Fruit Ninja 02

Chapter 163

At 9:50 AM.

On the sixteenth floor of the Qinglin City Science and Innovation Center, everyone was strung as tight as a bowstring.

Cigarette butts piled up like a small mound in the ashtray, and the Red Bull cans scattered across the floor crunched underfoot.

A group of programmers with dark circles under their eyes kept their eyes glued to the countdown on the projection screen, not even daring to breathe loudly.

Li Sinan stood with her arms crossed, her high heels tapping aimlessly against the floor.

"Boss, Penguin is going crazy over there."

Her voice was a bit tight as she pointed to the monitoring chart on the computer. "As of a minute ago, pop-ups and headlines are fully covered, and Jay Chou's posters are plastered all over the internet. It is said that the queue on Penguin's servers has already exceeded 150,000 people, and the servers haven't even opened yet!"

150,000.

In 2011, when smartphones were just becoming popular, this number was enough to make any small or medium-sized manufacturer despair to the point of disbanding on the spot.

This was Penguin.

A kind of suffocating feeling when they aggressively threw money in your face.

The office was dead silent. A few young programmers swallowed hard and subconsciously looked at the young man.

Gu Ran leaned back in his chair, twirling a pen in his hand, as steady as a giant Buddha.

"Only 150,000?"

He chuckled lightly, tossed the pen onto the desk, and spoke with a hint of casualness: "It seems Jay Chou's appeal has been underestimated, or Penguin's servers are too trash and started smoking before they even began."

Li Sinan: "..."

The fire is already burning our eyebrows, and you still have the mood to mock their servers?

How big is your heart?!

"Don't panic."

Gu Ran raised his wrist and glanced at his slightly worn watch. "Let them queue. The longer they queue, the higher their expectations. When they realize what's served is just a plate of cold leftovers, that anger... will be our best accelerant."

The second hand ticked.

Tick, tock.

"Is the lead programmer ready?" His voice sounded softly.

Wang Hao, the head of the technical department, stood up abruptly and wiped his sweaty palms hard on his pants: "Fruit Ninja version 1.0 has been uploaded to the App Store and all Android channels. We can open the servers at any time."

"Very good."

Gu Ran's eyes locked onto the top of the hour.

"Ten o'clock has arrived."

"Penguin is treating, we are serving the dishes."

...

At exactly 10:00 AM.

The Chinese internet exploded.

Countless young players waiting in front of their phones immediately clicked on "Everyday Parkour," which bore the Penguin logo.

"Charge! For Jay Chou!"

"One million Q Coins, bring it to me!"

However, reality backhanded everyone with a big slap.

"Server connection timed out..."

"Current queue: 12,450 people. Estimated wait time: 35 minutes."

In a university dorm, sophomore Zhang Wei slammed his hand on the desk and stood up angrily: "Fuck! What kind of trash server is this! Does Penguin use all the money they make to raise pigs? Don't they know how to expand capacity?!"

Despite his cursing, Zhang Wei stubbornly waited for over twenty minutes for the sake of the Q Coins.

Finally, the queue ended, and the game's loading bar finished.

The graphics were exquisite, the chibi version of Jay Chou was cool, and the BGM was a variation of "Nunchucks."

But...

After playing a couple of rounds, Zhang Wei's brows gradually furrowed into a tight knot.

"Isn't this just Temple Run with a different skin?"

Swipe left, swipe right, jump up, slide down.

Apart from replacing the monsters with the dean of students and the coins with diamonds, the gameplay had zero innovation.

The most disgusting part was that because the game was stuffed with too many special effects and top-up portals, his newly bought Xiaomi phone lagged like a PowerPoint presentation, and the back of the phone was hot enough to fry an egg.

"Is this it?"

Zhang Wei clicked on the event page, wanting to see the tempting "One Million Q Coins."

[Congratulations on obtaining the "Parkour Treasure Chest"! Opening it requires 10 diamonds (Top up 6 RMB to get 100 diamonds). There is a 0.01% chance to get 100 Q Coins!]

