I Just Want Players to Save Money, They Insist on Giving Me!
Chapter 558 - 179: The Design Approach that Dazzled Everyone! The Deserving Textbook of Platform Jump!_1

Chapter 558: Chapter 179: The Design Approach that Dazzled Everyone! The Deserving Textbook of Platform Jump!_1

In fact, before starting his livestream, Josiah had received a mysterious sponsorship.

The sponsor’s request was quite simple.

Begin streaming, and criticize the top player’s three games to the greatest extent possible.

Josiah had originally planned to ride the wave of ’criticizing the top player,’ and now with the financial backing of a benefactor, he was even more energized.

He quickly glanced at the three game installation packages in his hand.

The smallest of them was "Space-time Illusion."

The file size was just over 100MB.

With such a small game size, one could easily guess that it had little to do with graphics or music.

In other words, having lost the opportunity to score points for graphics and sound, the game had to be exceptionally well-designed or creative to attract players.

Josiah decided to start with this game as his appetizer.

With his streaming room’s popularity surging, it was a good time for him to pass his judgment.

Let’s see what kind of courage this company had to self-proclaim their game as a textbook.

Sure enough, upon starting the game,

he was greeted with a retro pixel-art UI interface matching the small file size.

A strong sense of cheap, crude aesthetics hit him.

And right in the center of the screen were the four Chinese characters for "Space-time Illusion."

The font had no flair; it looked like it was hastily made in a Word document and then given a random highlight color.

It could hardly catch anyone’s attention.

It had a certain ’I can’t even muster the enthusiasm to care’ beauty to it.

"Just this UI interface alone is probably enough to deter a large number of players, right?" Josiah began his sharp critique.

"Although this work is only a demonstration and isn’t sold to players, regardless, you’re addressing game designers from all of Blue Star. You should at least make the UI a bit better, shouldn’t you?"

However, just a few trivial comments couldn’t stir up the emotions of the viewers in his livestream.

For a stream featuring this kind of commentary, he essentially needed to get the viewers riled up to receive gifts.

Josiah planned to continue playing a little longer, waiting until he encountered something so obviously wrong that even the viewers could spot it, before amplifying the flaws and judging them.

A game that looked mediocre at first glance couldn’t possibly be without flaws further in.

But what slightly surprised Josiah was this—

for such a small game, the top player had actually included a variety of language settings.

He quickly found the English option and smoothly switched over.

Then, he began to control the character in the game.

It was an adult male with a center parting, wearing a suit and a bow tie, named Tim.

What didn’t fit with this modern-looking character was—

the game’s setting placed the protagonist inside a side-view castle.

The castle was divided into three levels, each with several rooms.

And each room bore the name ’World X.’

The room where Josiah’s controlled protagonist currently stood was called ’World 2.’

The other worlds were not lit up.

This meant that Josiah had no choice but to start from World 2.

"Starting off so rebellious? Let’s see what you’ve got." Muttering to himself, Josiah pushed open the door of the room and stepped inside.

What he saw was a scene akin to paradise.

Dreamy white clouds floated around, with bookshelves lined up in rows, each bearing a book.

After glancing through and piecing together the information, Josiah learned that the books were explaining the entire game’s backstory.

The princess had been kidnapped by the Demon King, and Tim had to venture to the castle to rescue her.

But unlike traditional stories,

these books also disclosed another detail.

Before the princess was kidnapped by the Demon King, she had lived with Tim for a while.

And it seemed that due to some wrongdoing by Tim, the princess became angry, which resulted in a big argument before she stormed off, leaving Tim behind.

Shortly afterwards, she was kidnapped by the Demon King.

Filled with regret, Tim embarked on a journey to save the princess.

"This is such a tired fairy tale that my grandmother wouldn’t even want to tell me anymore. And the designers have even thrown in an even more clichéd soap opera subplot," Josiah shrugged exaggeratedly and played canned laughter once more.

The entire livestream room was filled with the audience’s ’lol’s and some comments.

"I’ve had enough, if it were me, I’d probably have quit the game by now."

"Poor graphics, trite plot. I admire Josiah’s persistence to keep playing. I suggest to change to the next game right away, I’m not even interested in rating this one."

"Is this what the top player calls a ’textbook’?"

"What goes on in the minds of their lead designers? How can such a work be considered a textbook?"

"Is there a possibility that the top player just couldn’t come up with a better plot?"

"Hahahahaha!"

Amidst the mockery of the comments, Josiah continued to guide Tim through the ethereal corridor of white clouds, reaching the next door.

Pushing it open, a whole new world unfolded before his eyes.

And the theme of the world was revealed at this moment.

[Time and Forgiveness]

"If time could be reversed, could we make amends for the mistakes we’ve made?"

The overall style resembled the occasional 2D side-scrolling platform-jumping scenes found in "Mario Odyssey."

The background was blue sky and white clouds, with green roofs and blue bricks beneath the feet.