After Li Ruohai left, Liu Neng and the other three walked out of the restaurant and suddenly burst into earth-shattering laughter. "Hahahaha!"
They laughed so hard tears were almost streaming down their faces. "Did you see that kid's face just now? He was totally blank and stunned! Man, you are so deviously sly. Why didn't you play by the book?" Peng Shuang felt completely refreshed, infinitely more satisfying than playing games non-stop for hours.
Xu Jiaojiao didn't laugh as uproariously as the others, but she was doubled over with laughter as well. "You really are bad!"
The five of them had spent over a thousand yuan in total on food and drinks. If Li Ruohai had genuinely wanted to treat them to that much, Liu Neng would have accepted it, but since Li Ruohai insisted on putting on airs, he had given him the full opportunity to do so. He wondered if, after learning this lesson, that fellow would still dare to be so arrogant and look down on others in the future.
After the meal, Liu Neng and the two others accompanied Xu Jiaojiao for a casual stroll around the mall to digest their food, and when the time came, they all went their separate ways.
Back home and feeling bored, Liu Neng suddenly thought of his competition entry, so he turned on his computer and logged into the website. To his surprise, his game *Don't Tap The White Tile* was indeed featured on the homepage. However, the stats looked a bit dismal; he wondered if the organizers had other detailed rules for player voting, otherwise it was truly somewhat unfair.
For some of the larger games, downloading alone took an hour or two, which probably burned away the patience of many players before they even finished the download. Liu Neng's *White Tile* was small in size, playable after a two-minute download, and easy to pick up. Although the overall playtime wasn't particularly long, it definitely held a huge advantage.
Presumably, the organizers must have had a set of calculation rules to determine the rankings of the entries.
Even so, *White Tile* had now climbed into the top ten. He glanced through the other games and found that not many of them were particularly interesting. At this rate, there was a good chance he might actually win first place in the player review rankings.
Among the top ten games, two caught his attention. One was an immortal-themed game called *Immortal Romance*, and the other was a single-player strategy game called *Chronicles of Three Kingdoms Heroes*. These two games reminded him of two titles from his past life: *Chinese Paladin* and *The Three Kingdoms*.
To Liu Neng, both of these games held extraordinary significance. They could be said to be high-quality games from the pioneering era of domestic single-player gaming, representing the youth of an entire generation of Chinese people.
It was only later, due to the volatile shifts in the domestic gaming environment, that domestic single-player games almost ceased to develop entirely. Especially after that universally condemned *Blood Lion* burst onto the scene, domestic gaming was knocked right back to square one and never truly developed again.
He opened the introduction pages for these two games, briefly skimmed through the descriptions and promotional videos, and found that they seemed almost identical to the two games from his past life, possessing the potential to be great hits. He silently took note of the development teams behind both games; who knew, they might even cross paths in the future.
Among the current top ten games, there were two with unusually abnormal stats. But a glance at their producers or developing companies revealed they belonged to two major corporations. It was easy to figure out: since big companies had deep pockets, they had likely spent money to buy votes or hire astroturfers. Yet no matter how many trolls they hired, the player download numbers for *Don't Tap The White Tile* kept skyrocketing, something clearly none of them had anticipated.
It wasn't just the player download numbers; the player comments on the page were even more eye-opening, leaving those "professionally trained" game developers utterly dumbfounded.
"What kind of demonic game is this? I've been playing for over three hours now and it's still not over! It's way too addictive!"
"You've only played for three hours? I've been playing for nearly five hours straight, and it feels like time just flew by in a flash."
"I think I've found the feeling of playing Tetris when I was a kid; I just can't put it down. But are the people on the leaderboard demons? I swear every single beat I hit was on point, and I kept getting full Perfects, yet I'm only ranked 15th. Where is the justice in this?"
"I'm only 21st! I seriously suspect there's something fishy going on with this game, otherwise why are other people getting over 200 points higher than me when we both got full Perfects?"
"Hahaha, I just unlocked another track! Now I only need three more to unlock all of them!"
"To the person above, I unlocked all the tracks ages ago. But I discovered a whole new world—it actually supports custom music uploads, so you can play your favorite songs!"
"You can do that too?"
"All in all, this is the most fun domestic game I've played in the past two years. Although the game is tiny, it's truly full of creativity and incredibly addictive. I've been pushing for first place right now, but I'm still falling short by a dozen points!"
"Hahahahaha, I'm number one! My *Für Elise* is in first place! See that? My name is Liu Neng's Fan!"
……
……
Up to now, *Don't Tap The White Tile* had been played by over 80,000 people, with more than 70,000 casting votes. Over 30,000 users had given the game a 5-star rating, and over 40,000 had given it 4 stars. The comprehensive rating was close to 4.5 stars, a relatively high score among all the participating games.
Liu Neng wasn't actually surprised by this outcome. Among all the entries, aside from the two he noticed earlier, not a single one could hold a candle to it—this was clearly heaven helping him out. Right now, the game's word-of-mouth reputation was still in its initial fermentation phase, and given the game's addictive, self-propagating nature, it shouldn't take long before it swept through the entire gaming circle.
If it weren't for the rule that games couldn't be modified or optimized after uploading, Liu Neng really would have wanted to take advantage of this period when he wasn't particularly busy to push a version update for *White Tile*—introducing features like the previously mentioned speed-run mode or multiple leaderboards, which would be immensely beneficial for organic promotion.
On Monday morning during the weekly meeting, Wang Juncai announced that the official release date for the new version was finalized for the National Day holiday. He glanced around the room, his eyes landing on Liu Neng. "Since this update happens during the National Day holiday and everyone will be on break, we need someone to stay behind in the office. Liu Neng, the main content of this update is all based on your proposal, so do bear with it and stay behind during National Day. If any issues come up online, contact us anytime."
"I'm not coming in." Liu Neng looked down at his notebook, doodling on it, and spoke without raising his head.
The entire meeting room instantly went quiet as everyone turned their heads to look at him.
Wang Juncai acted as if he hadn't heard what was said, or perhaps he had heard it but couldn't believe his ears. "What did you say?"
Liu Neng raised his head, glanced lazily at him, and replied in a voice flat to the extreme, "I'm not coming."
"Why?" Wang Juncai slowly began to lose face. Sitting across from him, Sun Liang watched Liu Neng with gloating amusement, thinking to himself that this kid had some nerve, openly confronting the producer in front of so many people—his guts were getting bigger by the day!