Giving Interstellar Players a Horror Ghost Game Shock - Chapter 22
The terrifying final scene left countless viewers leaning back in reflexive shock.
Liver Bro’s reaction was so exaggerated that he rolled straight off his bed.
After that last scare, the video ended, leaving a dark screen with lines of bl00d-red text:
“At midnight, September 30, 3024, Campus Nightmare: May Bridge officially launches. Immerse yourself in a thousand-year-old forbidden campus game!”
“Shh… we’ll be waiting for you in another world.”
Having finally made it through the lengthy video, viewers collectively breathed a sigh of relief.
Only then did their minds begin to catch up with what they’d just seen—was the video saying the game would launch tonight at midnight? That was amazing!
Campus Nightmare looked like a straightforward narrative-driven game, one that could probably be completed in three to four hours. Players quickly calculated that they could pull an all-nighter, satisfy their curiosity, and then switch back to grinding materials and upgrading their starships in Starfall 2.
With this plan in mind, they confidently flooded the comments section to “reserve their spots.”
They weren’t betraying Starfall 2, they rationalized—they were just taking a brief detour to experience something different. They’d come back, for sure!
Among the eager players, however, one person stood out.
She wasn’t lingering on the game’s details page to chase thrills. Rather, she was drawn by a specific phrase in the promotional video:
“A thousand-year-old forbidden campus game? This designer sure has guts.”
“We in the archaeology department have studied every shred of data left from the home planet countless times and still don’t dare claim we fully understand ancient customs or lifestyles. Yet here they are, boldly boasting that their game includes thousand-year-old campus games?”
This woman was Huang Heng, a graduate student in the archaeology department at Capital University. She was currently working with her advisor on a project investigating the entertainment industry’s misrepresentation and misuse of ancient cultures.
Ever since humanity’s home planet was destroyed, survivors had migrated to a new galaxy and expanded into what were now the Eight Major Systems. As stability returned, the genetic drive to seek one’s roots became prominent.
However, the path back to the home planet had long since been lost, and the remaining data was scarce and difficult to decipher. This lack of understanding only made some people more fervent in their obsession with the unattainable past.
Naturally, this created commercial opportunities. Unscrupulous designers frequently claimed their games incorporated ancient culture, using it as a gimmick to lure players.
In truth, most of these designers knew nothing about ancient culture—how could they? For instance, space travel hadn’t even existed in the late ancient era. How could their so-called “ancient” games feature starships? It was ridiculous!
Rather than masquerading as “authentic” by exploiting nostalgia, designers might as well be like Chu Yuanming and make outright futuristic games set in interstellar worlds.
—Huang Heng wasn’t an avid gamer, but in her free time, she occasionally played a few rounds. She was a casual fan of the renowned designer Chu Yuanming.
Muttering to herself, she promptly added Campus Nightmare to her shopping cart and forwarded it to her advisor and fellow students.
“Let’s see how absurd this game is! If it’s a typical example, we can include it as a case study in our research.”
Meanwhile, in streamer CodLiver’s dorm room…
Liver Bro stared intently at the screen, fixated on the final words:
“We’ll be waiting for you in another world.”
It wasn’t until the video fully faded to black and minimized back to the details page that he jolted back to reality, collapsing onto his bed, utterly drained and gasping for breath.
Help! He really didn’t want to fulfill his promise to livestream this game for his fans! He felt like he might actually be scared to death if he played it.
After much deliberation, he finally came up with a brilliant idea.
As the old saying goes,
“Fear stems from the unknown.”
His fear, he reasoned, came from not knowing what tricks Miss Ye had up her sleeve.
But if he could watch someone else’s full playthrough beforehand, he’d know exactly what to expect. When the time came to play, he’d be unfazed and completely unafraid!
The more Liver Bro thought about it, the more genius he felt. Without hesitation, he forwarded the game to his lifelong best friend.
“Hey, Brother Lu, I found this super relaxing game. Want to give it a try?”
After a while, the other person sent back an impatient reply.
