Chapter 527: A Very Suitable Chapter Title
Chen Mo's series of numerical adjustments left Qian Kun feeling extremely frustrated.
Wasn't it supposed to lower the difficulty? This clearly raised it instead, right?
This kind of level design made even Qian Kun shudder. If he had to describe it in one sentence, it would be that every corner of the level was filled with Chen Mo's malice...
The monster placement in "Dark Souls" had the following characteristics.
First, wherever you see something tempting, there's bound to be a trap.
For example, if you spot a glowing item ahead or a luscious chrysanthemum, then check its left-rear, right-rear, or above—there will definitely be a varying number of small monsters hiding, waiting to ambush you.
Second, if you feel like you can't defeat an enemy, then you really can't.
For instance, you suddenly see a majestic knight, or a fat guy whose footsteps make the ground tremble, or an arrogant fire-breathing dragon.
Your first reaction is: Damn, how can I possibly beat such a tough enemy? But to clear the level, you still have to bravely go and try. Deep down, you harbor a sliver of hope—maybe it just looks impressive?
Then you try it and realize, yep, I really can't beat it!
In the early levels of Dark Souls, many places are filled with enemies you clearly can't defeat. Of course, if you're highly skilled and enjoy playing like it's "Contra," stubbornly insisting on fighting them head-on, it's not entirely impossible to win, but it'll be extremely exhausting.
These monsters are meant to be fought after you've pushed through to the next section and gotten stronger.
Many players, when first encountering this kind of level design, are completely baffled.
Why? According to the flow, I shouldn't be running into such insane monsters, damn it!
But that's the reality. In "Dark Souls," following the path obediently doesn't mean you'll always face evenly matched enemies.
Third, most of the more difficult levels hide simpler ways to clear them, like environmental kills.
But new players usually can't find them.
To put it simply, the level design in "Dark Souls" is extremely malicious. There are many seemingly unreasonable placements and vicious traps. If you still approach this game with the same mindset as ordinary games, you'll definitely be ambushed so badly you won't even recognize your own mother.
But if you carefully study the patterns of "Dark Souls" level design, adapt to that mindset, and keep trying various methods, you'll discover that every seemingly difficult level hides a simpler approach, allowing even players with poor skills to get through.
Of course, that's the charm of "Dark Souls" level design, but this charm is deeply hidden, and most people can't see it at first glance.
For Qian Kun, even though he had designed many levels himself, the design philosophy of "Dark Souls" completely overturned his previous thinking habits.
His first reaction was: This game looks damn hard!
He couldn't help with that; players would just have to fend for themselves...
...
Besides developing "Dark Souls," Chen Mo had other things to do.
The courses at World One University were still ongoing. Seeing the indie games downloaded on the Switch, for some indie games that required larger storage, players could also buy cartridges from the official website.
Currently, the indie games ported to the handheld platform were mainly from mobile and PC. The original designers were very enthusiastic because porting to the handheld platform wasn't a big hassle for them—it required almost no workload.
Just tweak it a bit, and they could sell on another platform. Plus, competition on the handheld platform wasn't fierce at all; as long as the game quality was decent, it would sell well.
Moreover, with the Switch's performance, mobile games ran perfectly, and even some PC games that couldn't run on phones could run smoothly after optimization.
Some players even called for Chen Mo to quickly port "League of Legends" to the Switch, so everyone could play LoL while lying down.
Chen Mo's enthusiastic response to this was: Go play with yourself!
Don't think I can't see it—you guys want an excuse for being bad teammates and blame it on me!
There would be MOBA games for mobile devices, but "League of Legends" wasn't suitable. The main reason was the control scheme; many of League of Legends' settings and skills weren't suited for mobile or handheld devices.
This involved the game's basic rules, hero skills, and so on. If everything were changed, it would be completely different from the PC version of League of Legends. The handheld and PC versions couldn't be connected for online play because the mechanics were different.
In that case, it would be no different from two separate games...
However, some indie PC games, like first-person adventure games, could be fully ported to the handheld platform, fulfilling many players' dreams of gaming while lying down.
The handheld device itself had plenty of buttons, supported motion controls, and had a very mature control scheme. So many designers saw the potential of this new handheld platform, and their enthusiasm for developing exclusive games kept rising.
...
The first floor lobby of the experience store.
A large LCD TV had been added to the wall, something Chen Mo reluctantly installed after strong demands from players.
Originally, according to Chen Mo's plan, there were bookshelves next to the sofas in the lobby, filled with books for players to read and pass the time. But he overestimated modern people's desire to learn.
In fact, aside from Chen Mo occasionally flipping through those books, most players had no interest in them at all.
They preferred more modern multimedia devices like TVs.
In simpler terms, they needed visuals and sound...
This was a bit annoying for Chen Mo, because when he was reading in the lobby, the TV sound would interfere. But then he thought, even without the TV, the lobby was bustling with people and never quiet anyway, so it wasn't really suitable for reading.
So Chen Mo reluctantly installed a TV. Besides playing game channel programs, it occasionally broadcasted matches or showed trailers for new games on the Thunder Game Platform.
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