Chapter 19

“Fantasy Life” was an action, adventure, survival, crafting, RPG, and defense game.

The main fun point of such games is gathering resources and building a base.

You create your own base and fight tooth and nail to protect it.

Before you know it, you start to grow attached to your base.

In other words, the creator of “Fantasy Life” is a pretty nasty piece of work, using people’s attachment to their bases to manipulate them.

“Is your sister a game developer?”

“Actually, it was my other personality that made ‘Fantasy Life.'”

“Dual personality?”

“Sometimes it even becomes triple.”

I chatted with Bunny Run while completing the base.

In real estate, location is everything. Even a single block difference can make the price vary by tens of times.

So, I built the base in the best possible spot.

Near a mine where it’s easy to gather lots of minerals. Sure, water might be hard to come by, but in games like this, once you level up your tech, you can gather hundreds of early-game resources with a single click.

Choosing a future-oriented location was definitely the right move.

As soon as the base made of stone and wood was completed, the sky turned red.

Bunny Run was bustling around as the first wave began.

I also grabbed my weapon and headed outside the base.

The first wave was a pack of four-eyed wild dogs. Monsters. Beasts corrupted by the aura of the demon realm.

In any defense game, the first wave is designed to be manageable for everyone.

After all, destroying a base that’s not even complete wouldn’t give the player any sense of accomplishment.

“We blocked them, sis!”

“Good job.”

After defeating the pack of wild dogs, Bunny Run started jumping around. Probably spamming the spacebar.

That’s how excited she was.

If she’s this happy already, I can’t even imagine how thrilled she’ll be later.

I asked Bunny Run to gather resources while I focused on upgrading the base.

After checking the types of bases, I muttered to myself.

“Why does this game have so many tech trees? If each magic type has a different style, the number of combinations to test becomes overwhelming. Please tell me the balance isn’t so off that only one tech ends up being viable.”

—

Why are you asking us, you lunatic?

Isn’t this your game? Do you have dementia?

—

“What are you guys even talking about? It’s my other personality who made the game.”

—

Oh, that setting?

Weren’t you suffering from amnesia when you made “Excel Busters”? LOL

—

“I also have amnesia.”

I pondered. Which tech tree should I prioritize for the best outcome?

There’s no such thing as a game where everything is equally good.

Even “DOTA 2,” which once achieved a beautifully balanced state under a genius director, had overpowered and underpowered characters.

No matter how well I balanced “Fantasy Life,” there would inevitably be S-tier and F-tier techs.

The balance would be considered golden depending on how small the gap was, but overpowered techs would always exist.

“Should we just ditch the dark magic stuff?”

Honestly, finding the best tech tree in such games was easy.

You just had to try everything.

But right now, I was playing with Bunny Run. I didn’t have time for such lengthy tasks.

So, for now, speculation was key.

I had to dig through my gamer instincts to figure out what would work best.

Games evolve by influencing each other. That’s just how genres work.

If “Fantasy Life” was influenced by other games… then it was probably best to skip the dark magic route.

Dark magic usually involves sacrificing something—offerings, life force, or even the future—in exchange for power. That’s not inherently bad, as it guarantees a clear return.

But the problem was that the risks were also fixed.

In games, S-tier characters are those that bring super returns with minimal risk. That’s what makes them broken.

Dark magic, designed with high risks from the start, had a hard time becoming S-tier.

Sure, there were times when dark magic was set up to be really strong, but for now, let’s skip it. We can try it later.

The candidates were summoning magic, holy magic, and elemental magic.

Considering the world setting, holy magic seemed likely, but in terms of versatility, elemental magic probably had the edge…

“Sis!”

At the sudden voice, I turned my view to look at Bunny Run.

She had already gathered resources and was helping me look for the right magic.

“This spirit from the summoning magic is so cute. Did you design it?”

“The Super Developer makes everything alone. Of course, I did it.”

“There are a lot of pretty things in the spirit category. I like cute stuff, you know.”

“I know. That’s why your avatar is cute despite your appearance.”

“I told you I don’t smoke.”

“I never said anything about that.”

Summoning magic seemed convenient, but this type usually had a low ceiling, so I wasn’t too keen on it…

“The Water Spirit is so pretty.”

“Let’s go with summoning magic.”

I’m a game developer. Someone who strives to satisfy the players.

If Bunny Run wanted summoning magic, then summoning magic it was.

I brought the game here so Bunny Run could have fun, so there was no reason to be stubborn about it.

I engraved a magic circle into the base’s mana stone.

Now, our base was under the protection of the spirits.

“Summon whatever you want.”

“Then, the Water Spirit first.”

After inputting the command, a small girl-like Water Spirit appeared with a *poof*.