"Are you fucking kidding me!"

Zhang Wei threw his phone directly onto the bed.

This greed was simply too ugly!

Are they treating players like monkeys?

Filled with anger, he switched out of the game, opened the "Jay Fans Headquarters" Penguin group chat, and prepared to vent crazily.

However, the wind direction in the group was not right.

No one was discussing "Everyday Parkour"; instead, they were flooded with a strange link.

The link came from "GR Game Studio," and the title was incredibly humble and somewhat "green tea-like"—

"Apology: We can't make a perfect parkour game, but we want to treat you to some fruit."

"GR Studio? The ones who made Temple Run?"

Zhang Wei was taken aback for a moment. Out of sympathy for the original creators, he clicked on the link.

The copy was very short, without any self-pity, only an almost "green tea-like" sincerity:

[Facing a behemoth, we know our strength is insignificant. We can't compete for servers, and we can't afford spokespersons. The parkour track is too crowded, so we decided to take a different path.]

[In this sweltering summer, GR Studio offers you a plate of chilled watermelon. No grinding, no pay-to-win, we just want to let you relieve some stress while waiting in the queue.]

[New game "Fruit Ninja", only 20M, instant download, play immediately.]

Below was a download link.

The icon was minimalist: a half-sliced watermelon oozing juice.

"Slicing fruit?" Zhang Wei muttered, "What's so fun about this?"

But considering it was only 20M, and he had just been pissed off by Penguin, he casually clicked download.

Installation complete.

He clicked the icon.

The screen went black, followed by a sharp silver blade flashing across the darkness, accompanied by a crisp and clean sound—

"Fruit Ninja!"

No tedious registration, no screen full of top-up pop-ups.

Only when you wanted to continue playing later levels would the registration interface pop up.

And the entire main interface was outrageously simple.

There were only three wooden plaques and a continuously rotating half-sliced watermelon.

The screen prompted: [Swipe the screen to start the game].

Zhang Wei subconsciously stretched out his finger and swiped gently across the screen.

"Swish!"

A silver-white blade light instantly generated along the trajectory of his fingertip, with lag so low it felt as if his finger had truly become a sharp blade.

The watermelon was split in two, and bright red juice splattered with a "pfft" onto the wooden background. The realistic sound effects and impact feedback made Zhang Wei's fingertip tingle as if he had been electrocuted.

"Holy shit?"

Zhang Wei's eyes instantly widened.

This feel... it was unbelievably smooth!

This was different from any mobile game he had ever played!

Previous games used fingers to simulate a mouse, but this... this was true touch interaction!

The game began.

Apples, bananas, and watermelons were tossed up from the bottom of the screen.

Zhang Wei tentatively swiped his finger.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

The fruits burst in mid-air, juice flying everywhere.

The thrill of destruction, the feedback of the blade slicing through flesh, made all the pores on his body open up.

Suddenly, three fruits flew up at the same time.

A flash of inspiration hit Zhang Wei, and he drew a horizontal line across the screen with his finger.

"Swish—"

Three fruits sliced at once!

A huge purple word suddenly popped up on the screen, accompanied by a passionate male voice roaring:

"COMBO!!!"

Immediately after, his score skyrocketed.

"Awesome!!!"

Zhang Wei couldn't help but let out a loud roar. The frustration and anger he had accumulated all morning were completely vented with this one slash.

To hell with queuing!

To hell with Q Coins!

Right now, all I want to do is slice watermelons!

...

12:00 PM.

GR Game Company, Tech Department.

"Boss! The data... the data is blowing up!"

Li Sinan stared at the backend, her voice trembling with excitement.

"What's wrong?" Gu Ran held a freshly brewed cup of goji berry water, calmly blowing on the steam.

As the saying goes, if you don't take care of your health when you're young, you'll be paying doctors when you're old.

Even if for nothing else, he had to keep his body in top shape for his girl.

"The curve... it's gone straight up!"

Li Sinan turned her laptop screen toward everyone.

The blue curve representing new users had taken a terrifying 90-degree vertical takeoff after 10:00 AM!

