"It seems they are enjoying it," Jack said with a smile.
"That three thousand should cover me with my bills and have enough to pay for a few things to improve the game," Jack muttered as he felt rejuvenated.
He had just recently woken up when he had seen Sarah's text message. Feeling a bit hungry, he made a snack before sitting at his computer.
"Sarah should have sent me her feedback by now. Let's see what she wants me to change." Jack said, pulled up his email, and got the feedback document.
Going through it, he nodded as he had expected most of it. Particularly, the level of gore is an issue.
He needed to make that the number one priority to solve.
Unfortunately, this was also the most time-consuming process. He didn't have any skills that gave him outstanding artistic skills. Game Development gave him some ability to make basic drawings and animations, but that wasn't enough.
If he tried to do it himself, it would take him longer and be of worse quality compared to hired professionals. This was something he couldn't afford to cheap out on.
There were other complaints, so Jack shifted his focus to them.
"Is it really that hard?" Jack frowned and rubbed his chin.
"Since Sarah says so, I don't mind making it easier. Maybe I can add in special zombies that hold plant cards."
"This way, there is another way for players to get cards other than the City or their research, which they can only really do in the game's later stages." Jack pondered.
"Or I can just unlock some plant cards every couple of rounds. If push comes to shove, I can eliminate the card elements and just let the players buy the plants." Jack muttered before highlighting the feedback he urgently needed to fix.
Jack's eyebrows scrunched as his instincts pointed him in another direction. His mouth curled up as he had the perfect Idea.
"Creating special zombies that hold plant cards is too troublesome. Too many will make the store pointless and too little is not enough."
"Unlocking more plant card varieties has to be done slowly. Too many cards will overload new players, and seeing expensive plant cards but not being able to buy them is frustrating."
"Since both aren't optimal, why don't I give the players what they want?" Jack's green eyes glimmered with excitement and amusement.
"Gamble!"
"They can gamble for new cards in the city. If lucky, they can get extremely valuable and rare plant cards; if unlucky, they will only get materials they can sell or use to create new plant cards." Jack's heart raced as he felt his blood becoming hotter.
He couldn't help but laugh.
"Gambling is as old as humanity itself. We can't help but reinvent it over and over again no matter what kind of civilization, no matter what era!"
After chuckling to himself, Jack's mind whirled as the code to build this new feature rapidly appeared. After a few seconds, he brainstormed enough about the gambling function and felt an urge to program it immediately.
"Let's get to work!" Jack stuffed the rest of the sandwich into his mouth.
Since he was adding a whole new feature to the game, there was a lot he needed to do before coding it.
First, he needed to decide on how the gambling feature would work. Was it entirely random? Maybe certain plants had higher chances of being drawn during certain rounds? What would it look like?
There was also how he could integrate it into the story. There couldn't just be a random section for gambling, or it would feel off.
"First off, what kind of free assets are available?" Jack muttered as he looked for game assets to work with his game.
It was surprisingly easy. He found a sterile white box that looked like it came out of a mad scientist's laboratory.
Perfect.
"The gambling function could be part of a small program from a research facility in the city. Explains why the player could get valuable plant cards. The person who signed them up could be a family member, too. Adds a little mystery." Jack muttered to himself as the basic framework came to him, adding richness to the story he had already planned out.
After getting everything ready, Jack grabbed his headphones to listen to music when he heard a faint buzzing. It was coming through the wall right next to him. Which directly leads to his living room. Jack's heart slowly began to pick up speed as he felt nervous and uneasy.
His eyebrows scrunched as he listened carefully and recognized the same buzz from his TV.
"Did I forget to turn it off?" Jack muttered before shaking his head.
"It doesn't matter. Some background noise is no big deal." Jack said and went back to put his headphones back on.
"Help!"
The cry was faint but unmistakable—desperate, high-pitched. His skin prickled, and the hairs on his neck stood upright.
Jack frowned as he put his headphones down and listened out for where that cry came from. It sounded so clear that it almost sounded like it came from within his apartment.
After a few seconds, he could only hear the faint sound of his TV buzzing. Jack gulped as he stood up and walked out of his workroom.
"Damned thing. I bought this new TV last year, so why is the buzz so loud? Maybe that screaming earlier was from a commercial or a neighbor dealing with their kid. Either way, I don't have to worry about it." Jack gripped the doorknob and took a deep breath.
He didn't know why, but he felt colder than he remembered. But he couldn't shake the feeling that the cry for help was real.
Jack stepped into his living room, shaking his head to clear away those feelings. As he expected, the large flat screen was on. But he didn't expect it to be playing a children's show that looked like a rip-off of Dora the Explorer.
A little girl was sitting on a bed inside a room filled with robotic-looking flowers, puppets, and toy cars. Her bright brown eyes were warm as her body moved back and forth with a strange hypnotic motion that felt inhuman.
Everything about it reminded him of his childhood watching Dora the Explorer with his family. He always complained about watching it, but he was always hooked once it began.
"Do you know where my favorite race car is? It's a blue car with pink flowers. If you see it, shout at me." The little girl said before pausing as if expecting a response.
Jack rolled his eyes as he chuckled to himself. It really was a children's TV show.
He went to turn it off but stopped as he felt his mind racing and his stomach churned.
"Wait… that voice. Could the cry for help have come from my TV?" Jack said with a frown as he stopped walking.
There were some differences in the two voices, but they were too similar.
"No, silly. That's not it." The little girl responded with a cheeky smile.
"I'm looking for a blue car with pink flowers. It's this small. Do you know where it is?" The little girl asked again while using her hands to show it was a toy car.
"Now that I think about when was the last time I watched TV. And the last thing I watched was the Summer Olympics."
Jack seemed to say casually as his eyes looked around his living room. Everything looked the way he left it. But after looking for a bit, he noticed it was too dark.
The room felt unnaturally dark for how bright the lights were in the room. Even the natural lighting from the kitchen window didn't make much of a difference.
"You're getting further away. A blue racecar. Look for a blue race car with pink flowers." The little girl repeated, sounding a little annoyed this time.
Jack narrowed his eyes as he took a step back. His heart skipped a beat as cold sweat covered his body. A deep sense of dread filled Jack's body.
"Who and what are you? What happened to that little girl screaming ?" Jack grumbled as he sped up to the front door.
He couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Others might ignore this feeling, but as someone who lived with a borderline magical System, he was sensitive to things that felt supernatural.
And when Jack noticed the little girl's brown eyes following him, his heart went cold. He immediately picked up his pace, almost running to the door.
The girl's cheerful face twisted, her smile stretching unnaturally wide. Her brown eyes darkened, oozing black-like ink spilling over the paper.
"Wrong!" Her shoulders trembled unnaturally.
"Wrong answer!"
"Wrong!" The little girl repeated like a broken record. Her voice became increasingly distorted.
The temperature of the room plunged as the lights dimmed.
"Come back!" A deep and demonic voice replaced the little girl's voice. She stretched out her hand with an insane smile.
The imprints of her hand appeared on the screen before the small brown hand slowly passed through. Entering reality.
"Ghost!" Jack internally screamed.
He could hear his heart pounding, pounding so loud that it was painful. Screaming for him to escape.
Jack's trembling hands clawed at the icy handle, his breath clouding in the freezing air.
"Open, dammit," he hissed, wrenching the stuck lock with all his strength.
Click!
Before Jack could celebrate, he found that the icy door handle refused to turn. The door was getting colder as the faint buzzing grew louder, and the ghost girl's eerie voice spread through the room.
"I found my racecar," the voice rasped—low, guttural, wrong.