Agreeing to Create Bad Games, What the Hell Is ‘Titanfall’? Chapter 27

"Oh! Got it, sis! I just refreshed it!"

Shark Live, in the streaming room of Empress Stone Liuliu and Prince Zhuangzhuang of the Great Zhou Dynasty.

The two were real siblings, and whenever they had time, they'd hop on a stream together. Today was no different.

Hearing her little brother’s shout, Liuliu quickly refreshed her screen as well.

Sure enough, the homepage of the YiYou Platform had been updated with a flashy banner for the Mini Game Development Festival.

"I got it too!"

"Whoa—"

Looking at the dazzling main screen, Liuliu felt overwhelmed.

"So many games… my indecisiveness is kicking in."

"Why don’t we look for a multiplayer one first? We can play together," Liuliu suggested.

"Sounds good," Zhuangzhuang replied, and within moments, he had found something.

"Hey sis, search for Xingmang Games. I think their entry this time is a multiplayer one."

"Xingmang?" Liuliu raised an eyebrow, a bit surprised. "Isn’t Xingmang one of the veteran studios? Didn’t expect them to join this event..."

While talking, she typed "Xingmang Games" into the search bar.

The search results popped up immediately.

Sure enough, under Xingmang Games, a game titled Brotherhood Adventure had entered the competition.

"All done downloading."

The game was small, so Liuliu had it installed in no time.

"Okay, I just invited you to the room."

Zhuangzhuang had already set up a room and pulled his sister into the game.

As soon as she entered, Liuliu felt a wave of familiarity wash over her.

A rough sketch-style art, two stiff-faced stick figures—one black, one white—question-mark bricks hanging midair, and mischievous clouds drifting overhead.

Everything felt so familiar.

"Wait… is this a sequel to Cat Mario?"

Clearly, the original Cat Mario had left Liuliu with some psychological trauma. Just seeing this art style gave her a mild case of PTSD.

"This looks way too familiar."

"Nah," Zhuangzhuang said, "Cat Mario isn’t by Xingmang. This probably just has a similar art style."

With that, the two entered the game.

After a brief black screen, a little white figure appeared with “x3” written behind it.

Then, the main gameplay screen loaded.

The little white character, controlled by Zhuangzhuang, stood under a row of question-mark bricks, with two slow-moving mobs approaching from ahead.

"Uh… this..." Zhuangzhuang’s voice was hesitant in the voice channel. "So multiplayer just means taking turns like in Mario, with three lives each?"

"Looks like it," Liuliu chuckled wryly, a bit let down. "Go ahead and show us your skills, little bro."

"Not much to show off," Zhuangzhuang laughed. "I bet the moment I jump and hit that question mark brick, I’m gonna die."

Sure enough, he made the character leap up and headbutt the brick.

Boom—

The brick exploded on the spot and, just like he predicted, it blew him up.

"See?" Zhuangzhuang didn’t even get mad, he actually looked like he was trying not to laugh. "I totally saw that coming!"

"Pfft, big deal," Liuliu snorted. "You act like you're some master of prediction. Didn’t it take you over 40 lives just to beat the first level of Cat Mario?"

"Hey, that’s harsh, sis," Zhuangzhuang smacked his lips. "I've been through the wringer since then. Just watch—I’ll call every trap before it hits. I guarantee it!"

Then, Zhuangzhuang leapt forward and started making spot-on predictions:

"A monster’s gonna pop out of this pipe…"

"Don’t hit that question block…"

"A row of enemies is gonna fall from above…"

"Touch the cloud, you die…"

In no time at all, Zhuangzhuang had used up all three of his lives.

The audience started losing interest.

‘This is kinda boring.’

‘Yeah, how come it doesn’t hit like Cat Mario?’

‘True, even though the graphics and gameplay are super similar, it’s just missing something.’

‘It just doesn’t have that same vibe.’

‘It’s not even that hard.’

‘Doesn’t have the same show-stopping effect Cat Mario had.’

‘Maybe Prince Zhuang's just built different now?’

‘Skip it already…’

Reading the bullet comments, Liuliu also found it strange.

The game looked a lot like Cat Mario, so why wasn’t it as fun?

It just felt like… something was missing.

Zhuangzhuang, as it turned out, had a sharper sense for this.

"Let me tell you exactly what’s missing," he said, reading the confused comments.

"This game might look like Cat Mario, but the obstacle design? Not even close."

As a streamer who had cleared Cat Mario after dying over 200 times, Zhuangzhuang had earned his right to speak with authority.

"Cat Mario’s traps are super logical,” he explained. “The designer usually sets a decoy to bait you into messing up, then hits you with the real trap."

"Basically, every single prediction you make gets predicted by the designer—so you end up getting trolled over and over."

Then he pointed at Brotherhood Adventure.

"But this one? It’s just trap-stacking. The obstacles don’t connect, sometimes they don’t even make sense together."

"The reason you’re all not enjoying it or finding it funny is simple—the designer got outplayed by the player."

"When that happens? This kind of game loses its charm."

His explanation was like a light bulb going off.

The comments lit up:

‘No wonder he was secretly gaming since he was a kid—he's got insight!’

‘Man, he hit the nail on the head…’

‘His take is so weirdly deep LOL’

‘Makes you wanna cry from how true it is’

‘No joke, this is the same guy who once smashed his keyboard live. His game sense is elite!’

‘Yeah, these traps are way too surface-level.’

‘The dev just copied the hard part of Cat Mario, without understanding why it was fun.’

‘Next game, sis! Skip it!’

Thanks to Zhuangzhuang’s breakdown, the viewers finally understood—Cat Mario, with all its rage-inducing tricks, wasn’t just chaos for chaos’s sake. It had smart design under the hood.

Liuliu nodded along. "Yeah, guess there aren’t many devs who can think through game logic like that."

"Exactly!" Zhuangzhuang grinned. "Think about it, sis—I started gaming when I was seven. If a dev can make me feel helpless like that, they’ve gotta have some serious skills."

Pfft—

Liuliu couldn’t help but laugh.

Then her eyes lit up. "Wait, speaking of Cat Mario, did their company join this dev fest? I remember they were a newer studio, right?"

That jogged Zhuangzhuang’s memory too. He slapped his forehead.

"Oh right! How’d I forget about them?"

After all—

Golden Wind’s two games had totally hooked him.

With that, Zhuangzhuang closed out Brotherhood Adventure by Xingmang Games and returned to the YiYou Platform homepage, pulling up the search bar.

"Uh… the company was called Golden Wind…"

"Oh! Found it!"

A game marked with the "Dev Festival" tag popped up in the results—

Vampire Survivor