned in Norse mythology.
According to the setting, Nidhogg was an incredibly enormous dragon, so it was impossible to show his entire body on the screen.
That was why, in-game, I had made only his head and part of his upper body appear, but even that alone took up two-thirds of the entire screen, so the sense of pressure Nidhogg gave off compared to ordinary monsters was tremendous.
Because I knew that as well, in the game PV I would register on the Steam page this time, I had implemented and included at least a short version of the boss fight against Nidhogg that players would someday experience firsthand.
If people watched the PV, Nidhogg’s appearance would surely leave a strong impression on them.
In other words,
“Dragon?”
It was essential for the word “dragon” to be in the title.
But there were already plenty of games with similar names, like Tower of Dragon or Dungeon in Dragon, so an ordinary name probably wouldn’t work. Then, suddenly, my eyes landed on Ash’s concept art.
It was an illustration that brought to mind the typical image of a medieval knight, wearing heavy armor that covered his whole body and holding a two-handed sword in both hands.
“…Wait.”
If the final goal of this game was to obtain the golden apple, then you had to kill Nidhogg.
In that case, why not make that the title outright?
I didn’t ponder for long.
After that, I immediately opened a Steam page and entered the game’s title. That title was “Slash the Dragon,” which, translated directly into Korean, meant “Cut Down the Dragon.”
***
Dozens, even hundreds, of indie games are registered on the Steam store every day.
Naturally, there were almost no people who looked through all of them, and most of the time, after a game was officially released and word of mouth spread, a buried game would be dug up and become a topic of discussion on communities or elsewhere on the internet.
But what would happen if, among those countless games, there was one with visuals that stood out in particular?
Like the idiom “a crane among chickens,” even if a game suddenly appeared with no promotion whatsoever, if its quality was incomparably outstanding compared to other games, it was bound to naturally draw people’s attention.
And Slash the Dragon, whose demo and PV had just been uploaded to its Steam page, was exactly such a case.
It wasn’t a fake PV stuffed full of things that hadn’t even been implemented just to draw people’s interest, but a well-made indie game containing actual gameplay footage and a one-hour demo.
And the scheduled release date for a game like that was only one month away from its reveal?
Naturally, it was bound to attract an insane amount of attention, and while its creator was asleep, the view count on Slash the Dragon’s PV began to climb at a terrifying speed.