Bunny Run, fascinated, reached out her hand, and the Water Spirit giggled, floating around in the air.

Finding it adorable, Bunny Run kept touching the Water Spirit, her eyes widening at its ever-changing behavior.

“Is this even possible?”

“The game’s AI just needs to produce a lot of outputs based on interactions. Manual labor is my specialty.”

“That must have taken a lot of time.”

“It didn’t take long.”

Now that I’m used to the ability, it only takes 10 seconds.

Bunny Run poked the Water Spirit and spoke up.

“It really feels like a living creature.”

“The creator probably worked hard to make it feel that way. That way, players can develop affection for it.”

“Are you going to keep that dual personality concept, sis?”

I checked the Water Spirit’s performance.

Purification, healing, and water production.

It had no combat abilities, but the fact that it could produce an infinite supply of water was great news.

As expected, water and food could be obtained with just a click later on. Setting up in the mine was the right move.

But this meant my combat power was lacking. I needed something to compensate.

After some thought, I summoned a Fire Spirit as well.

Generally, when it comes to spirits, fire handles the attacks. It was a reasonable assumption, given that Thierry from the world’s number one game, <Eternal World>, also had fire elementals handling area attacks.

The Fire Spirit, resembling a lizard, flicked its tongue and perched on my shoulder.

Then, the sky turned red. It was time for the second wave.

I should probably test how strong the Fire Spirit is.

I stepped outside the base.

In the distance, I could see monsters.

The Fire Spirit, staring intently, unleashed a powerful burst of fire as soon as the enemies entered its range.

Indeed, the Fire Spirit was strong. It single-handedly took out half of the monsters, with performance so impressive it made me wonder if it was even fair.

“Let’s set up a Spirit Tower too.”

“What materials do we need?”

“Magic engineering and iron.”

A tower where spirits inside amplify their power to take down enemies. This should easily handle the regular waves for now.

“Let’s summon higher-level spirits too. To summon intermediate spirits, we need spirit stones… which we have to mine deep in the mine.”

Since I already had an automatic defense system set up, I could leave the base for a while.

To move efficiently, Bunny Run and I went crazy mining resources in the mine.

“Sis, look at this.”

Bunny Run proudly showed off the Water Spirit, which had matured into an intermediate spirit.

Since we had a full contract, the Water Spirit grew alongside Bunny Run whenever she gained experience.

“The boss is coming soon. Don’t let your guard down.”

I used the spirit stones I brought to strengthen the base.

I summoned a higher-level spirit and built a tower.

I also expanded the walls. Now, even if the defense line was breached temporarily, the walls would hold the enemies back.

The sky turned black.

Boom. The boss appeared. A Baron-class demon. I didn’t let my guard down and gripped my sword, swallowing hard.

The Baron roared, and the monsters went wild. In its hand was a sword made of fire. Thud. The Baron stomped the ground, creating a massive tremor as it charged toward the base.

Then, the spirits unleashed their firepower.

I couldn’t bear to watch the slaughter.

It was fine for the monsters to be torn apart like paper. Those weaklings should fall quickly to keep things fun.

But the boss wasn’t supposed to be like that.

What kind of boss melts in less than 20 seconds?

This isn’t right.

It seems this round went too well.

I thought spirit stones were supposed to drop every time we dug, but seeing the spirits’ performance, it seems the drop rate wasn’t intended to be this high.

Realistically, we should have only found half of the spirit stones to maintain game balance.

What should I do?

Tower defense games are problematic if there’s no sense of crisis.

Later on, when automation is complete, the sense of crisis disappears, but if it’s like this from the start, the game’s design is flawed.

…We need a hotfix.

But I can’t overhaul the game right now, so I need to adjust it another way.

I turned on admin privileges.

The current game difficulty is set to normal.

If I raise it to hard, it should strike a balance between being challenging and manageable.

I increased the game’s difficulty to hard and turned off admin privileges.

This should make it fun for Bunny Run too.

*

Riding atop a dragon soaring through the sky, I wielded a holy sword and used a skill.

A flash of starlight pierced the dragon’s heart.

The dragon fell.

I descended from the corpse and awkwardly made my way back to the base.

Inside the destroyed base, Bunny Run silently looked down.

I subtly shifted my perspective to beneath Bunny Run’s feet.

The advanced Water Spirit lay motionless.

“……”

“I didn’t know hard difficulty would be like this.”

“……Sniff.”

At the sound of sniffling, I quietly turned on admin privileges.

As I rolled back the stage and lowered the difficulty to normal, I muttered to myself.

I told you, the creator of <Fantasy Life> is a ruthless person who uses players’ beloved Water Spirits to threaten them.

Making it feel so real just to make it more heartbreaking when it dies.

I seriously question their character.