Chapter 1 Anxious

Ma Yang was frowning, looking miserable.

"Qian-ge… is our game really that terrible? No one's even looking at it…"

"I saw the release of other new games, and they had tens of thousands of downloads on the first day. How come we only have a dozen…"

Ma Yang was utterly dejected.

After the game was released, Ma Yang checked the data for *Gui Jiang* on the official game platform every few minutes, looking at the number of downloads and the players' reviews.

But an hour passed, three hours passed, five hours passed…

And the data barely changed!

That’s because *Gui Jiang* only got a recommendation in some obscure corner of the platform. The name itself wasn't very eye-catching, and there weren't any attractive promotional images. Who would even notice it?

*Lonely Desert Road* was discovered by Qiao Laoshi because he was an up-and-coming content creator who made videos reviewing indie games and regularly searched the indie game section for new titles.

That was a very rare exception.

Most mobile game players don't regularly look for new mobile games unless they're particularly popular or have a lot of pre-registrations.

A new mobile game like *Gui Jiang* will almost certainly be buried without good marketing and promotion.

"It's okay, new games are always like this. We just have to wait it out," Pei Qian said reassuringly.

Wait it out?

No way!

On the surface, Pei Qian acted as if he was just as anxious as Ma Yang, but in reality, he was overjoyed.

It was perfectly normal for there to be no downloads. The game had no exposure channels at all. Where would the downloads come from?

Not just for a day or two, but even after a week or a month, the game would still end up being ignored!

Pei Qian was just waiting for the week to pass quickly. By then, *Gui Jiang* would have been removed from that obscure corner of the game platform, its heat would have died down completely, and once the system settled, all 300,000 system funds would be converted into personal property.

Sweet!

Pei Qian's comfort didn't have much effect. Ma Yang still looked gloomy.

"Sigh, I'll check the data again. I wonder if anything's changed in the last three hours." As he spoke, Ma Yang reopened the official esro game platform and searched for *Gui Jiang*.

After searching for the game's details page, Ma Yang was stunned.

He rubbed his eyes, thinking he was seeing things.

He'd checked it several times before, and the number of downloads was always in the teens. But this time, when he looked again, the number of downloads had actually jumped to over two thousand?!

Ma Yang thought he was mistaken, but when he looked at the game's rating and player reviews, he confirmed that he wasn't.

A group of players had indeed discovered the game!

The first thing Ma Yang noticed was the game's rating, which had reached an unbelievable 9.7!

Originally, the *Gui Jiang* review section was desolate, with not a single comment. But now, there were already hundreds of comments!

"Why does this game cost 10 yuan? It's more expensive than *Q Meng San Guo*! What's going on?"

"Upstairs, you haven't even played the game, have you? You think 10 yuan is expensive? It's practically a steal, so generous!"

"I played it seriously, and this is a card mobile game full of sincerity! The key is that the game only sells a lifetime card. The total cost of all in-game purchases is only 40 yuan!"

"40 yuan to play as much as you want, everyone is equal, and there are absolutely no recharge or consumption traps. I'm shocked. Is this even a card mobile game?"

"The quality of this game is very good. As a loyal card mobile game player, I've finally found another unique card mobile game!"

"What impressed me most was the characters in this game! I never thought that the characters of the Three Kingdoms could be interpreted in such a unique way. These character designs are like flights of fancy. Although they're full of absurdity, they're also refreshing!"

"The art is amazing. Just for the art, I'm definitely going to whale in this game! What? You can't pay to win? Then I can only give it a five-star rating!"

Ma Yang's hands were trembling with excitement. He flipped through the player reviews page by page and couldn't even find a single negative review!

The lack of negative reviews wasn't entirely because the game's art was good and the pricing was generous. Another important reason was that the first batch of players were basically drawn in by the art!

After Chen Qi and the other artists posted these original artworks on Weibo, they immediately received a lot of likes, and many people searched for the game by name.

Although many people were disappointed to find that *Gui Jiang* was a card mobile game rather than a single-player game or a large-scale online game, they were too embarrassed to give it a low score after playing it for a while.

That's because the game seemed too generous!

The quality of the game was good. Whether it was the art assets or the music assets, Pei Qian spared no expense, giving people a very good first impression.

And the game's non-pay-to-win nature won the favor of a group of casual players.

So, after this first batch of players flooded in, *Gui Jiang*'s reputation exploded, and all the reviews were positive!

Ma Yang excitedly leaned down from the top bunk and said to Pei Qian, "Qian-ge! We did it, the game downloads are up! And a lot of people are commenting, all five-star reviews!"

Pei Qian was drinking water when he "pfft"ed it out, then coughed for more than a minute because he choked on it.

"What did you just say?" Pei Qian almost thought he misheard.

Ma Yang repeated excitedly, "The downloads have skyrocketed to over two thousand! And everyone's giving the game great reviews. Someone even praised the character designs I did!"

Pei Qian was dumbfounded.

The number of downloads skyrocketed by several thousand?

How was that possible? Where did these players get the news from?

And all five-star reviews?

That didn't make sense. The game was just a generic card mobile game template, with no innovative gameplay. How could it deserve five-star reviews?

If it were someone else's game, Pei Qian's first reaction would definitely be that the game company had hired an online marketing team to inflate the ratings!

But this was Pei Qian's own game.

Wouldn't Pei Qian know if he hired an online marketing team?

He only had so much money, and it had all been spent. Where would he get the money to hire an online marketing team?

Besides, even if he had the money, Pei Qian wouldn't use it to hire an online marketing team and inflate the ratings. He wanted the game to quietly fail. How could he do something that would stir up hype?

Did another company hire an online marketing team to inflate their data and get it wrong?

That couldn't be it either. How could any online marketing team be so bad at their job that they inflated the data in the wrong place?

Could it be… that the kind of coincidence he encountered with the previous game had happened again?!

Pei Qian quickly logged into the esro resource station and looked at the game data.

Ma Yang wasn't lying. The game data had indeed skyrocketed!

Moreover, the players' reviews were all as if they were written by an online marketing team, all praising how generous the *Gui Jiang* game was!

The number of players who downloaded the game was constantly increasing.

The number of people who bought the lifetime card in the game was also constantly increasing!

Looking at these two constantly jumping numbers, Pei Qian fell into a daze.

What was going on in this world?!

Where did things go wrong?!

Pei Qian's eyes went dark, and he fell onto the bed.