"Sarah, Sarah!?"
"Huh? Betty, what's the matter?" Sarah asked as her eyes remained glued to her phone screen.
Just as she felt safe, she turned to see her roommate standing beside her bed with a helpless expression on her beautiful face. Her long blonde hair was freshly done, so it shimmered faintly, making her even more angelic.
"Class is about to start. Are you coming?"
Sarah's eyes slowly blinked as the gears in her brain, which had rusted from the lack of sleep, turned.
"Really!?" Sarah jumped up as she snapped back to reality and checked the time.
There was only half an hour until her lab began. Luckily, she completed the required attendance homework yesterday, or she would have been screwed.
Sarah jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom to get ready. Her dorm mate shook her head as she noticed that Sarah had left her phone unlocked.
Curious, she leaned over to see what got Sarah hooked.
"A game? I didn't know Sarah was into gaming." Betty whispered as she put a strand of her blonde hair behind her ears.
"Is that a Furred Venus Fly Trap? Oh, that's the Coconut Smasher Plant. And that's a Dandelion Fruit Tree."
Betty's eyes sparkled as she easily identified every plant in Sarah's base.
However, she was stumped by the monsters. She really couldn't recognize any of them.
"Sarah's base is getting overrun. She's going to lose." Betty whispered as she noticed that the number and uniqueness of the hordes of zombies were too much.
It had gotten to the point that some of the zombies were going around her base, attacking the unprotected back and sides.
"She shouldn't mind if I help a little, right? No, Betty, no. Remember that your New Year's Eve commitment is not touching others' things without their permission first."
"You gotta keep it. There are only three months until the end of the year. Hold strong." Betty whispered with a determined expression and slapped her face twice.
After holding back her bad habit, Betty heard the bathroom open as Sarah rushed out and grabbed her phone. Seeing that she was about to lose, she placed some emergency Furred Venus Fly Traps and used XXX Fertilizer to mature them rapidly.
Unfortunately, it was already too late and too little. Her precious plants were stomped, chewed, and torn to death while the zombies entered her undefeated base and killed the main character.
Game Over!
"Hester, you son of a b-" Sarah was about to curse before remembering she still had class.
So she just muttered, "Why did you make the game so hard?"
Before picking out her clothes and leaving with Betty.
Luckily, with the two of them running over, they made it across campus and just barely made it to their lab before it closed.
After two hours of lab work, Sarah and Betty went to get lunch. While eating, Betty watched as Sarah pulled out her laptop, which was extremely thin and sleek.
Not wanting to be someone who spied on her emails, Betty looked away before hearing Sarah clicking on the screen and muttering about the Zombies.
"Sarah, what game are you playing? I don't recognize it." Betty asked with curiosity.
"This? It's a beta version of a game my friend is making. He is letting me test it." Sarah yawned, her eyes glued to the screen.
"Oh, is it, Starn? I heard he was making a game, but I didn't think it was ready yet." Betty said with realization.
"Can you ask him if I can test it out, too? It looks fun." Betty asked as her golden yellow eyes sparkled.
"Starn's making a game?" Sarah paused before shaking her head.
"No, this is from an old friend of mine back in high school. He is a professional game developer out in the field. I can ask him, though." Sarah said as she pulled out her phone and texted Jack.
She waited but got no response, so she shrugged her shoulders.
"He must still be sleeping. I'll let you know if he says anything." Sarah said with a smile.
She was happy that someone was already interested in Jack's game. And it was still in the early development stage, yet it was very fun, although very hard.
The best she got was night seven before she lost. In the beginning, she was trying to beat that by investing more in resource plants to earn enough money for better plant cards.
"By the way, Sarah, will you send feedback to your friend? If so, ask him to tone down the gore. It's so graphic it might be labeled Rated R on Steam." Betty said calmly as she watched Sarah playing with interest.
Sarah blinked her crimson eyes as she realized that she probably should be taking notes on her experience of the game and the bugs she found.
"Same here, it's a bit too gory for my liking. But he used Digital Factory's free assets, so he probably wouldn't mind changing them later. I will create a notepad to add my thoughts." Sarah said, nodding her head in agreement.
She paused the game before writing about what she liked and didn't like.
So far, her likes were:
The game is well-balanced.
No discovered bugs (So far).
The story is interesting.
It's fun to play.
The descriptions of the monsters and plants actually affect the gameplay.
As for her dislikes:
It was too hard.
Too gory.
The background music was bland.
The monster and plant sounds were too disturbing, or there was nothing at all.
And it was too hard to get cards.
Overall, she liked the game and was willing to invest her money.
"You should add that he should blur the blood. Having zombie blood shooting out everywhere is unnecessary and disgusting." Betty added as she felt a little queasy looking at all the blood, zombie limbs, and acid all over the screen.
Sarah touched her chin and pondered Betty's suggestion before disagreeing.
"No, I think the blood makes it strangely less gory since it covers up some more nasty stuff."
Betty's eyes twitched. How did more blood make it less gory?
"Whatever, it's your critiques. But don't you think you should add more constructive feedback?" Betty asked after looking at Sarah's feedback.
"I'll add more in this post. I want to play more first before we go to our next class." Sarah waved her hand in dismissal.
