In May, he had just returned to China and received a wrench USB flash drive, which was a late birthday gift from his girlfriend.
The USB flash drive is just a container for gifts, and the real gift his girlfriend gave him was the game "Pile of Dream Stories" made for him.
His girlfriend, who has little contact with games, made a game for him and piled it up on a small black box to share the joy. The post became popular, and the comment area broke the defense, saying that this is a "super 3A" that belongs to the pile.
The post was transferred to major platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu and Weibo, and it also exploded in an instant. The number of likes on Douyin reached 60,000, 47,000 people forwarded, and in addition to the envy in the comment area, the two also received a lot of blessings.
The teahouse found the two protagonists and chatted, and found that it was different from what everyone imagined: this is not the story of two professional game producers who love the game, but the process of making games for love.
01
"Long-distance relationship" is the biggest boss in the game
Dui Dui and Halo were high school classmates, and at that time, Halo stared at this cute boy, and often went to chat with him, and the two fell in love like this.
Looking back, he said, "I've never seen such an active girl, I was stupid at the time", and said with a faint smile, "Because I'm more bold!" ”
On the social media platforms of the two, the graduation ceremonies of 520, Tanabata and Dizziness seem to be tired of being together every day. June 4 is their 2,000th day together. They went out shopping, sang together, and ordered a small cake to celebrate together.
However, the two have been in a different distance since they went to college. Games have become an important part of their emotional communication in their long-distance relationship.
Dizzy complained like a coquettish that it was particularly hard to think about choosing gifts for the pile. She had wanted to buy Wooting and Hurricane 3, only to find out that Pile Pile had already been bought. After Xiaohongshu asked a lot of people, because Dudui usually likes to play games, she decided to give him a customized game.
"Heap Dream Story" tells a very simple story in which the game Heap is trapped in a dream and needs to find 4 artifacts to get out of the dream. The four artifacts are: sour jujube cake, the blade of the ocean, the snakeskin of the little snake, and the craftsman's tears, all of which can be found in reality and exchanged for real gifts.
Sour horn cake is a pile of favorite food, blue magic sticks, mouse, these gifts are once piled up and halo mentioned to like, halo bought these gifts, and set the gift into the game.
At the beginning of "Dui Duo Dream Story", Halo set up the pile in the game to reacquaint herself with the Halo in the game, the name of the high school school, the name of the university in the pile, the name of his place abroad, and the names of some classmates were also set into the game by her.
Halo and heap in the game recognizable
At the end of the game, Duapi wakes up from his room, lying faint next to him, saying "It's your birthday, let's talk about it when you get up", and Dudui babbles about the adventures in the game.
This is a concrete imagination of the future life of the two of them, but the reality of the big boss of "long-distance relationship" has not yet been opened: the pile will have to stay abroad for a while, and then the two can really get together.
Heap suggested that he upload the game to the Steam Creative DreamWorks, so that he could see the game every time he opened Steam.
Teahouse downloaded and played, and found that "Pile of Dream Stories" is really a private game. The game requires the purchase of weapons in order to leave the village, and the money to buy weapons is stored in the treasury, which requires a password to enter.
Dui told the teahouse that the vault password was his computer password
After walking around the village for half an hour, I finally couldn't help but ask what the password was, and Dudui told me that the password was his computer password, and I remembered it so I set it.
But the decryption of the whole game is not too difficult in terms of the pile, it seems that this is indeed the "exclusive 3A game" given to the pile by the girlfriend.
02
From opposing him playing the game to making a game for him
When you open the game, you can also feel that the heap is amazing.
He played games a lot, and imagined that making games should be a difficult process, and he felt that the dizziness was really bad. As the only player, he felt that the story design was good in all aspects.
Halo chose to use RPG Maker to make "Pile of Dream Stories". RpgMaker is a traditional classic turn-based combat adventure game creation tool, and the maps and characters required for game production can also be downloaded from the forum.
Halo said that the production process of "Pile of Dream Stories" is not complicated, and only simple tools and templates are needed to understand. RPG Maker is also known as a tool that "can make fun games without any programming or art knowledge".
Halo is not a game production-related major. As a literature major, learning game production is not easy even with the simplest tools.
Starting from scratch, Smudge digested 26 hours of lessons on video sites before he really threw himself into game production. During this period, the senior was busy with his graduation thesis and internship, and he would devote himself to game production almost every day after work.
Screenshots of some of the lessons I've seen
But preventing surprises from being discovered in advance is a technical task. During the production process, Halo will still worry about being known by the pile. During that time, when Dudui couldn't reach her, he would ask her what she was doing, and she could only say that she was chatting with her parents.
But in fact, because of the time difference in different places, it is difficult to detect the piles in advance.
On the day of the gift, Dui Dui had just come from abroad, and as soon as she got off the plane, she ran to see Dizzy and accompanied her to attend the next day's UGC interview. The day before the exam, Dizzy took out a USB flash drive and gave it to him, saying that it was a belated birthday gift and would wait until he got home to read it.
Dizzy told the details of the gift delivery in a somewhat annoying tone, "Just came back to me." ”
I asked her, "This tone seems annoying." ”
Dizzy immediately added: "It's not very annoying, I still think it's because he's too hard." ”
In the heaps of memories, there was a time when Halo didn't like to play games by himself so much. In high school, Dui Tui always divided most of his time with games, and the dating time between the two was squeezed a lot.
