Chapter 351: Maybe This Is the Sorrow of a Game Designer
Chen Mo did a quick analysis and roughly understood the designer's intent, after all, he hadn't devoured all those psychology textbooks for nothing.
So, Chen Mo groped his way through the pitch-black darkness to the bathroom light and turned it on.
Amid a series of crackling sounds, the bathroom light flickered back on, but the hue had become eerily strange.
The sound of running water in the bathroom had long since vanished, and it was completely empty, as if no one had ever taken a shower there. Needless to say, it was all the male lead's hallucination.
Chen Mo quickly spotted a line of blood-red writing on the bathroom mirror: "Find me, and you can escape from here!"
After a moment, Zhao Lei asked, "Store manager, have you finished the bathroom scene? Don't bother searching outside; the clue is on the bathroom mirror. Turn on the light and you'll see it."
Chen Mo said, "Oh, I've already found it. I'm on the second-floor balcony now. Next step is the storage room, right?"
Zhao Lei: "What??? How are you faster than me?"
Chen Mo was a bit speechless: "This game is way too dumb, absolutely no challenge. And those random ghost figures and scary sound effects in the middle? Totally lacking any high-energy moments, just pathetic."
Zhao Lei: "..."
Chen Mo continued, "After the storage room, it's the underground garage, right? Knowing this game's usual tricks, the clue should be in that red car, shouldn't it? And a bloody hand is probably going to pop out of the trunk and grab me? After struggling like crazy, I'll find the hand's gone again?"
Zhao Lei was silent for a long time before finally forcing out, "Store manager, have you... played this before?"
Chen Mo said, "No, I haven't."
Zhao Lei was exasperated: "Don't lie to me, store manager! If you haven't played it, how come you're going through the process faster than me? And you even know the trigger points for the plot?"
Chen Mo sighed: "Sigh, maybe this is the sorrow of a game designer. I know exactly what players are thinking, and I know exactly where they'll get scared. These low-level gimmicks have appeared in my mind countless times already, so there's absolutely no novelty left."
Zhao Lei: "... I'm done with you, store manager. I'll play on my own."
Zhao Lei felt his intelligence was being insulted, like a struggling student facing the effortless show-off of a top performer, utterly helpless.
...
The entire game flow wasn't long; it ended in less than an hour. Of course, that was mainly because Chen Mo went through it too fast.
For most new players, "Haunted Mansion Terror" still had some horror elements, and there was a fair amount of puzzle-solving content, like the blood-red writing on the bathroom mirror—if you didn't trigger it, you couldn't proceed. So, most players' first playthrough took between three to five hours, with most of that time spent searching for clues while being scared out of their wits.
But for Chen Mo, who had a thorough grasp of player psychology and the designer's intentions, he was mentally prepared for all the high-energy moments. He also understood the patterns of the puzzle-solving content, guessing everything correctly, just like a player who had already cleared the game once and knew the rules. So, he finished in an hour.
As for Zhao Lei, he was still struggling in the final scene.
At that moment, the male lead was running through a space filled with countless vengeful spirits, with spirits suddenly appearing from time to time to grab his ankles.
This was the game's final act. The male lead had fallen into deep hallucinations, his schizophrenia symptoms at their peak. He had to find his hidden will among the countless spirits and destroy it to clear the game.
Zhao Lei was playing very tensely. Even though he had cleared the game once before, the final scene had many random elements, and under the influence of the terrifying atmosphere, he couldn't help but feel his blood pressure rise and his heart race.
Just then, Chen Mo's voice rang out in his ear at the most inappropriate moment: "Zhao Lei, I've cleared it. I'm heading off now."
Zhao Lei: "..."
What the heck! How am I still on the final level, and you've already cleared it?! Who's playing this for the first time here, me or you?! The game's only been going for less than an hour, and you're telling me you're done? Did you cheat or something?!
Though a thousand alpacas were stampeding through his mind, Zhao Lei still said, "Oh, okay, store manager, you go ahead. I'm almost done here too."
System notification: "Your friend who was playing with you has cleared the game. You can now use their save file to continue, or proceed with your current progress."
Zhao Lei, surrounded by layers of vengeful spirits, suddenly felt that everything he was doing was utterly meaningless...
Why was this happening...
Wasn't I the one who had cleared this game before?
...
...
Stepping out of the VR game pod, Chen Mo's heart was completely calm, almost to the point of wanting to laugh.
This "Haunted Mansion Terror" getting a player score of 3.7 was absolutely deserved. Chen Mo felt that score was even too high; if he were scoring it, it would be a negative score and get lost.
Maybe it was because there were so few horror games domestically that players were so lenient with it.
In fact, after playing for ten minutes, Chen Mo had already confirmed that "Haunted Mansion Terror" was a textbook case of a VR puzzle game wearing a horror skin. Except for the final scene, where players had to keep running to avoid vengeful spirits and find the split personality, all the other scenes just involved wandering around the house looking for clues, with no real sense of tension.
There were no monsters that would chop you up without warning, no plot kills that made your fingers or other parts ache. Although there were occasional screams and a few scary scenes, they were all trigger-based, like a haunted house—even if you stood still, nothing would happen.
Moreover, the game's scene resources were way too stingy.
Aside from the protagonist's starting room, the entire game took place in a single haunted mansion, with very, very limited resource usage.
No wonder the game was sold so cheaply; there was hardly any cost to it!
As for the story, Chen Mo strongly suspected whether the script for "Haunted Mansion Terror" was written by some domestic horror movie screenwriter, given the strong vibe of a typical Chinese horror film.
When he first entered the game, it seemed full of mysteries, but in reality, the game's plot summary was extremely simple.
The male lead, as a horror novel writer passionate about his craft, often needed to collect horror material and frequently fantasized about being a character in his own books. Over time, he developed schizophrenia.
In truth, the haunted mansion was bought by his other personality, and the female netizen called "Red Rose" wasn't real either—she was all a figment of his imagination. Everything in the mansion was him struggling against his other personality.
In the end, he defeated the other personality, walked out of the haunted mansion, and the game ended.