When I write a bug it becomes the core gameplay.

Chapter 404: Why did Shaowan Games.com take the blame?
Seeing that the contract had been signed, the deposit had been paid, and the model manufacturer had promised to start mass production immediately, Lilith finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Now, the dust should have settled, right?

"Heartbeat Dream" has received mixed reviews online so far. Although the progress of collecting negative emotions has obviously slowed down compared to the beginning, it still exists.

Little by little, it adds up to a lot, and compared to the previous games, it is already very good.

She casually browsed the Internet and found that so far, there were indeed some players who spoke well of "Heartbeat Dreamland", but it was obvious that these praises were not enough to change public opinion.

Even Lilith was a little surprised. How could anyone like this kind of game?

But on second thought, this is normal. After all, although the game "Tokimeki Dreamland" is heavily stitched, the love game part and the horror game part are very solid. The quality itself is there, and it is inevitable that some viewers with unique tastes will like it.

This bit of insignificant praise will not ruin the overall situation.

Lilith was happily flipping through the reviews when suddenly, her hand that was scrolling the mouse wheel stopped.

Her body tensed up instantly, as if she had seen something terrifying!

Gu Fan secretly glanced at the computer screen. At this time, Lilith was reading the review of the game "Heartbeat Dream" on the official platform. She deliberately filtered out all the negative reviews in the label and read them all at once.

I have to say, Li always knows how to enjoy herself.

But there is a striking line of fonts on the evaluation interface: There is 1 new curator review recently!

On the official platform, in addition to players who have purchased the game and can freely post reviews, there are also some special reviews, the so-called "connoisseur reviews."

Connoisseurs may be players who have received many positive reviews, or they may be professional gaming media. In short, the official has certain rules to grant players the status of connoisseurs.

These Curator Reviews will have some special benefits, such as they will have default tags, allowing players to quickly filter all Curator Reviews;
Curator reviews are displayed above all other reviews;

There may even be special formats in terms of font color, font size, etc. to create a more eye-catching effect.

Of course, the status of a connoisseur is not static. If you do not produce high-value reviews for a long time, this status may be revoked by the official.

The account that published the Connoisseur Review this time is also a familiar face: Shaowan Games Network!

As a relatively large domestic gaming media that claims to be professional, Shaowan Games not only regularly publishes various game reviews on its own website, but also attaches great importance to other media.

For example, live broadcast platforms and video platforms, Shaowan Games Network is also operating them seriously and will regularly forward its excellent articles or excellent reviews.

Even some large-scale manuscripts are published simultaneously on all platforms.

On the official platform, Shaowan Games Network naturally also has its own connoisseur account.

This time, Shaowan Games' review of "Heartbeat Dream" was quite late, at least one or two days later than other game review media.

Lilith originally thought it didn't matter. After all, these gaming media wouldn't review every game, so if one or two less gaming media criticized "Heartbeat Dreamland" it wouldn't be a big problem at all.

However, after seeing the review from the connoisseur, Lilith couldn't hold it anymore.

It was actually a "very good review"!
Lilith inadvertently exuded a murderous aura, and she decisively moved her mouse to check it out!

This review was published not long ago, but Shaowan Games is a relatively influential platform after all, so many players have already rushed to the comment section before they have had the chance to carefully read the entire review.

"Front row!"

"I heard that dogs can be popular if they come early!"

"It's finally out? I thought Shaowan Games Network was going to play dead this time!"

"I haven't even settled accounts with you guys for misleading players before, how dare you publish a review!"

"That's right, I just remembered that I didn't explain it in the last review!"

Originally, Shaowan Games Network’s attempt to pretend to be dead was almost successful. Internet popularity came and went quickly, and everyone was about to forget about the previous interview.

As a result, when this review came out, players’ memories were reinforced.

Everyone was curious. Was it true that Shaowan Games' previous interview was misleading to players? As a gaming media, how could such bad behavior be explained?

Put the blame on Nitiantang?
Or just keep silent?

Obviously, these two possibilities are the most likely.

In fact, the players all know that Shaowan Games is more realistic than other gaming media. The contents in the manuscripts are not necessarily their deliberate deception of players. It is very likely that they did not play the game at the time and were fooled by the people from Nitiantang and inadvertently used as a gun.

Therefore, Shaowan Games Network now only has these two options.

But these two choices are not good in essence. If you put the blame on Nitiantang and push all the responsibility for the interview onto them, on the one hand, Nitiantang and its fans will be dissatisfied. After all, Nitiantang accepted your interview with good intentions. Why are you trying to put the blame on them now?

If you do this, will any gaming media be willing to accept your interview in the future?

But the more they keep silent about it, the more concerned and more attentive the players will be. They will even mention this matter repeatedly in every report on Shaowan Games Network in the future.

If the players haven't forgotten, the impact will be more far-reaching and worse.

Obviously, Shaowan Games' decision to publish a game review at this critical juncture is indeed a bit of a dilemma. Whether it admits or denies it, it will still further expand the negative impact.

unless……

Lilith's eyes continued to widen as she read the text of the review.

"Gu Fan! What the hell is going on!!"

The beginning of this review almost burned out her CPU.

Shaowan Games Network actually mentioned the previous interview right at the start!
What no one expected was that Shaowan Games neither put the blame on Nitiantang nor flatly denied the incident.

Their response surprised everyone. "First of all, as the lead writer of the interview with the staff of Against the Heaven before the launch of Heartbeat Dream, I would like to apologize to all netizens, players and readers!

“In fact, during the interview, the producer of Against the Heavens had already given many hints, and I roughly guessed that this game would not be as simple as everyone thought.

