Ke Su first moved the mouse to Faithful World: Steam Age, and a line of introductory text appeared.
"As the advanced Steam Age dawns, a terrifying plague known as the Black Death follows. Witches are blamed for being the source of the plague and are hunted down, even though they possess no magical powers. The town's doctor, Kate, witnesses his sister falsely accused of being a witch and dying in agony at the stake. He despises this sinful town and wishes to summon the legendary evil god to resurrect his sister. For this, he is willing to give up everything, yearning for the deity to fulfill his wish..."
Upon reading this, Ke Su suddenly felt that the ancient god character he was playing in the game might not be a good entity. The game's background story made it seem like a major villain.
He's even regarded as an evil god—or rather, this ancient god might not be on the side of justice. When he first responded to the summoning, he wiped out a large group of believers.
Thinking about this, Ke Su paused, realizing it was quite surprising that this game even passed censorship.
The text introduction ended, and the words under the mouse cursor suddenly turned into a delicate illustration, in the style of a tarot card. The card depicted a doctor wearing a bird-beak mask.
The doctor was dressed in a long black robe with a black cape and held a bird-beak staff in hand. The gothic art style gave the entire doctor's image a naturally eerie vibe.
Ke Su moved the mouse over the card, and an option box appeared.
"Honorable Ancient God, do you wish to respond to the summoning? Yes/No."
Ke Su looked at the background story and the illustration; he found it quite interesting.
So far, he had discovered that the game mixed various styles. The previous Zerg world had a pixelated style, and now it had shifted to a two-dimensional comic style. Overall, the gameplay was quite engaging.
However, Ke Su was still curious about the instance in the Zerg world, so he temporarily exited this selection screen and opened the Zerg instance block.
Like Steam Age, this Zerg instance also had a line of text introduction.
"This ancient, gloomy manor holds many secrets, even hidden from Dell, the youngest son of the manor's owner. The locals say that the manor's family worships an evil god and secretly uses Zerg heads to summon the deity. As rumors spread, no one dares to approach the manor anymore. Dell, who wholeheartedly believes in the God of Light, feels deep anguish because of this. He explores everything within the manor to uncover the truth, only to find that the rumors are true. His family is indeed worshipping the evil god and preparing to summon it to destroy everything, just like the Curtis Empire centuries ago, bringing divine judgment upon the world. To redeem his family's twisted souls, Dell decides to stop this evil ritual. Under the witness and blessing of the God of Light, he will seal the evil deity once and for all..."
"Honorable Ancient God, do you wish to accept the summoning? Yes/No."
Ke Su moved the mouse. As the text introduction ended, a delicate illustration appeared over the instance, depicting a luxurious, classic Western manor at the center of the screen. The Rococo-style architecture swept away the gothic gloom, bringing an air of intricate elegance. Even the patterns on the iron gate were extraordinarily complex and beautiful. The rose garden inside was faintly visible, and the tall roofs and ivory-white walls made the entire manor appear even more splendid.
Ke Su hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to do. After all, the game's design was somewhat frustrating—the summoning progress bar was painfully slow, and if he still had to choose between two options, it would be too time-consuming.
So, Ke Su returned to the main screen, intending to carefully plan out the game flow, but unexpectedly noticed a new text prompt at the top of the game's Ancient God Awakening Level progress bar.
"Congratulations to the Honorable Ancient God for increasing the Awakening Level. The game has been upgraded, and the summoning progress bar has been removed. The Honorable One may respond to the believers' summons at any time."
Finally, the game developers realized the importance of improving the player experience.
Ke Su felt relieved as he read this line. It was worth leaving his computer on overnight to let the game update.
Feeling completely at ease, Ke Su happily clicked into Faithful World: Steam Age, as the dark art style really appealed to him. Since there was no progress bar slowing things down, he decided to start with this one. If it wasn't fun, he could always switch to another.
After entering the screen, a world with the same art style as the illustration appeared on the game page, along with system prompts guiding the player on where to go to complete the main quest.
Possibly due to the game upgrade, the summoning process this time was more complex than last night. In addition to responding to the summoning, he also had to ensure that the believers spread the Ancient God's fame as much as possible, expanding the number of believers. The mission requirements were quite flexible, with no specific number of believers needed.
After briefly scanning the mission, Ke Su closed the system prompts and began exploring the game interface.
Everything in the game was two-dimensional. A gloomy town gradually unfolded as Ke Su moved the mouse, revealing itself fully. After a bit of dragging, he discovered that this wasn't an open world—at most, he could only see the forest on the outskirts of the town; he couldn't go beyond that.