She muted the background music, opened Spotify, and played her Spooky Jams Playlist. Only then did she unpause the game when she was in the mood.
Betty rolled her eyes seeing this and scooted her butt over to get a better look. She tried not to backseat, but before she knew it, she tried to convince Sarah that buying the Floppy Lantern Corn was a worse investment than the Purple Light Lily.
"The Floppy Lantern Corn only lasts for five rounds while the Purple Light Lily lasts for ten, and each of their pupa is worth double the Floppy Lantern Corn," Betty explained calmly.
"Yeah, but looking at the materials to create each Purple Light Lily is too expensive for my current wealth. I can't afford to create them very frequently or in high quantities."
"I can easily create twice the number of Floppy Lantern Corn for the same cost as the Purple Light Lily." Sarah retorted.
"But that takes up so much space. Your defense line will be stretched out." Betty continued, her face red as she tried to tell Sarah the advantages of her analysis as a Botanist.
"Let's ask the creator himself. He just read my text." Sarah said and sent Jack a FaceTime request.
Betty's heart skipped a beat every time the phone rang before it blooped and showed the top half of Jack's face. His sharp emerald-colored eyes looked eye-catching.
"Hester, I have a question," Sarah said with urgency.
Jack blinked with curiosity.
"Go on,"
"Is getting the Floppy Lantern Corn better or the Purple Light Lily? This is important. I'm in round four." Sarah asked with a serious expression on her face.
"Did you seriously Facetime me for such a dumbass question like that?" Jack palmed his face before sighing.
"It depends. How good is your defensive line? Did you already set up protection around your entire base?" Jack asked.
Sarah shook her head.
"No, I'm still only defending the front. But I got a mighty strong line of Furred Venus Fly Traps to protect me."
"I see. Don't worry about either; you'll die this round anyway." Jack said calmly.
Sarah's mouth gaped as Betty burst out laughing.
"Stop joking. Do you really think this isn't enough?"
"How are you not sure? With such a weak defense line, you're going to have to use XXX Fertilizer just to survive the round. Using it this early, you're basically screwed."
"Don't tell me you think using the expensive and limited resources was fine?" Jack asked jokingly.
Sarah blushed from embarrassment. It was how she got to round seven last time.
"Well, how far did you get? It's harder than you think." Sarah said as she pouted her lips.
"In the current version? I got to round twenty." Jack said with a smile.
Sarah and Betty blinked before looking at each other with shock. Why the hell were they struggling so hard?
"Don't worry, Sarah. It's to be expected that we are not as skilled since we don't know the ins and outs of the game yet. He has been working on this for much longer than us." Betty said as she tried to comfort Sarah.
"By the way, Hester, this is my dorm mate Betty. Betty, this is my high-school friend Hester." Sarah said as she introduced the two.
"Nice to meet you," Jack said simply as he nodded.
"Same here," Betty said with a smile.
After their brief introduction, Sarah coughed as she switched the topic of discussion before Jack exposed the fact that he had only created the game two days ago.
It would only embarrass her more.
"Anyways, Jack, I like the game. I'm willing to invest three thousand dollars. Betty and I have created a feedback document that you can have if you want." Sarah said with a smile.
"Three thousand! Hell yeah, did I say using XXX Fertilizer was dumb before? Forget what I said. I mean it's brilliant and wise." Jack said with sparkling green eyes.
Sarah's face twitched as she felt that Jack hadn't heard the rest of her statement.
"Also, would you mind if I shared the game file with Betty? She is interested in testing it out." Sarah asked while winking at Betty.
"Go ahead. You are my Sugar Mama, so share it with anyone you want." Jack said with a wide smile.
Sarah smiled as she emailed Betty the game file.
"Thanks," Betty said happily before her eyes widened from shock.
"Holy shit, is it true that the game is compatible with all this? I can play this in VR." Betty asked with a shocked face.
Jack nodded as he smirked with pride.
"Yes, sir. Everything I listed out is fully compatible with all the same features. There are a few other platforms you can play it on, but I didn't include them since they didn't seem relevant."
"Like what?" Sarah asked with curiosity.
"A fridge is one of them."
"If you have a smart fridge, it can run the game. However, you probably should do it in a fridge with a screen. But if you don't want to go ahead." Jack said calmly as if this was normal.
Although Jack resented the System for being too hard, he couldn't deny that the skills it imparted to him were excellent and covered a broad and deep foundation for any skill.
He only had two skills ranked B: Debugging and Multi-Platform Coding.
And when it came to these two things, he was excellent. It's well above average for most coders. He was at the mythical tier in these two skills.
It was how, even without testing his game, he figured out there was a bug, where it was, and how to fix it.
And how his games could run so well on any platform. It was easier for him to code like this than not.
"Why does it need to run on a fridge? Are you trying to make the next Doom!" Sarah said with surprise.
"If my games can't run on something Doom can run on, then it's not my game," Jack said seriously, to Sarah's and Betty's astonishment.
"Forget it, forget it. I'll talk to you later." Sarah said as she ended the call.
"Sarah, restart. Let's see who gets further before our next class." Betty said excitedly as she pulled out her phone and downloaded the game.
"Sure, don't think it's so easy. You are probably going to die in three rounds." Sarah said with a smirk as she reset her game and started a new one.