"However, if I describe the actual content of the game in detail in this interview, it would be equivalent to spoiling the movie for all audiences before it is released, which is a very inappropriate behavior.

"Therefore, in order to take care of the gaming experience of all players, the author considered again and again, and finally decided to keep the suspense until the last moment. We deeply apologize for the trouble this has caused to everyone!
“But I believe that after everyone deeply experiences Doki Doki Dream, especially after reaching the true ending of this game and understanding the plot content hidden deep in the game, they will definitely have a new understanding of this game!”

This beginning made Lilith dizzy.

She looked at Gu Fan in confusion: "Huh? Weird, Shaowan Game Network is...taking the blame for us??

"Are you sick?"

Lilith actually knew about the interview with Zhou Yang by Shaowan Games. To be precise, the misleading information this interview caused to the players had nothing to do with Shaowan Games. It was Zhou Yang who deliberately used some ambiguous statements when answering questions in order to keep the game confidential, which caused the misunderstanding among the players.

But in this review, after being beautified with the Spring and Autumn style of writing, the meaning has become different!

According to Shaowan Games Network, they had actually heard something was wrong during the interview.

As for whether they heard it or the staff of Against the Heavens hinted at it, it was not directly stated, but players are obviously inclined to think it is both.

In other words, the employees of Nitiantang revealed some secrets to them out of good intentions, but Shaowan Games deliberately concealed this information for the sake of "not revealing spoilers" and only used ambiguous statements.

This is equivalent to helping the game Against the Heaven take all the blame.

If it were any other company, they might be a little touched.

The gaming media took the initiative to help share the firepower. How loyal!
But for Lilith, this is not necessary at all. After all, the louder the players scold, the more negative emotions they will generate. If the players don't scold me, they will scold you. Then who will make up for the negative emotions I lack?

The key point is why should Shaowan Games Network take the initiative to take the blame?
Against the Heaven isn't to the point where it has to make all the gaming media lick its boots, right?

Lilith felt like her CPU was a little burned out. As a demon, she simply couldn't understand the twists and turns of the human world and always felt that there must be something wrong.

I can only turn to Gu Fan for help.

Gu Fan also frowned, not being able to figure it out for a moment.

Although he knew the game itself very well, he was not aware of the internal situation of Shaowan Game Network, and this review was the first time he had seen it.

"Wait a moment, Ms. Li, let me give you a simple reasoning."

Gu Fan frowned and thought for a moment, then continued: "Boss Li, I think after excluding other possibilities, the only possibility is...

"The editor of Shaowan Games.com thought it would be profitable to take the blame for us."

Lilith was a little confused: "Ah? Profitable?
"Where exactly is the profit? That's impossible!"

Gu Fan explained: "In fact, Shaowan Games can completely clarify or ignore it. We, Against the Heaven Game, are not in a position to let all gaming media take the blame for us, so Shaowan Games must have some special purpose in doing this.

“As for where exactly there is profit…

“I think it should be ‘plot’. Shaowan Games Network seems to think that starting with the plot of this game can not only offset the negative impact of the previous interview, but also bring more traffic to the website.

"This should be the only possibility."

Lilith looked at the previous passage carefully again and instantly realized that what Gu Fan said made sense.

“If we report it truthfully, it would be like spoiling the movie before it’s released, which would be irresponsible to the players.”

“I believe that after everyone deeply experiences Doki Doki Dream, especially after reaching the true ending of the game and understanding the plot content hidden deep inside the game, they will definitely have a new understanding of this game.”

Judging from these two sentences, the focus emphasized by Shaowan Games Network is indeed "plot".

But this made Lilith even more confused. What about the plot? Does the game "Heartbeat Dreamland" have such a thing?
The horror content of this game basically has no plot. It's all about chasing each other and players are running around for their lives. After completing the game, they return to the real world and then continue with the next horror plot.

There are some plots in the love content, but they are basically written by fake-AI. The employees of Against the Heaven’s Glory have screened them, but compared with normal love games, there is nothing special about them.

Maybe it will feel like a science fiction movie when the girls in the movie take the initiative, but this kind of thing is not worth exaggerating, right?
Lilith couldn't help but continue reading, wanting to know who exactly Shaowan Games Network was and how dare they brag about something that didn't even exist.

“After the game was officially released, I also experienced the game in depth and found that this game actually has quite complex meta elements…”

In the subsequent review content, this article details various operations on character files in the root directory folder, including deletion, copy and paste, renaming, etc.

Although most players have discovered that the files here can be modified, there are not many who have conducted comprehensive experiments like Zhang Qifeng.

After reading this review, I felt like a world of enlightenment had suddenly dawned on me.

With these operations, players can actually complete many functions that the game originally did not support.

For example, you can transform a certain save file into a specific save file for a certain character, and then you can chat, train, and transform the AI.

You can delete Elios's files like Zhang Qifeng did, and then skip the horror content for a short period of time and quickly experience the love part of the game;

You can also keep only Elliot and enable various modification options built into the game, modify the content of the game at will, and experience the details of the game repeatedly like a multi-week game.

Although the game's own saving function is not particularly complete, the special mechanism of the meta game can easily accomplish things that were originally impossible.

But obviously, this is just the surface and not the whole story of this game.

“I guess everyone is wondering, who is the savior?
“Is it the female characters who left the Garden of Eden? Or the players?

“Why is the game’s apocalyptic setting set?
“These questions do not seem to have clear answers in the game.

"But as long as we continue to collect texts from the game, infer these fragmented plots, and combine them with meta elements to infer, we will find that the plot of this game is far from as simple as everyone imagines!"

(End of this chapter)