After college, the two spent more time dating, and Dizzy became less opposed to playing games in a heap. Later, Halo will also play some games with the pile.
In the process of making games and giving them to the pile, I felt happy and enjoyable myself. Because she feels that "making a game is creating something of my own", and the process of creating makes her feel satisfied.
In the game, she pinched the looks that were more similar to the two of them. I'm worried about bugs in the game.,Dizzy keeps looking for friends who haven't been in contact with the game to test.。 She was testing the game until the night before it was sent out.
There was a moment when I thought about giving up on this complicated gift. When testing the game in the early stage, it was common to encounter situations where you couldn't jump to the next map on one map, and then found that you forgot to set the jump conditions. At that time, she thought about ending it hastily, but she didn't think it would work, because "since I decided to do it, I'll do it well." ”
After playing the game, Dudui told the teahouse that maybe he could create a game for Halo in the future.
03
Give a game as a gift
The faint post attracted a lot of discussion, and there were many words in the comment area that he had also given similar games to his boyfriend and girlfriend.
Someone did the same thing, and the story ended differently, but it became its own skill.
It's the same with Xiao Yan, she has made a lot of games to give to her relatives and friends. As a teacher training student, she had studied Rpg Maker in the classroom, and the teacher who taught it felt that making a game could help elementary school students make Chinese vocabulary in their later teaching career.
In the discussion about "Pile of Dream Stories", she said that she also played games for birthday presents for friends, her sister and her parents.
Each person's game is customized to their style. The story of a brave man saving a princess is an adventure story about a friend who saved her from a greeting card she gave to her friend the year before.
My sister is a two-dimensional.,Usually play games.,She set up the story of the adventure in the Demon King City.,As the hero's sister in this world.,Along the way, you encounter all kinds of two-dimensional.,More and more teams.。
Dad is a music teacher, and in the game, Dad was captured by the Demon Realm, because the Demon Creatures can't sing, and asked him to teach them to sing. But in the game, Xiao Yan thinks that his father has been captured by the bad guys, and as a college student, he wants to save his father.
When she received the gift, everyone praised her for being so good. Considering that her father didn't know how to play games by herself, she played the game by herself like a game streamer, brought the commentary, and made a video. Dad was very happy and took it to show off to his colleagues.
Xiao Yan herself felt happy, she thought it was "the most interesting class". At the end of the semester, Xiao Yan analyzed that many RPG Makers were in the Western fantasy style, and produced the story of "The Little Match Girl".
04
A fusion of game and reality
"Pile of Dream Story" embeds the memories of Pile and Halo in their daily lives, and the game has also become a memory for the two of them.
"It Takes Two", "Messing Around Kitchen" and "Animal Crossing" are the games that the two most often play together during their long distances.
Like many couples, the two play games together, and many times it is inevitable that the two will have quarrels.
"Sometimes it's more urgent, some people." Faint pretend to complain about the teahouse.
Dudui immediately began to explain, "Yes, in the past, when the two of us first started playing games together, they would be in a hurry. It's been a long time, so I'm not in a hurry now, which is okay. ”
Dizzy couldn't help but quease him, "I don't know if it's because my skills have improved, or if some people's endurance has improved." ”
Many couples have built their own memories in the game, just like them.
It Takes Two tells the story of the disappearance and reconciliation of love from a unique perspective. The level design of the two-player match also allows many couples who play together to experience the dual enjoyment of the plot and gameplay, adding a new memory to their love story.
It's not like the state of being glued together every day in the circle of friends. The two can only see each other at the end of the semester or during the long vacation. Hugs and kisses that can't be reached have become unbearable thoughts when they are in a different place, and the few posts in the faint account on the small black box are expressing their thoughts about the pile.
The two with jet lag often play games together late at night. In "Animal Crossing", which can participate together, the duck-billed villains operated by the two in the game get together, want to kiss for a long time before succeeding, and finally sit on the beach together to watch a fireworks.
Halo and pile up in the game to watch fireworks
In May, when he received "Dui Dui Dream Story", Dui Dui wrote, "This is the most heartfelt birthday gift in the world!!" In the story of "Heap Dream Story", it's really nice to wake up and dizzy ,......, dream by your side! ”
In June, he went to attend the graduation ceremony of the dizzy, and the dizzy wrote in the circle of friends, "You appear on every page of my poems." ”
Except for the pile, no one can play the game "Pile of Dream Story", but it does not prevent everyone from envying the feelings of the pile and dizziness, and one of the comments said with a lot of insight, "When you are in love, you have to be more violent."
I feel like that's the best evaluation for a heap and stun story.
As an industry media, Teahouse has written a lot of industry articles. At various industry conferences, developers have tried to quantify the enthusiasm of players for their games into data, and terms such as "daily activity" and "retention" have been coined and promoted to define a game's success.
"Heap Dream Story" is rough, has a lot of bugs, and has only one player, standing on the opposite side of the "law of success" of data piling, but the sincere emotions it conveys are infected by the piles of posts, so that they are also willing to use a game to convey emotions, or create emotional memories in the game.
In addition to the "law of success" in the game market flooded with data, perhaps the "secret of success" should not be a cold number, but just an expression of true feelings. It's like Halo told me that she never cared what the game turned out to be, and that he would love it when she got her hands on it.