The system prompted:
"We extend our most sincere apologies to the Honorable One. Your renown has not yet spread to the outside world. The world's consciousness rejects you, preventing you from fully observing the believers' world. We deeply apologize. The game will open up the outside world after this mission is completed."
The system's tone was extremely cautious, as if it were afraid of upsetting the player in front of the computer.
However, Ke Su didn't mind. He had played many semi-open-world games like this and was already used to it. He moved the mouse back to the small town.
This town, fitting the Steam Age scenario of Faithful World, was filled with factories spewing sewage and smoke everywhere. Black polluted rivers flowed through the town, with various twisted mechanical pipes emitting wisps of white steam, intertwining with the town's buildings. The combination of steam and machinery created a style that was both retro and eerie. This novel steampunk art style was quite eye-catching.
In the town, countless Q-version Gothic-style characters with dark circles under their eyes walked around, as if truly living in the town—shopping, chatting with neighbors, working in factories, and so on.
Moreover, each character's design was different, their movements smooth without any lag. Who knows how much effort went into creating these character illustrations.
Ke Su continued to explore various parts of the town carefully, concluding that this game was somewhat similar to a famous single-player game from his previous life, Don't Starve. Both shared a Gothic style, but the illustrations in this game were more realistic and detailed.
At the same time, the game allowed for free zooming in, and you could even enter the townspeople's houses to observe. The perspective was somewhat like that of a 3D game such as The Sims, primarily using a top-down view. When objects blocked the view, the game would automatically blur the models, making the perspective more refined and realistic.
However, even though the realism was impressive, Ke Su got bored after browsing for a while. He began following the game's prompts to find the doctor, Kate, who had summoned him, preparing to proceed with the main storyline.
He quickly found a Q-version character highlighted in red—a person wearing a black coat.
Ke Su clicked on him with the mouse, discovering that he was currently in the basement of a dark duplex house, surrounded by a pentagram magic circle, with unknown beast skulls as offerings.
"Honorable Ancient God, do you wish to accept the summoning? Yes/No."
Since the game had already been upgraded, there was no need to worry about long waiting times, so Ke Su decisively clicked "Yes."
In the next moment, the game screen automatically switched perspectives, bringing him into the basement.
Instead of a top-down angle, the player's perspective was now directly on the magic circle, as if they had truly become a summoned god.
It seemed that unlike the previous summoning, which was automatically completed, this time the summoning required the player to personally fulfill the believer's wish. Otherwise, the ritual progress bar wouldn't have disappeared, and the summoning perspective wouldn't have been directly activated.
It appeared that the game had indeed been upgraded, allowing players to experience the game more deeply. This was the correct way to design a game.
Ke Su played around with the mouse and discovered that it was a panoramic view. By dragging the view upwards, he could clearly see the originally blurred roof. Everything was in 2D animation style, and even up close, there were no visible pixels. The game's production quality was indeed excellent, forming a stark contrast with the previous rough versions.
After a full circle of exploration, Ke Su returned to the front view. Opposite him was the summoner, Kate. From this angle, the Q-version character in a black coat was showing a terrified expression, as if he had seen something unimaginable.
Ke Su noticed that as the character became more frightened, a value above his head rapidly decreased.
"Sanity: 80"
"Sanity: 60, 50, 40..."
Hmm? Is this the sanity value?
Having played many Lovecraftian games, Ke Su was very familiar with this sanity value setting.
The so-called sanity value was usually used in games to indicate the mental pollution level of the characters. In the Lovecraftian world, deities are untouchable; contact leads to madness. The closer one gets to the truth, the more their mind gets polluted, and the lower their sanity value becomes. When it reaches zero, the character is fully corrupted and becomes insane, which typically means the player's failure.
So if the summoner's sanity value drops to zero, does that mean his mission would fail?
Ke Su quickly opened the game instructions and found that the game didn't seem to care about the summoner's life or death. It straightforwardly stated that successful summoning would increase the awakening level, and the summoner was not important.
With this in mind, Ke Su felt reassured.
He returned to the game and clicked on the summoner, Kate, to start asking about his wish.
However, due to the character's mentally unstable state, Kate did not respond to Ke Su.
There was no other choice—Ke Su had to find a way to maintain Kate's sanity; otherwise, he wouldn't be able to complete this first mission.
Just as he thought of this, he saw Kate's sanity value fluctuate slightly on the screen, then stabilize, eventually stopping at a fixed value.
"Sanity: 25"
Now, he could inquire about the wish.
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