"Downloads have broken through 500,000! And the retention rate... 98%?!"

Wang Hao was so shocked his glasses nearly fell off. "Is there a bug in the data? How could there be such a god-tier retention rate?"

"It's not a bug."

Gu Ran took a sip of water to moisten his throat, his tone firm. "Because at this point in time, there isn't a single game on the market that understands this screen better than it does."

The success of Fruit Ninja wasn't a victory of gameplay; it was a dimensional strike of interaction logic.

It was the first game to truly capture the soul of multi-touch since Steve Jobs released the iPhone.

For the users of 2011 who were just coming into contact with smartphones, this experience was a point of no return.

"Boss, look at Weibo!" Li Sinan shouted.

The big screen switched over.

On the trending list, although National Parkour Festival was still in first place, it was a zombie trend bought with money.

However, within the top ten, a topic named Screen Killer was skyrocketing like a rocket.

Clicking into it, it was full of crazy recommendations from organic fans.

"Brothers! This game is addictive! My fingers are about to rub out sparks!"

"Highest combo of 8! Who else?!"

"Penguin's parkour game makes me want to sleep, but I really can't stop slicing these fruits! I was playing it in class just now and got it confiscated, but after class, I saw the teacher slicing away in the office..."

"Ultimate stress reliever! Highly recommend! True masterpiece warning!"

The word of mouth was exploding.

Meanwhile, at the Penguin Game Division.

The celebration banquet that had been prepared was now as quiet as a mourning hall.

The person in charge looked at the cliff-like drop in the user activity curve, his face livid.

"Can someone tell me where everyone went?!"

"The tech department just checked..."

An employee tremblingly handed over a report. "The lost users... most of them went to download a game called Fruit Ninja."

"It's that GR Studio again?!" The person in charge gritted his teeth.

He couldn't figure it out.

They clearly had Jay Chou, Q Coins, and all-channel promotion on their side.

Why would they lose to a crappy game about slicing watermelons?

"Where did they get their marketing? Isn't GR just a small company?" the person in charge asked with a frown.

"Uh, mainly... by spamming advertisements in our promotional groups and Jay Chou's fan groups..."

Person in charge: "???"

Are they freaking hooligans?!

How could they leech off us like that!!!

...

2:00 PM.

Inside the GR Company, the cheers almost blew the roof off.

The real-time online player count broke through one million.

The advertising cooperation emails sent by channel distributors stuffed Li Sinan's... inbox to the brim.

In this battle, not only did they win, but they also stood on the shoulders of giants and soared into the sky, winning utterly and completely.

"Alright, stop howling."

Gu Ran stood up and clapped his hands to quiet down the crowd's revelry.

"Hurry up and rent servers to expand our capacity. For tonight's celebration banquet, pick any place you want. Boss Li is paying."

"Long live the boss!!!"

Li Sinan: "???"

Are you trying to bleed me dry?!

Amidst the wailing and howling, Gu Ran picked up his jacket and walked toward the door.

"Boss, where are you going?" Li Sinan chased after him for a few steps, her eyes full of admiration. "You're the main character tonight. Aren't you going to say a few words?"

"No, you guys have fun. Just expense it after the meal."

Gu Ran pushed open the glass door. The afternoon sunlight poured in unhindered, stretching his shadow long.

He turned around and waved his phone at this future capable right-hand woman, his smile containing a bit more boyish charm.

"The battle is over. It's time to go home and eat."

...

Downstairs, the sunlight was just right.

Gu Ran took a deep breath of the hot and dry air when his phone suddenly vibrated.

It was a text reply from Ye Zhenzhen.

Ten minutes ago, he had sent a message asking, [What are you doing?]

Now, four words lay on the screen. It was simple, yet it made his heart race faster than that one million online data from just now.

[I am thinking of you.]

Gu Ran smiled, laughing out loud.

Sparks can be hidden in the dust, and legends can naturally be born from the ordinary.

But at this moment, the legend only wanted to go see his girl...