Doomsday SLG battle, Zhixingtong’s new tour “The Walking Dead” global release

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[GameLook special manuscript, please indicate the source for reprinting]

GameLook report/strategy games (hereinafter referred to as SLG) has always been one of the best game categories for Chinese games going overseas. With the continuous iteration and update of SLG products, the entire category market is maturing, but it is also destined to only have a clear and clear positioning. Only products with differentiated content can succeed in the current market. In this case, most teams choose to use “IP” as a breakthrough point.

On April 12, the zombie theme “The Walking Dead: Survivors” produced by Elex was officially launched globally.

With the strong IP and the good reputation of Zhixingtongtong in overseas markets, the game has received a lot of attention from players after the game was released. According to the data given by AppAnnie, “The Walking Dead: Survivor” has successfully squeezed into the top 100 best-selling games in 23 markets in the countries and regions where it has been tested, and achieved a top 30 record for the highest time.

The popular walking dead

The zombie doomsday theme is for European and American players, just like the Three Kingdoms theme for Chinese players, it is a fairly classic and popular thing, and players have a high degree of acceptance. Whether it’s games, TV series, or movies, works on related themes endure for a long time and emerge in endlessly.

And “The Walking Dead” is a leader in the theme of zombies. Anyone who is interested in the theme of “zombies” should know the name of “The Walking Dead”, and its influence is undoubtedly the level of the first echelon. It is also the “The Walking Dead” comic series that has largely caused players’ fascination with the zombie world.

“The Walking Dead” was created in 2003 by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore. Now it has grown into a well-known IP covering movies, novels, TV shows and games, and each The media have analyzed the connection between human beings and the theme of survival in different ways. Especially in terms of film and television dramas, “The Walking Dead” won the award and got cramps. At its peak, it won the US cable TV ratings championship several times and created a single-series ratings record of 17.3 million people in the United States. “The ratings king.”

In 2012, Telltale Games launched the same list of games, a total of four games, and continued to expand the IP audience. The sales volume of the first season of “The Walking Dead” exceeded 8.5 million, which was called a dark horse-level game in 2012. However, due to the failure of the developer Telltale Games, the sales of subsequent works continued to decline. With the closure of Telltale Games, the copyright of the game was handed over to comics. Company Skybound Games.

Fortunately, the publisher Skybound and the main members of Telltale Games finally collaborated to complete the final season of The Walking Dead, making this game a good start and fulfilling the wishes of fans for many years. The game has also received “acclaimed reviews” on Steam.

Regarding the IP sequel, Skybound Games is unwilling to follow this approach with the plot, and wants to seek a new form beyond the existing games and series. This time Skybound authorized the “The Walking Dead: Survivor” IP to Zhixingtong, helping the Walking Dead IP to be more diverse in gameplay. As the leading manufacturer of SLG mobile games in China, Zhixingtong’s influence in overseas markets is undoubted. This IP plus traditional tower defense gameplay may be able to make up for its deficiencies in the category, and will undoubtedly further expand its IP. Influence.

Familiar world and hardcore gameplay

As an IP-authorized mobile game, “The Walking Dead: Survivor” firstly guarantees IP fans’ need for a sense of enthusiasm in terms of plot, worldview, and characters. The background of the game is set in a dark apocalyptic world, which is full of zombies, abandoned houses and buildings. Players will explore the open world with other survivors to obtain anything that can help, such as equipment, edible food, weapons, clothes, and various other items that can be used for survival.

In addition to the immersion of the subject matter, in the display of the picture, the consistent cool color is also highly compatible with the theme of zombies. At the same time, the style of painting adds a layer of comic filter on the basis of realism to create a unique The impression of comics, and the IP of The Walking Dead is based on comics, which allows fans of the IP to regain the familiar feeling at first glance.

In terms of gameplay, “The Walking Dead: Survivor” inherited the underlying design of COK-like, and on this basis, to adapt to market changes, it has made further upgrades to expressiveness and gameplay. The battle itself takes the form of tower defense. Players need to match their three heroes to play, and use reasonable skills and weapon placement to repel the tide of corpses. It is worth noting that the gameplay of tower defense emphasizes the level, skills and rating of heroes, requiring players to actively upgrade and strengthen their heroes to deal with more difficult levels.

