After steadying the staff and shutting down his uncle's theatrics, Evan immediately pulled the senior team into a smaller meeting room. He wanted to talk without half the company eavesdropping from the hallway.
As for his uncle James? He'd already slunk away in a huff. The moment his "everybody jump ship to BrightPeak Entertainment" speech was interrupted, he lost all momentum.And honestly? Nobody with actual industry experience was going to follow him.
People like to imagine that salary is the whole game — but in the real world, your professional reputation is worth more than a ten-percent raise. Bolt from your company the minute things get tough, and every future interviewer will quietly mark you down as unreliable.
"Oh, this is the guy who abandoned their studio as soon as things got rough."Once that label sticks? You're done. No good studio will touch you.
James either didn't understand this basic principle, or didn't care. Probably both.
Evan released a slow breath and looked around at the people who mattered.
Tom Jensen, head of the technical department — dependable, blunt, fiercely protective of his engineers. Evan trusted him the most.
Across from him sat Sasha Quinn, who ran content support and art. She had joined the company last year, mature, calm, intelligent — but Evan didn't know her well yet. Still, she wasn't the type to panic, and he needed that.
Aside from those two, calling anyone else to a crisis meeting would've been useless. They simply weren't senior enough to contribute meaningfully.
Evan reached into his folder and handed both of them a packet — the draft he'd written last night after hours of pacing at the hospital.
"This," Evan said, "is everything I've mapped out about Redline's situation. You don't technically need the full explanation, but I want you to understand exactly why this next project isn't just 'another game.' It's a life-or-death move for the studio."
Both Tom and Sasha nodded seriously and started reading.
The draft was brutally clear.
He had divided the company's problems into categories — financial, personnel, structural, project-based.He crossed out the ones that were dead ends.He highlighted the ones that could be salvaged.Then he drew two enormous arrows converging on the same phrase:
"New Game."
Under it, he'd written:
small investment
short development cycle
fast revenue recovery
minimal risk
minimal staff requirement
morale-boosting potential
Tom was the first to speak.
"So based on all this," he said slowly, "are we going back to visual novels? They're cheap, we've built a strong niche following, and it'd almost guarantee a return."
Evan shook his head. He already knew the logic — visual novels almost never lost money, but they also rarely blew up. They were stable. Predictable. Too slow.
"No," Evan said. "We're making a web game."
Sasha raised a brow. "We've done browser games before. Mostly text simulations. Cheap to make… and cheap in every other sense. Web games are kind of niche, aren't they?"
Then she added with a dry smile:
"Unless you're talking about opening an online casino. Then yeah, the money rolls in fast."
Evan let out a laugh."No casinos. I don't look good in orange jumpsuits. And I'm not going to have the FBI showing up during lunch break."
He leaned forward, tapping the draft with a finger.
"The real question I asked myself was: what kind of game can turn money fast? With online games, even a mediocre one — hell, a six-out-of-ten — can make more profit than a polished indie single-player game. We need something low-cost, fast to launch, and capable of generating revenue immediately."
He paused.
And then, unexpectedly, he sighed.
Because in his head, memories from his previous life began to replay — specifically, the most notorious corner of the old browser-game era.Those games weren't good. At all.But their advertisements? Pure, unfiltered radioactive chaos.
The worst offender — and most profitable — had been a series of ads so over-the-top they became memes:
"Start with a leviathan — evolve it by devouring everything!""I let my girlfriend click ONCE, and she evolved a cosmic beast! Insane!""Played one day and evolved a corrosive titan — now even whales beg me for help!""A gamer from Louisiana captured a mummy to fight the mega-leviathan!"
They were ridiculous. They were everywhere.Every YouTube video, every sketchy website, every social feed.
Even Evan — who prided himself on being a classical game purist — had clicked once or twice out of morbid curiosity.
Of course, when you actually clicked the ads, the games never delivered anything remotely close.The ads promised monstrous creatures, cosmic beasts, giant devourers…
The games gave you… a rat with a stick.
It was a classic bait-and-switch.
But the concept? The fantasy of raising, evolving, and unleashing a giant sky-devourer? That idea worked. It had been validated by millions of curious players.
This world didn't have the "giant legendary nostalgia" that fueled the originals.It didn't have recognizable pop-culture references.And Redline absolutely couldn't afford the celebrity endorsements those old games used.
But the core idea — raising an absurdly powerful creature that grows by devouring —that could be rebuilt from scratch into a real, fully-featured game.
No lies.No clickbait.No broken promises.
Just contagious fun.
Across the table, Tom and Sasha watched Evan silently, waiting. He'd gone still, eyes unfocused — deep in the kind of thinking that usually led to big decisions.
After nearly a full minute, Tom cleared his throat.
"Evan… if we're truly desperate, we can always open that casino. You know — under the table."
Evan jerked back to reality.
"What? No! We're not doing anything illegal. I was thinking."
He stood up, fully energized again.
"Alright. Here's the plan."
He pointed at Tom.
"Tom, I need you to list every front-end engineer who can touch browser tech — JavaScript, HTML5 canvas, anything modern. That's where most of the load will land."
Tom nodded without hesitation.
Then Evan turned to Sasha.
"Sasha, I need your art team to start producing concept work immediately. Think:ancient mythical beasts, sky leviathans, titan creatures, ocean devourers — big, powerful, bizarre.We need wild shapes, weird silhouettes, unsettling scales, glowing markings — anything that screams cosmic apex predator."
She wrote quickly. "Specific creature in mind?"
"Yeah," Evan said. "We'll call it a Kun for now. Placeholding name. But make it massive. Something that feels ancient, unknowable, and hungry. The kind of thing you'd see in a national park myth brochure and think, 'Nope, shutting my eyes now.'"
Sasha laughed. "You want eldritch-chic?"
"Exactly. Eldritch, but in a cool, marketable way."
Tom leaned back, impressed."As long as you've got a plan, you know the tech team's behind you."
Sasha looked at Tom curiously. "You keep saying that today. Was Evan really that good last summer?"
Tom let out a sigh that was half nostalgia, half awe.
"Better than good. He practically ran the department. The game we shipped in December? Evan rewrote half the backend, fixed the entire plot structure for the writers, and solved a dozen bugs we didn't even know existed. And he just won Best Graduate at Harborview University."
He paused, then added:
"And that little 64-kilobyte shooter everyone was talking about online? Killing Planet? Evan built that in his dorm room."
Sasha turned to Evan with a new expression — part respect, part surprise.
Evan rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. "Okay, okay, enough flattery. Let's focus. We have work to do."
He moved to the door.
"Both of you — have your departments brush up on front-end tech. If we're making a web game, that's where all of our firepower needs to go."
They nodded and left the room.
Evan stood alone for a moment, staring at the empty conference table.
There it was — a weird idea, a dangerous idea, an unexpected idea…but maybe the only idea that could save them.
He whispered under his breath:
"Alright. Let's start with one Kun.