Chapter 1: Don’t Become an Indie Game Developer(1)

Developing a game alone is incredibly difficult. The reason is simple: game development is essentially repetitive, grueling work.

The idea is short, but development is long.

And coding isn’t even the end of it. You need illustrations, sometimes pixel art, and essential elements like a story and music.

Doing all this on your own? Even just putting the pieces together takes an enormous amount of time.

That’s why I’ve spent years dedicated solely to game development, starting in high school and continuing until after my military discharge.

And then, I became a woman.

It must’ve been because the game needed it. How ridiculous.

“Wow.”
I let out an exclamation as I played the finished game.

It was a simple bullet-hell shooter, but the structure was incredibly well-made. No matter how much bullet-hell shooters are beginner-level projects for game development, the quality of this one took a lot of time.

But I made this in just one day.

Considering more than half the time was spent adjusting to my new abilities, I could make it even faster next time.

I recalled the conversation I had in my dream last night:

[“Mortal. Give me your Infinity Zero in exchange for your wish.”]

“I want to keep making games forever. Make me the god of games.”

[“Your wish has been granted.”]

The person in my dream took my Infinity Zero. When I checked Steam, the game that had only one download had disappeared without a trace. Along with all my development logs and notes—even the analog records I wrote on paper were gone. This wasn’t the work of a hacker.

After all, no hacker could turn a person into a woman.

Anyway, all evidence of the time I spent developing that game vanished, and in exchange, I gained a few abilities.

Let me break them down in a game-like format:

[Sleep is like Chocolate]
You no longer need to sleep. Just as you don’t die without eating chocolate, you’re fine without sleep. But if you want, you can sleep—deliciously, even. That’s what it means for sleep to be like chocolate.

[If the Ability Sucks, the Body Suffers]
When it comes to game development, the grind has been eliminated. Coding? Art? Composing? Just think about it, and it’s instantly completed.

[Cold-Hearted Tester]
You can now look at your own game from an outsider’s perspective! Whenever you want, you can temporarily forget everything about your game and play it with a clean slate.

A failed game developer can’t keep making games. That’s why the wish I made—”I want to make games forever”—also meant I’d make them well. As a result, my abilities all became related to game development.

My passion for game creation was well understood, and in terms of efficiency, it would’ve been ideal if I could just snap my fingers and produce a god-tier game instantly.

But what’s the point of that?

So, my powers were limited to skipping the repetitive process. Whatever I imagined during development was immediately reflected in reality.

This meant the quality of my games would no longer resemble that of solo projects. Still, the limit of these abilities was me. Skipping the grind didn’t mean I’d produce output beyond my innate talent.

But that was fine. Changing how my brain worked would’ve made me a different person, anyway. I didn’t expect to suddenly come up with genius ideas.

Even with just these abilities, it was a cheat.

Coding, composing, and art—those three essential elements of game creation all required grinding.

Composition was no different. While composing itself took a lot of time, mixing and mastering took even more.

Skipping all that? It almost made me feel guilty towards other creators.

What about the other abilities? The Cold-Hearted Tester? It’s notoriously hard to view your own work objectively, so this ability was obviously welcome.

Looking at each ability, it felt like I was being pushed to become the legend of solo game developers. All of my abilities were tailored to that goal.

Except for one.

I looked in the mirror. Golden hair that shined like spun gold, eyes as clear as the sky, and snow-white skin.

The ultimate beauty was staring back at me.

This was the part I questioned the most.

Hmm.

Oh well, as long as it didn’t interfere with game development, it wasn’t a big deal.

More important than this trivial matter was my game.

Excitement surged through me as I sorted through ideas. Games that I hadn’t been able to make before due to my lack of skills came rushing into my mind.

I decided to make the game I had always dreamed of creating.

The genre was action, adventure, survival, crafting, RPG, and defense.

A similar game would be 7 Days to Die, the original apocalyptic survival game. However, I strengthened the crafting and defense elements to an extreme degree.

In the game, players could choose their base in an open world and defend it from swarms of monsters.

Of course, ordinary monsters would get boring, so I added boss monsters. These powerful enemies would appear at specific points, requiring proper leveling, farming, and skillful control to defeat.

I cranked the difficulty up to the max. Defense games aren’t fun if they’re too easy.

But a game that’s impossible to beat isn’t fun either. If it’s too hard, players lose interest. Defense games need to reward proper strategies and perseverance with victory.

After finishing my latest game project, I registered it for release.

One month later, the game was finally released.

[Price: 18,900 KRW]
[Reviews: 5]
[Downloads: 31]
[Net Profit: 410,130 KRW, after platform fees]

What went wrong?

Confused, I checked the reviews.

Among the short reviews, one word in particular caught my attention.

VR game…?

Isn’t VR that platform with no real content besides VRChat, which flopped ages ago?