At the same time, the game also introduces the current more popular character development elements. Players can completely experience multiple types of roles, like playing traditional MMO games, not simply upgrading defenses and recruiting troops. In the game, we can see many classic characters in The Walking Dead, such as the familiar Rick, Glenn, Maggie, etc., which further enhances the sense of substitution of the game. At the same time, each character has its own unique ability, which fully stimulates players’ desire for combat and role-playing.

It is worth mentioning that character collection has also become an important factor in the development of the camp. Exploring new plots requires characters, and entering buildings to improve production efficiency also requires characters. Therefore, to increase the development speed of the camp, players need to have more characters.

The following is a demo video of the game:

In addition, “The Walking Dead: Survivor” also subdivides the attributes and functions of the survivors. Combat survivors are composed of melee, sharpshooter and cavalry types. Each of them has their own upgrade level and can be upgraded to more capable positions. The development survivors are used to build and improve settlements. Players need to build facilities to resist the attacks of zombies and protect them from undead creatures. So that players can experience a diversified combination of arms, making the game more strategic.

In addition, collecting resources, building and exploring are only part of the game, and the game still retains the consistent depth of strategy games in siege. In terms of camp construction, it is still necessary to adopt a gameplay similar to regaining lost ground. As the main city level advances, the areas hidden by the fog around the inner city are constantly unlocked, and the zombies are cleaned by training troops to expand the area of ​​the inner city. Strengthen defensive measures to resist the imminent danger. As the player explores the area around the town, it also unlocks new locations, characters, items, and resources that can be used to develop settlements.

In general, “The Walking Dead: Survivor” is an advanced product optimized on the basis of the previous work. The theme is still its core advantage of breaking through, and the optimization of the experience is conducive to further attracting new users.

Doomsday survival theme is hot, Zhixingtong urgently needs to break the game

Anyone familiar with the SLG field knows that the SLG category has been overrun by themes such as “Three Kingdoms”, “Western Magic”, and “Gong Dou”, and the solidified content has gradually caused SLG players to have aesthetic fatigue. Once the doomsday theme was launched, it has been widely loved by players, especially overseas.

According to Sensor Tower data, there were three SLG games with doomsday survival themes occupying the forefront of the list in October last year. FunPlus’s “State of Survival” revenue has reached a new high and is firmly in the top three of the list. The other two doomsday survival SLG mobile games “Watching Dawn” and “Age of Z Origins” on the list also performed fairly solidly. At the same time, the estimated total overseas revenue of these three mobile games exceeded US$100 million, an increase of 224% over the same period last year, and 10 times that of October 2018, making them the fastest-growing overseas market segment.

It is worth mentioning that in addition to the great success of the doomsday SLG mobile game overseas, in January this year, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment’s doomsday survival themed match-3 game “Puzzles & Survival” also successfully entered the TOP30 domestic mobile games. List. It can be seen that even if the gameplay is different, the popularity of the doomsday theme is still very high in the European and American markets.

On the other hand, Zhixingtong, the recent development of SLG mobile games overseas does not seem to be so smooth. According to its 2020 financial report, the company’s revenue and net profit during the period have both declined, and revenue from overseas markets has plummeted year-on-year. 18%. Although its “Clash of Kings”, “Magic Heroes”, “Clash of Queens” and other games still maintain high revenue levels, it is obvious that with the passage of time, the product flow is different. The degree of decline.

In this case, Zhixingtong urgently needs a game to add new vitality, and it is the best choice to make the IP based on the doomsday theme “The Walking Dead”. On the one hand, “The Walking Dead” is a doomsday-themed IP with its own traffic, which can gain a broader audience market. At the same time, for SLGs who pay attention to buying volume, a strong IP appeal will become a powerful boost for promotion, allowing the game to quickly become available on SLG. The possibility of a circuit breakout is greatly enhanced.

to sum up

The powerful IP of “The Walking Dead” coupled with the accumulation of Zhixingtong’s COK-like gameplay is escorted. According to GameLook, the game is already ahead of the starting line of similar competing products, especially in overseas markets, which can arouse the emotions of European and American players. On the resonance. With its excellent operating capabilities, it is clear that it has the opportunity to become the next hot model in the later tuning, and re-promote its SLG mobile game overseas to achieve new success.

This Article is curated from Source and we only provide the English version of the Story.

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