[LEVEL Up KL 2020] Wan Hazmer Shares Large Fan Response To No Straight Roads

Wan Hazmer opened up about the huge fan outpouring of support for Metronomik’s debut game, No Straight Roads. The game has spawned lots of fanworks from fanart, streams and even fanfiction.

He discussed this at his Level Up KL 2020 Keynote, No Straight Roads To Our Debut Game. It served as the closing address for the second day of business conferences.

One of the biggest pieces of fan support of the game is the online Among Us stream, featuring the voice talent for the game. Despite featuring the cast of the game, this wasn’t a directive by Metronomik. It was organized by Steven Bones  the voice of Zuke.

According to Wan Hazmer, the cast for the game would play the popular party game while in character, and managed to get the game trending on Twitter via the hashtag #NoStraightRoads.

“They seem to be very proud of the game,” he says. “Of course, we’re proud of them as well”.

The hashtag is also strongly supported by the game’s fanartist community. According to Wan Hazmer, the game gets more than 100 new uploads of fanart in a single day. For demonstration purposes, he filled up an entire page with fanart collected in just the past 12 hours, and exclusively on Twitter.

Similarly, fans are putting together a fan zine, a self-published collection of fanworks for the game.

“It’s really amazing to see how well its celebrated among the fans”, he says. “I’ve been talking to them, and they’re really a great bunch. We have no words to thank them enough”. he says.

Through their efforts, he says the hashtag managed to surpass 2.8 million impressions on his birthday, October 10th.

He also praised the fans for starting their own fan discord, something he wishes he’d done officially. Rather than contest it, however, he’s simply joined the fan discord.

Finally, he brought up one of the more niche sides of fandom- fan fiction. According to Wan Hazmer No Straight Roads has 48 stories on publishing site Wattpad, though the actual number may be much higher.

“We’re not including the ones that are on the darker side of the internet, if you know what I mean” he smirks. This is of course, a reference to more sexually explicit content found in fanfiction, which is a stereotype attached to the medium.

Additionally, he shared Twitter user Ash The Artist’s fan game about the game’s first boss, DJ Subatomic Supernova. He didn’t go into detail about it, only mentioning the fangame’s existence.

“It’s very safe to say that we’ve created a memorable cult classic,” he laughs.