Felix had finally completed designing a ten-meter section of the ground, carefully crafting several environments that looked alike but featured subtle differences to keep the scenery from feeling repetitive.
He had used a similar approach when working on Subway Surfer, which helped simplify the development process.
Now, the only thing left for him to do was create a variety of traps and obstacles to challenge players, like the trees that appeared in Temple Run.
Once these elements were ready, he planned to program them to appear in random order, ensuring that each playthrough would feel fresh and unpredictable.
The holographic system was quite different from traditional coding. While both involved creating games, coding typically meant writing lines of text to build game logic and visuals on a screen.
In contrast, holographic game creation allowed developers to manipulate three dimensional environments directly, making the process more immersive but also much more demanding, requiring significant mental power to build and sustain an entire world.
Although the two methods shared some similarities, developing games in the holographic world, especially endless, boundless ones took much more time and effort.
Felix had found a practical solution to speed up the process, resulting in what now appeared to be an infinite, seamless world.
Feeling the need for a break, he decided to step away for a moment. He had been in creator mode nonstop all month.
He wasn't sure why, but being immersed in the holographic GameStar CreatorNet had become strangely addictive.
When Felix arrived in this world, he ignored people his body once knew. Now, out of boredom, he decided to check the messages he had not seen yet.
Among them was a profile with a black cat icon, featuring three tails on its back.
If he remembered correctly, it belonged to a college friend named Alex.
Felix and Alex were the same age.
Twenty two.
Felix had started school early and graduated ahead of schedule because he wanted to focus on becoming a streamer and playing games.
Alex was also a fellow streamer who enjoyed gaming, much like the original Felix.
[Alex: Are you going to stream soon?]
[Alex: Your fans are worried about you.]
He suddenly remembered that it had been a while since he last streamed.
Streaming was the original owner's hobby, but Felix was afraid someone might realize that he was not the real Felix. That fear kept him from streaming at all.
He checked the oldest messages and noticed that the original owner's tone was calmer and more nonchalant than he had expected.
Felix responded in a similar manner, keeping his reply brief:
[Okay. I'll soon.]
Curious, he went to watch videos of Felix streaming and observed his persona.
It was hard to describe, but Felix's personality on stream seemed intensely focused on the game, almost to the point of being completely absorbed in the gameplay.
After watching his old videos for a while, Felix realized it would be easy to replicate the original persona.
The real Felix was not the type of streamer who focused on fan service; he simply concentrated on the game.
Turning his attention to the Subway Surfer game he had created, Felix noticed it was rarely mentioned on StarTok.
Most of the discussion happened on Holonet, a platform that combined features of Facebook and Twitter.
He wondered aloud, "What can I do to make Subway Surfer famous?" The game wasn't attracting much attention compared to the popular shooter games in the Top 5.
It also seemed that Subway Surfer wasn't generating many transactions on StarTok.
In his previous life, the game only gained significant interest when it included story narratives.
He even remembered a Roblox story that combined gameplay with storytelling, effectively multitasking to keep viewers engaged.
After thinking for a moment, Felix suddenly remembered a specific challenge in Subway Surfer.
"What was it again? The avoid coins challenge!" he recalled. Yes, that was it there was a challenge where players had to avoid collecting coins, adding an extra layer of difficulty to the game.
He realized that if he made a short video featuring this challenge using the original owner's account, which already existed on StarTok with previous videos, he wouldn't have to worry about creating a new identity or starting from scratch.
The original owner was already an established streamer, so this approach would feel natural to the audience.
With this plan in mind, Felix decided to create and showcase the avoid coins challenge in Subway Surfer, hoping it would help make his game more popular and attract attention from players and viewers alike.
He entered the holographic world and accessed the original owner's account.
To his surprise, he noticed that the character's hair had turned green and the tan skin tone looked even deeper.
However, the clothes did not match the character's face and hair, creating a strange contrast that caught his attention.
Feeling a surge of creative energy, his passion for designing characters was reignited. After some thought, he decided to design a new outfit for the character, inspired by fantasy themes.
He crafted an elf-like costume, choosing a white base adorned with green leaves woven into both the clothing and the hair, giving the character a natural, mystical appearance.
Looking at the character, he felt satisfied with the transformation.
The next step was to record the gameplay.
In a small apartment, a young man sat in a chair beside the latest affordable VR headset. A slender hand swiped through the air as he watched StarTok, his ash-blonde hair slightly tousled from boredom.
Kael was resting after playing Subway Surfer for too long, which had drained much of his mental energy.
He was in his college years, living in this apartment as an aspiring game designer.
He had good mental stamina, which was one of the reasons he chose this career path.
Although he had created a few games, none had gained much traction.
Kael wasn't sure why; perhaps, despite his mental power, he lacked the spark of creativity needed to make his games stand out.
He admired the person who created Subway Surfer because it featured unique game mechanics.
Kael wanted to develop a gameplay style that was just as original, but he struggled to come up with any fresh ideas.
He even considered joining a large company where game developers had stable jobs, and he could focus on building environments and structures to support their work.
Despite this, nothing had felt truly enjoyable so far.
Kael sighed deeply.
He truly wanted to create games that would amaze the world.
As he scrolled through StarTok, Kael noticed a streamer he followed.
"Hmm, isn't that Felix?" he wondered.
"He's playing Subway Surfer too?" It made sense since many streamers played that game to climb the leaderboards.
Kael enjoyed watching them because of a newly updated feature: whenever a player died, a photo would automatically pop up showing exactly how they failed, capturing the funny and often exaggerated expressions on their faces, which made the moments even more entertaining.
It wasn't surprising that Felix was playing Subway Surfer as well.
Kael glanced at the caption:
[No coins challenge!!]
The post even included a Subway Surfer hashtag and had received many likes.
Since the video was only a few minutes long, Kael decided to watch it himself.
___
Author:
Thank you for reading :D
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