I Just Want Players to Save Money, They Insist on Giving Me!-Chapter 43 - 23 Goblin Pinball_1

Goblin Pinball

“Goblins? Isn’t that selling point a bit… outdated?” murmured Gou Chehua.

Even though there is serious homogenization in the game market now, many games still start with weak characters like goblins or slimes for initial player empowerment.

This has led to an even more competitive and homogenous market.

Nowadays, if players download a game and see goblins at the start, many are immediately put off.

Many top publishers have realized this problem and started to avoid these creatures.

As for the pinball element, Gou Chehua also wasn’t clear how it would play out.

Everyone has played with marbles as a child.

But integrating it into a game always seems to lack something.

With his three years of experience in the gaming industry, he knew that there had been attempts to incorporate the marble element into games.

They tried to create something similar to match-three games, but it went from match-match fun to bounce-bounce fun.

Using its bounciness to collide three identical items and achieve a match-three.

But they invariably ended in failure.

The reason was that players don’t enjoy games with too much uncertainty.

If you fail, you have to restart the whole level.

Even with a revival mechanism, the chance of success next time is still uncertain.

If players consistently fail to receive positive feedback, the likelihood that they’ll abandon the game goes without saying.

“Ugh…” Gou Chehua fell silent.

Both goblins and pinball are not very appealing elements.

Yet Designer Ke mixed these two elements together…

No matter how you look at it, it’s doubly unappealing…

“Is this the equivalent of starting on hell difficulty…” Now, even Gou Chehua had his doubts.

Amidst these thoughts, the game finished extracting.

When he opened it, a strong pixel art style hit him right in the face.

This was another negative point…

Although the graphics in previous titles like I Wanna and Goose Duck Kill weren’t sophisticated, their focus was on gameplay, so players would subconsciously overlook the graphics quality.

But now, with both goblin and pinball proven to be nothing special, whether the graphics were refined became key.

“Sigh.” Gou Chehua sighed helplessly.

This game was visibly not going to be a hit.

But that’s life for you, with its highs and lows.

You can’t force a game designer who’s just started their career to keep coming up with fresh ideas.

It was already quite an achievement that they managed to make two hit games.

“Let’s just play it first and see if I can find any suitable selling points to promote.”

As he said this, Gou Chehua clicked on “[Enter Battle]”.

To his mild surprise.

Unlike the usual image of being beaten down in other games.

The goblin this time was actually the protagonist.

In the game, it carried a brown backpack filled with marbles made of various stones, and with its short stature, it looked rather cute and dumb, not at all off-putting.

After selecting it to enter the game, a map that looked as if it were drawn by an elementary school student unfolded before him.

The starting point was the tiny goblin Gou Chehua had chosen, and two dotted lines extended in front of it.

One led to a skull icon, the other to a treasure chest.

Beyond these icons, there were more dotted lines as extensions.

“Is this about choosing my own level?” Gou Chehua muttered to himself and then clicked on the skeleton head on the left with his mouse.

He needed to see how this game was played first.

After clicking, the screen popped up with the words “[Enter Battle].”

With a shift in the scene, two Treemen with health bars both showing 200/200 appeared in front of the tiny Goblins.

It was clear that if he defeated the Treemen before him, he would pass the level.

However, the game’s unique attack method made Gou Chehua’s eyes widen slightly.

It wasn’t turn-based, nor was it real-time combat.

It was instead a pachinko-style board that appeared at the bottom of the screen.

Just like playing pool, the marble the player was about to throw would be fixed at the topmost spot.

Then, small round nails were distributed evenly around, the game referred to these as “nails.”

These nails had a slight elasticity, and when the marble hit them, it would reflect and bounce off.

Of course, with each reflection, the momentum of the marble would decrease, and due to gravity, it would keep falling until finally dropping into the hole at the bottom, completing one attack.

Gou Chehua randomly aimed at a spot, pressed the launch button, and an ordinary stone started shooting toward the direction indicated by the mouse.

“Pop!”

After colliding with a nail, a prompt appeared on the interface showing “+1 Damage.”

It then refracted towards another direction, soon slamming into another nail.

“+1 Damage”

So it went, continuing to reflect and jump along, with the marble’s bounce getting weaker and its position lower and lower.

Just as it was about to fall into the hole, at that moment the damage had only increased by 13 points.

Meaning he could deal 13 damage.

But there were two Treemen with 200 HP each.

“This seems a bit strenuous…” Gou Chehua hadn’t finished speaking,

when suddenly he saw the marble collide with a special nail at the very bottom layer, marked with an exclamation point.

“Bang!”

As if injected with new vigor, the marble dramatically reversed its decline and shot upwards!

It then crashed down all the way from the top again.

This time, each nail it touched changed the displayed text to “+2 Damage.”

“Is that a Critical Hit Nail?” Gou Chehua realized, and then began to glance intentionally and unintentionally towards the hole at the bottom left.

There, there was another nail marked with an exclamation point.

“If I can hit this one too, wouldn’t it be +4 damage for a crit?”

He mused to himself, and the marble continued to slide down accordingly.

Watching the marble fall, bringing with it a string of “+2 Damage” figures, Gou Chehua’s heart tightened with tension.

Unfortunately, the marble didn’t follow the path he had envisioned, missing its target.

But in the next instant.

“Pop!”

Suddenly, the marble collided with the very left side of a nail and shot straight at a right angle, passing countless nails to fly directly towards the Critical Hit Nail he had been longing for.

“Thud!!”

Once again with full force, the marble flew up to the top and then continued to fall with gravity.

This time, every strike brought a lucrative “+4 Damage.”

After several turns of ricocheting, the marble finally settled and dropped straight into the Bottomless Abyss at the bottom.

After the cumulative attack was over, one could see the Goblin on the game screen above, flipping a marble from a small pouch and throwing it towards the Treeman not far away.

“-211!”

The damage dealt was exactly the total damage of the first marble.

Instant kill!

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Direcly emptied the Treeman’s 200 HP health bar.

“Holy shit…” Staring at the screen, Gou Chehua’s eyes widened, showing a hint of something unusual.

This game…

It’s different from the hardship of Iwanna.

It’s not like Goose Duck Kill, which is about wits and bravery.

It…

Seems rather thrilling!