【I’ve been busy training lately. The annual Military Cup is about to start. Xiaoyu, stop wasting my time with trash games.】
【How many times do I have to say it? Don’t call me Xiaoyu! And this is absolutely not one of those garbage games I tricked you into playing before!】
Liver Bro, whose real name is Ji Yu, was a sophomore at the Central Military Academy of the Central Star System.
Don’t get the wrong idea—he wasn’t the traditional, brawny type of cadet. His specialization was in administrative roles.
Ji Yu was a local, born and raised in the capital. Coming from a well-off family, his favorite pastime was streaming games.
He’d been at it since he was 15 years old, and after switching to horror escape games three years ago, his channel had unexpectedly blown up. Now, he had over a hundred million followers—likely drawn in by his delightfully terrified screams.
Ji Yu wasn’t exactly brave; even a simple corpse model could scare him out of his skin. It was no surprise he’d chosen a desk job-oriented major for his future.
Whenever he encountered a horror game too frightening to play, he relied on his secret weapon: his childhood best friend, Lu Xiaofeng.
No matter how realistic or terrifying the game was, watching Lu Xiaofeng play it first—discovering all the scare points—made it much less frightening for Ji Yu to play himself.
Why not just watch other streamers? Because streamers often dragged out their playthroughs for content. By the time they finished, streaming the same game would feel redundant.
But Lu Xiaofeng was different—he stormed through games with a stone-cold expression, finishing them as quickly as possible. This way, Ji Yu could still catch the hype live.
Lu Xiaofeng clicked his tongue impatiently.
“Fine, fine, I’ll head to your dorm and play it for you today. Happy now?”
Ji Yu’s family had enough means to ensure he got a single dorm room at school, a luxury that allowed Lu Xiaofeng to drop by whenever he wanted.
This time, however, as soon as Lu Xiaofeng entered the room, he saw Ji Yu looking like a walking tragedy.
“Seriously? Are you that scared?”
Ji Yu glanced at him with hollow eyes, then suddenly threw himself onto Lu Xiaofeng, sobbing loudly.
“Brother Lu, I’m doomed!” he wailed, recounting his earlier ordeal between sniffles.
In short, DouDou, the platform, had contacted him to start a livestream of the game at midnight. The catch? He couldn’t play straight through to the end; he’d have to stop whenever DouDou said so.
Ji Yu didn’t think they realized the truth—he didn’t have the skills to beat the game at all!
Almost simultaneously, Lu Xiaofeng’s terminal chimed with a notification.
He glanced at it and raised an eyebrow.
“I won.”
It turned out that DouDou had randomly selected two players who’d added the game to their cart to receive it for free. The only condition was that their first playthrough had to happen at midnight, and DouDou would have the right to broadcast the gameplay as a livestream—but only for this one time.
Lu Xiaofeng had seen the promotional trailer earlier and found the game intriguing. A free copy only sweetened the deal.
As for the livestream, it wasn’t a big deal. The platform didn’t require personal information to be disclosed.
He patted Ji Yu on the head.
“Relax. I can stream it with you now, so there’s nothing to be scared of.”
Ji Yu was on the verge of tears.
“It’s a single-player game! You can’t be by my side, so I’ll still be scared all by myself!”
Meanwhile, Liu Yuling, a friend of the designer and the first tester to beat the trial version, also received an invitation from DouDou to stream the game at midnight. The platform’s generous payout quickly won her over.
At the same time, Huang Heng, who had been planning a late-night data analysis session, discovered that she was one of the two lucky players selected.
Given how exhausted she’d been lately, relaxing with a game didn’t sound like a bad idea. Besides, it would eventually become a case study for her research anyway.
Naturally, she agreed.
Midnight arrived quickly.
The “Buy” button for Campus Nightmare: May Bridge changed from gray to blue.
But even more eye-catching was the livestream window link that simultaneously appeared on the game’s details page and DouDou’s homepage!
The carefully orchestrated opening ceremony for Ye Yuxi’s terrifying game, in collaboration with DouDou, had officially begun!