Japanese game apocalypse: art, gameplay, theme… What is missing in the current chain tour?

If you are a game loyalty powder, you will not be unfamiliar with the "Adaly collapse".

In 1982, Warner was heavily invested to buy the license. The movie adaptation game "ET Alien", which was developed by the home console giant Atari, would have become the best seller of Christmas, but the players found that it was only used after purchase. The garbage that came out of work in 6 weeks was refunded.

A large number of homogenized and shoddy games have made people lose confidence in the console market, and this fuse has undoubtedly led to the end of Atari.

In 1983, millions of unsalable "ET" game cassettes were buried in the Alamogordo garbage town in New Mexico, announcing the end of an era.

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In the following years, few people in the United States talked about the console market, and an industry is on the verge of collapse.

In the same year, Nintendo of Japan seized the opportunity to quickly launch a red and white machine to occupy the market and open a new era of video games.

For a long time afterwards, Japanese game makers as the leader brought many benchmarking works to the industry. Even today's Japanese factory technology has gradually fallen, but the game content design still has a unique charm, which is inseparable from the overall domestic game development environment.

In 2017, Nintendo launched two heavyweight works. "The Legend of Zelda's Wilderness" evaded the short function of the Switch function with elegant artistic effects, and showed their ultimate understanding of the "sandbox game" and directly won the TGA Award. "Super Mario Odyssey" broke the traditional concept of the game of Mario, and pushed the "box class" Mario to a higher position.

Players applaud the strength of this old-fashioned manufacturer, and once again reflect on "the Japanese game is down" is not a false proposition.

The same is true in the field of blockchain games. My Crypto Heroes (hereafter referred to as MCH) turned out to be the top three in the DApp list. The trading volume once exceeded the number one in the "Mystery Love Cat". The fire not only made the players in the chain tour feel once again. :

Maybe the Japanese know how to make a "game."

Art, always first impression

What many people don't realize is that "gaming" is not the first threshold for traditional players who have never touched blockchain games, and art is the only one.

When people browse Steam or mobile app stores, or even offline stores, there is no way to see the "core gameplay" and "essence" of a game at a glance.

In addition to being recommended, whether to buy a game depends largely on whether you have a relationship with the game – the importance of the game screenshots is highlighted.

Therefore, the importance of game art is self-evident.

For everyone's understanding of "good art," maybe everyone is not the same. But for me, "good" is not synonymous with a powerful technology engine and cool lighting effects. Just as someone can use the Unreal 4 engine to make a game less than a month ago, the light and shadow particles have everything, but the chaos is full of routines and looks boring.

Conversely, recalling the "Final Fantasy 6" that was used in the past, or the "Tea Cup" which was very popular last year, is the pixel and hand-painted 2D art, but the meticulous scene depiction and the exquisite American retro animated style make people remember. profound.

The key is to use your heart.

The My Crypto Heroes game uses the overall design of the pixel wind, which is a plus for the old players. But even if the player doesn't like pixel art, he can't deny the development team's Double Jump in character design.

Double Jump did not use the coarse pixels to perfuse things, but carefully designed the image of each character, so that the character map also contains some exclusive details while ensuring cute or handsome. For example, in the picture of the Brothers Grimm, the stalks of the four small animals of chicken, cat, dog and scorpion are from the Bremen band in Grimm's fairy tale.

In the fairy tale, the four animals left their poor masters and traveled to Bremen with the dream of "building a band together." Although I did not realize this wish in the end, I also happily lived together.

This story is a warmer one in Grimm's fairy tale, and designing these animal images into Q-pixel pixmaps in the game will give players more intimacy.

Crypto Oink's main game mode is the same as most collection chain games, but the developer has very experienced designing the character into a pig with an elliptical body and a bean eye. The image is very pleasing, in line with the general public's "cute" "Definition.

Although like the Mystery Love Cat, all parts of the pigs are made up of random elements, but each element in the Crypto Oink material library is uniform and restrained, no matter how random it is, it will not be too strange. image of.

At the same time, the design of the game logo is also very subtle, the visual communication effect is very prominent, and people have a very intuitive impression on the game itself.

Art is the skin of the game. Although it can't determine the fate of the game, it can be used as an important part of the promotion to attract more potential players to try the game.

User preferences are different, but good art won't be an obstacle to refusing players. More often, it may be a reason for outside players to get started with blockchain games.

Gameplay, the key to sustainable survival

For the entire game industry, "gaming" is a topic that can never be talked about.

The reason why Nintendo has such a high status today is the three words. Letting players feel fun in the game is the most fundamental requirement for a game, and for the current blockchain game, the discussion about "gameplay" is still at an early stage.

But some chain games will have more thoughts on gameplay. Take MCH as an example. On the surface, the gameplay is not high: send three characters to play, and then automatically fight to see the result.

In fact, the development team designed a very tight combat value system in the game.

