A year earlier, a new game came out: a MMORPG called world of Warcraft. It was revolutionary and more importantly could be played online with hundreds of people. In just about five months, more than one million players bought it and connected to the game, even the mainstream media talked about it.
I tested in my free time and liked it. It was simple but hard enough to make it interesting. Honestly, the story wasn't really new or ground breaking but still pleasant enough.
When I started developing call of Cthulhu, I decided to make it similar. It would cost me a lot to make it a multiplayer game but I wanted people to be able to play together. Luckily my gift was perfect for this task. The Hardest part of making a multiplayer game was synchronizing the information sent by the players and making the main server apply them.
My power allowed me to make this part more efficient and optimize everything from the game itself to the requirements. I wanted everyone to enjoy it even if the game design would only be liked by a minority of people.
The game was simple. Alone or in group, the players would create a character with no special traits or powers whatsoever on a planet were Cthulhu was waking up. For the moment I made a simple map based on New York but in ruin. Every building could be accessed but would start a dungeon and aside from a few safe zone I put around the around, every street would be filled with monsters inspired largely by the Cthulhu mythos.
There was no level up in my game, the statistics would rise as would some capacities while fighting or crafting. For the moments, I only added a hundred items to build: weapons, protections and foods. If the player did not let his character rest in the safe zones, he would gain a madness penalty that would rise as time went and make some of his capacities weaker or useless.
They would start in the center of the city and as they would approach the sea, the monsters would get stronger.
As for the creatures in the building it would vary from cultist to sea creatures mutated.
I had to do some actual research in the Cthulhu Mythos for the creatures and even added screamer when insanity would kill the players character. Cthulhu face would appear and saturate the speakers before the simple black screen with the white writing "The dreamer is awakening".
I was so engrossed in the development, I did not see the months pass and when I finally made the alpha available for everyone, I finally noticed how much time I spent on the project.
Finally, after hours of pondering, I decided to put it on line. I made a simple website with just one button to download the game. I did not promote it, I wanted people to find it.
XoX
The world of gaming was for a lack of better worlds taken by surprise.
While nowadays video games were well known and platform such as steam were gaining on popularity thanks to the growing player base, few looked past the BIG game as they were called. Platform such as Steam that allowed gamers to find independent games were still new and barely trusted.
One day, on a forum, someone linked a strange website. It consisted of one page and one button in its center. The page was mostly black with strange green writing barely visible around while you could read "the city is rising".
Most saw it as a prank, a badly made virus, but one curious soul clicked on the button. Without surprise, an executable yet when finished no virus were detected. The same man executed it and he was surprised when instead of a program, a game launcher appeared.
"call of Cthulhu"
Most of what happened was relayed on a new forum called reddit. No one else dared to download it yet, fearing a new virus but still wanting to know what it was.
One day later, the news exploded: A new independent MMO was open.
In just one day, thousand connected to the new game.
Surprisingly, it was free. The only things needing money were appearances as well as title with various small effects. One of them was instantly bought by those that first played 'path of the stars', it gave them 5 percent more chance to find something on the monster's loot. 5 percent may not seem much but for 1 dollar, it was a really, really good deal.
Within a week, ten thousand people download and tried the game.
Most abandoned when they found out they had to FIND the information needed for the quests. Meanwhile, a fan base was created. Using reddit, they shared what they found and helped each other as they discovered new game techniques and place.
The first time someone died due to the madness debuff, they shared it on youtube as they were filming a tuto on how to hunt cultists. The video was seen three hundred thousand time. People used it as a prank and it made the game even more popular.
Mere weeks after the game was discovered, CoC or Call of Cthulhu became a well-known name in the gaming community.
Strangely enough, there were rumors of people getting healthier after upgrading their characters. A strange but common rumor.