Aiko had always believed in never giving up easily and relentlessly pursuing her own path to success.
In high school, she was a top student, and in college, she was also among the best of her year.
Even if she had decided not to pursue video game development, she had already received at least two job offers from well-known companies by the end of her first year. As soon as she graduated, she could immediately join those companies with a high salary.
But that wasn't what she wanted. She loved adventure and success.
Career success alone held no meaning for her. She wanted to create something groundbreaking.
Video games were a completely new industry.
In the context of human society and industries, this was a very young field.
Computer programming had existed much earlier than video games.
So Aiko set her sights on this industry, hoping to develop her full potential in this field.
...
...
Now, the results indicated that she had succeeded to a certain extent.
But it wasn't enough.
She wouldn't be satisfied with just a little success.
She wanted to reach even greater heights.
Dead Cells was the game she had the most confidence in since starting her career in game development.
It had consumed a lot of her energy.
She didn't even know how many brain cells she had exhausted on the details that most people wouldn't even notice.
Just the motion values that Takayuki had explained to Aiko—she had adjusted them at least a hundred times.
Every time she was unsatisfied, she worked hard to make modifications.
Moreover, following Takayuki's advice, she specifically researched the different attack animations of each weapon, striving to make each one look fluid and impactful.
In this aspect, Aiko had truly taken it to the extreme.
Takayuki had never played the final version of the game, but if he did, he would certainly find that the character and monster animations in Dead Cells were smoother than in the original game.
Achieving this wasn't just a small amount of effort.
Aiko could almost be considered a perfect example of a hardworking, goal-driven personality.
"Are we starting the DLC now? We've only just rested a bit," Kanemi said, appearing somewhat unwilling, as she still wanted to take a break.
Aiko didn't even turn around, continuing to type code and modify models. She said, "I remember you mentioned wanting to buy a car. Do you have enough money saved up for it?"
"Uh..." Kanemi hesitated, unable to answer right away.
The thought of buying a car had always been on her mind.
She had once watched a TV show with a female lead who drove a super beautiful car.
That car cost over 20 million yen.
At that price, it was a luxury car, and if Kanemi really wanted to buy it, the income from Farm Defense War and the game that Oto-chan had developed would not be nearly enough.
Aiko immediately spoke up, gently encouraging her, "If you fully complete this game, I can guarantee that you'll definitely save enough for that car. If you're still short, I'll help make up the difference, no charge."
Kanemi's eyes immediately lit up, and she said, "You're serious? Well, I'll put in some effort!"
In an instant, Kanemi felt motivated.
For the car, she was all in!
Actually, she enjoyed designing the game art, so she treated it like getting all her work done ahead of time.
Once the game was released and met expectations, she could get the car. It sounded quite nice.
For most people, thinking about buying a 20 million yen car might be impossible, but for Kanemi and her friends, it no longer seemed so far-fetched.
As for Oto-chan, Aiko didn't say much. Though she wasn't as driven by success as Aiko, she didn't dislike the sweet feeling of success after hard work. After all, the three girls worked together as a team, and since they were doing it, they couldn't leave anyone behind.
So, the three girls, who had originally planned to rest, immediately picked up their tools again and resumed their intense work.
With the basic framework of the game already in place, the development speed would be greatly increased.
Even if the game's DLC might end up being more extensive than the original game, the cost and manpower involved would be far simpler than creating a brand-new game from scratch.
Of course, this evaluation applied to indie games.
If the industry shifted to more industrialized, streamlined game production in the future, creating any type of game would become much easier.
By the way, what did Kanemi say earlier?
After instructing Kanemi and Oto-chan on what to do, Aiko finally remembered that Kanemi seemed to have something to tell her.
Oh well, I'll ask her later.
Since hearing the poor reviews for the game, Aiko had started working on the next phase of development, determined to achieve success.
The three girls completely ignored the external sales and trends surrounding the game.
But not long after, the reviews for Dead Cells began to rapidly improve.
Initially, most of the reviews were about how difficult the game was.
But as players spent more time playing, they started to realize that the difficulty was nothing compared to the fun the game offered.
Many of these players had also played Titanfall.
In Titanfall, Takayuki had intentionally increased the difficulty of the final level by several times.
That was to test the current players' tolerance for high-difficulty games.
The result of that experiment showed that players were gradually able to accept high-difficulty games.
And Dead Cells seemed like another test, examining how well players could handle this type of game.
The results so far were very positive.
A week later, Dead Cells's reviews shifted from mostly negative to mixed reviews, with a significant improvement in positive feedback.
The sales reached 200,000 units within the first week, far exceeding the initial expectations of Aiko and the team.
As more and more reviews came in, the positive reviews kept increasing. Everything seemed to be moving in the right direction.
And of course, Dead Cells's success caught the attention of other game companies.
Selling over 200,000 copies in such a short time was impressive. This success showed that the game was indeed enjoyable.
So, many companies quickly followed suit, trying to learn what made this game so popular and seeing if they could pick up any valuable insights.
Dead Cells didn't initially have an official community, since the indie development team was small and didn't have the resources to manage an official forum.
But players started to form their own Dead Cells forums and shared various strategies and equipment combinations. This player-driven sharing kept the game's popularity alive and seemed unlikely to fade anytime soon.