The next day at noon, Ruan Guangjian crawled out of bed, feeling a bit dizzy.

Fortunately, he had only drunk beer, so after sleeping it off, he was mostly sober.

“Oh right, the game!”

Ruan Guangjian remembered that the game should have passed the review by now!

He eagerly took out his phone and searched for “Ghost General” on the official platform.

This batch of concept art was something he and his dormitory brothers had worked on day and night, cherishing it like their own child. Naturally, he hoped this game would be a huge hit.

Then he could rightfully claim the title of concept designer.

In the future, whether looking for a job or seeking investment, he could simply showcase this batch of concept art, and the effect would be impressive.

So, as the concept artist, although he was doing outsourced work, he cared more about it than Pei Qian!

“Hey, our game has passed review. Download it quickly and check it out. Just search for ‘Ghost General’.”

Ruan Guangjian shouted, and his already awake buddies also took out their phones to download it.

Looking carefully at the game details page, Ruan Guangjian frowned.

Why was it so brief?

Especially the introduction—saying it was “bland” would be an overstatement; it was halfhearted!

“This is an utterly ordinary card game”?

Could it be that the producer had a grudge against his own game??

Moreover, other games would put promotional images and attractive posters on this page to serve as clickbait.

Usually, games would put their best art resources on the details page, just to lure players in.

As for whether the actual in-game graphics matched the promotional images… that didn’t matter. At least some players would stay after getting in.

But for “Ghost General,” there wasn’t a single image!

So when Ruan Guangjian searched for this game, its cumulative downloads were still at zero—even Pei Qian hadn’t downloaded it yet.

“Maybe the game just passed review and hasn’t had time for large-scale promotion… yes, that must be it.”

Ruan Guangjian reassured himself while downloading and entering the game.

The game cost 10 yuan, which Ruan Guangjian paid without hesitation.

It was a rather primitive card game, with gameplay that reminded Ruan Guangjian of the “Cute Three Kingdoms” version from half a year ago.

But this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Mobile games didn’t need overly complex systems and gameplay. In this era, lighter casual mobile games were still popular.

Most players could currently accept a total of two to three hours of entertainment per day, which would be spread throughout the day.

Therefore, card mobile games from this period were centered around challenging levels and sweeping through stages as the main active gameplay, using energy and level challenge limits to control players’ game time.

Adding too many fancy features was a low-return behavior.

But for games like “Cute Three Kingdoms” that had been operating for nearly a year, there was a paradox.

Updating gameplay was thankless work—the game became bloated, and players complained that the game was too grinding.

But if the gameplay wasn’t updated, players would quickly get bored playing the same thing.

So “Cute Three Kingdoms” updates its versions every two or three months, adding new functions and new cards. The whole game became increasingly bloated, which was an unavoidable move.

But “Ghost General,” as a new game, didn’t have this problem.

Although it entirely adopted the older gameplay system from “Cute Three Kingdoms,” it was, after all, a classic gameplay that had been market-tested, and players had a high acceptance rate.

As long as it had a different skin, players wouldn’t get bored.

Moreover, the game featured some relatively simple basic gameplay mechanics, allowing card game players to quickly get the hang of it without feeling it was too grindy or tiring.

Ruan Guangjian quickly drew some cards, all of which were basic cards for beginners.

He looked at the overall effect, and it was very good!

When designing the concept art, Ruan Guangjian knew these original drawings would be used for a card game, so he deliberately made some unique designs in terms of styling, making the character poses on the cards more dynamic.

For instance, on Guan Yu’s card, the dragon was in the position of raising a blade about to strike someone. Combined with the card’s swaying special effect, it looked particularly impressive.

Ruan Guangjian grew increasingly proud.

Not bad at all! I managed to create such perfect concept art!

At first, Ruan Guangjian was worried that his concept art style would look jarring or mismatched in the game, but now it seemed there was no problem at all.

These cards integrated well and gave the game a unique charm.

Beautiful cards, decent interface effects, and passable music and sound effects—all of these combined to give Ruan Guangjian a very good gaming experience!

Ruan Guangjian had played other card mobile games, so he picked it up quickly.

Perhaps because the concept art in this game was drawn by himself, giving it a sense of being his “own child,” Ruan Guangjian naturally had extra affection for this game.

After playing for a few minutes, he entered the card-drawing phase as usual.

Most card games would arrange this phase in the early stages, to retain players through a rare card.

Of course, to ensure the game’s spending ceiling, this card was generally an ordinary purple card—it looked good to newcomers but wasn’t useful, becoming commonplace in the later stages.

Ruan Guangjian was certainly well aware of this point.

But after clicking on the ten-card draw, he was stunned.

He had drawn two orange cards?!

Ruan Guangjian was very clear about the value of these cards because the art requirements table had specified clearly that some generals were rare generals!

The two generals he had drawn were Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang, both undeniably rare generals, and they belonged to the rarest category in the game!

Ruan Guangjian was stunned.

His first reaction was that the game might still be in the testing phase, so the value table was misconfigured, and the probability of drawing rare generals was too high.

But soon, a second absurd thing happened.

Ruan Guangjian was surprised to find that in the game’s store, there was only one item for sale: a permanent membership card!

Players who didn’t buy the membership card could only do a ten-card draw once a day, while those who bought the membership card could do it twice a day.

Apart from this, Ruan Guangjian didn’t see any other products, nor did he see anything like a nobility system.

In other words, this game did have in-app purchases, but it only allowed you to spend 30 yuan, not a penny more. You couldn’t even charge more money into the game!

“This… Could it be that it’s still in the testing phase, so the functions are incomplete?”

“No, this is the version that was submitted to ESRO for review, isn’t it?!”

Ruan Guangjian felt something was off.

After submitting to ESRO for review, if there were to be version updates or fixes for bugs in the game, they would have to be submitted for review again.

Moreover, there was a limit to the number of review submissions per month; one couldn’t repeatedly submit and waste the time of ESRO staff.

Generally speaking, what was submitted for review was the official version, and there shouldn’t be these kinds of errors in basic functions!

After all, once the review was passed, the game would be listed on the official store, displayed to players, and some players would pay to purchase it.

With a sense of responsibility toward players, developers shouldn’t frequently and irresponsibly alter the game’s content.

Ruan Guangjian was bewildered.

Since it wasn’t a low-level error, it must have been intentional by the designer!

He hadn’t expected “Ghost General” to be such a conscientious card mobile game!

Wouldn’t they lose a ton of money like this???