When the role is upgraded, the four-dimensional attribute will be improved according to the growth value. The correlation between the active and passive skills and the attribute is very strong, and the performance of the same character in different positions (front, middle, and back) will be significantly different.

So this is not a "numerical than big" game. The design logic behind it is in line with the traditional turn-based RPG. It requires the player to have a clear understanding of the character's ability and give corresponding strategic arrangements. This is a great pleasure for the game.

Blockchain games can also completely copy some of the traditional game modes, such as Cryptoderby.

There are too many similar horse racing game consoles in Japan, but the combination of horse racing and trading is realized by blockchain. Combined with other original contents, it can also become a full-fledged work. Imagine this idea, the "Football Manager" of the overhead reality may also be a good idea.

For the current homogenization chain travel market, a different gameplay is enough to make players shine.

For example, in Cryptoninja, players need to manipulate their ninja to sneak into other cities and put traps in their own cities to prevent other players from invading. In many cases, the size of the game is not a decisive factor, as long as it can be different in the market, it will cause some attention.

After all, the blockchain game will eventually have to explore some fun outside the transaction, or expand on the basis of the existing gameplay, otherwise the player loss is the inevitable result.

At present, the Japanese chain tour is still somewhat conservative in this respect. After all, traditional game makers are still waiting to see this emerging field, but the existing works are better than a large number of opponents with serious homogenization.

Theme, rare design shortcut

For traditional games, script or worldview settings are a very important part and one of the core of the game.

Due to the limitations of the development stage, the chain tour is currently on a very small scale, and it takes a lot of time and effort to build a huge world view.

Is there any simple way for the player to quickly generate some interest and emotional connection to the game? It may be a good choice to spend a little thought on the subject.

The subject matter can be a work or event that is familiar to you and has no copyright restrictions.

There are almost no original characters in MCH. Except for the three miscellaneous soldiers provided at the beginning of the game, all available characters are historical or legendary characters. Even if the player first touches the game, they can have certain cognitions about these characters, and the emotional connection will naturally occur.

If a player likes Napoleon, he is likely to try to participate in the game, trade and train the character. This approach is obviously more effective at attracting players than original characters without a companion story.

On the other hand, the theme can also borrow traditional big IP.

Japan has a game called "European Three Kingdoms". The quality of the game is not mentioned for the time being, but the game is very easy to use in terms of subject matter.

In the traditional game industry, the three countries, the Westward Journey, the Warring States, and the Second World War are all eternal themes. The world view, script, and characters are all ready-made and familiar. Like "Three Kingdoms Warriors", "Nobunaga's Wild Hope", "Taige Lizhi Biography" and other works, developers can save time to set aside to focus on other aspects, but also have a lot of space.

In addition, the subject matter can also be a specific field. Japanese games are often surprisingly successful in this area, and chain tours are no exception.

Like Crypto Idols and Crypto Kanojo, this is the work that is aimed at the quadratic group. Crypto Kanojo also recently collaborated with a mixed media idol group called “Virtual Money Girl”.

Although there is a gimmick component, the game itself is not a lot of people, but when the subject matter attracts people's attention as a topic, its purpose is achieved.

One thing to note is that although the selection of the theme is a shortcut, in the end it still needs to complement the game content itself. At this stage, developers can take the subject matter to try their luck, but it is not good to say whether it will be effective in the future. Just like the previous domestic mobile game frenzy, the games about the Westward Journey and the Three Kingdoms can find hundreds of games, but there are only a few that survive.

Without good content, shortcuts will not exist.

Aesthetics, mindset, and others

In the three aspects of art, gameplay, and theme, Japan's blockchain game does have its own advantages. But back to the essence, I would like to talk about the topic of "aesthetic".

Not long ago, the special issue of the new weekly magazine was called “Low-Sense Society”, and some discussions were made on the lack of domestic aesthetics. The terrible expression packs, earthy music, and earthy videos are full of our lives, and the audience is not small. The entire Chinese society is in a state of “low aesthetics”.

“Low-feeling society” does not mean that pursuing high aesthetics is meaningless. In the development of a single field, overall aesthetic improvement is a necessary path. This not only means visual upgrading, but also brings about qualitative changes in the product itself. .

In fact, it is as big as literary creation, as small as street signs, and the aesthetic gap between Japanese and Chinese people is objective, as is the case in the game field.

For the game, aesthetics is not only reflected in the art, from game theme selection, project development to music production, planning, gameplay design, UI design, and publicity, all of which can reflect the aesthetic level of the development team.

Take a look at today's many well-known domestic mobile games, basically bid farewell to the era of aesthetic loss. Although the Japanese chain tours are not all fine, the overall posture has matured, at least there is no sense of cheapness.

This is worth the time for the developers of the chain to spend more time working hard.

So what did the Japanese chain tour bring to us?

I think the article is written here, and the answer seems to be slowly clear:

Can learn the mentality of returning to the game production itself.

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