Ma Yang wore a gloomy expression.
"Brother Pei… Is the game we made really that awful? Literally no one cares about it..."
"I saw other companies' new games hitting tens of thousands of downloads on launch day. Why does ours have only a dozen or so downloads?"
Ma Yang felt deeply discouraged.
Ever since the game's release, Ma Yang had been obsessively checking the official game marketplace every few minutes to monitor Ghost General's stats, looking at the download numbers and player reviews.
Yet, after an hour, three hours, five hours had passed...
The numbers had barely changed!
Currently, Ghost General had only a minor placement on the edge of the recommendation section. Its title wasn't eye-catching, and it lacked appealing promotional images—why would anyone notice it?
The Lonely Desert Road had been discovered by Qiao Liang because he was a streamer who specialized in roasting indie single-player games, regularly browsing the single-player game section.
In other words, that had been a special exception.
Regular mobile gamers wouldn't actively search out new games unless there was significant hype or strong pre-release marketing.
A newly launched mobile game like Ghost General, without effective marketing or promotion, was almost guaranteed to remain obscure at launch.
"It's fine. All new games start out this way. We just need to wait patiently," Pei Qian comforted him.
Wait patiently?
Yeah, right!
Pei Qian pretended to be as anxious as Ma Yang, but internally, he was ecstatic.
It was entirely normal for the game to have minimal downloads. It lacked any marketing or exposure—where would downloads even come from?
Forget about one or two days; even a week or a month later, the game would still end up completely unnoticed!
Pei Qian was now just waiting for this one week to pass quickly. By then, Ghost General would have dropped from its minor placement on the game marketplace, any tiny amount of interest would have completely vanished, and the system would settle the funds—converting the entire 300,000 Yuan into his personal assets.
He was thrilled!
Pei Qian's reassurance didn't really help, and Ma Yang remained distressed.
"Sigh, I'll check the stats again. I wonder if anything's changed after three hours," Ma Yang muttered as he opened the ESRO official game marketplace once again and searched for Ghost General.
But when he reached the game's detail page, Ma Yang froze.
He rubbed his eyes, thinking he must've misread it.
Previously, the game had only a dozen or so downloads. But now, suddenly, there were over 2,000?!
Ma Yang thought he must be mistaken until he noticed the game's rating and player comments—confirming it wasn't an error.
Players had indeed discovered the game!
What caught Ma Yang's attention first was the game's rating, which had reached an astounding 9.7!
Previously, the comment section had been empty. Now there were already over a hundred comments!
"Why is this game priced at 10 Yuan? Even more expensive than Cute Three Kingdoms, what's going on?"
"To the person above, clearly you haven't even played it yet. 10 Yuan expensive? It's incredibly cheap and fair!"
"I've seriously tried it out. This is a highly fair card game! The key point: there's only one optional lifetime membership available. Combined with the base price, you only spend 40 Yuan total!"
"40 Yuan for unlimited playtime, everyone on equal footing, zero hidden traps or charges. I'm shocked—can this still be called a card game?!"
"The quality is surprisingly good. As a loyal fan of card-based games, I've finally found something unique again!"
"What impressed me most were the game's characters! I never imagined Three Kingdoms characters could be portrayed this creatively! The designs are wildly imaginative—even absurd at times—but they feel incredibly fresh!"
"The illustrations are amazing! For these illustrations alone, I'd gladly pay money! What? There's no way to spend more money? Well, I can only leave a five-star review then!"
Ma Yang's hands trembled in excitement as he flipped through page after page of player comments, finding not even a single negative review!
The absence of criticism wasn't just because the illustrations were beautiful or because the monetization was fair. Another significant reason was that the game's earliest players had specifically come for the artwork!
After Chen Qi and the other prominent illustrators shared these pictures on Weibo, they immediately attracted countless likes, prompting many fans to seek out the game directly.
Although some were initially disappointed to discover Ghost General was a card-based mobile game rather than a large-scale online or single-player game, after trying it briefly, they felt too embarrassed to give it a low rating.
Because the game was genuinely so generous!
The overall quality was quite impressive, with Pei Qian having spared no expense on art and music, leaving a strong first impression.
Moreover, the absence of greedy monetization quickly won over casual players' goodwill.
Thus, as the first batch of players flooded in, the game's reputation soared, and the reviews were overwhelmingly positive!
Excitedly, Ma Yang leaned down from the upper bunk and shouted to Pei Qian, "Brother Pei! Good news! Our game's downloads are skyrocketing! And there are tons of reviews—all five-star ratings!"
Pei Qian, who had been drinking water, promptly spat it out in shock, coughing uncontrollably for over a minute.
"What did you just say?" Pei Qian thought he'd misheard.
Ma Yang excitedly repeated, "The downloads jumped past two thousand! Everyone is praising the game, and some players specifically complimented my character designs!"
Pei Qian was utterly bewildered.
Downloads suddenly surged into the thousands?
How could this be possible? How did players even find out about the game?
And—every single review was five stars?
That made no sense at all! The game was just a reskinned generic card game template with no innovative features. How could it possibly deserve five-star ratings?
If it had been someone else's game, Pei Qian's first reaction would have been suspicion—assuming they'd hired fake reviewers.
But this was his own game!
Pei Qian knew very well if he'd hired fake reviewers or not.
He'd already spent every penny of the available funds—where would the money for fake reviews even come from?
Besides, even if he had money, he'd never use it on fake reviews—his goal was for the game to quickly fade into obscurity, not boost its popularity!
Could another company have mistakenly purchased fake reviews for his game?
Impossible—no company would make such a foolish mistake.
Could it be… that another strange coincidence like the last game's situation had occurred again?!
Panicking, Pei Qian quickly logged onto the ESRO resource marketplace to check the game's data.
Ma Yang hadn't lied—the game's statistics had indeed exploded!
Moreover, player reviews seemed exactly as if they'd been fabricated—all praising how incredibly fair and generous Ghost General was.
The number of game downloads continued to rise.
Players purchasing the lifetime membership card were also steadily increasing!
Watching the numbers constantly ticking upward, Pei Qian fell into a daze.
What on earth was going on with this world?!
Where did everything go wrong?!
Pei Qian's vision blurred, and he collapsed onto his bed.