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GameLook reported/Not long ago, the National Press and Publication Administration officially issued a new batch of game version numbers. Among the all-in-one national comics and two-dimensional games, a science fiction adventure game caught my attention.
Compared with other works, the special thing about this game called “Xinjie: Reconstruction” is that it has more than 460,000 taptap reservations, ranking first in the same batch of new games with version numbers. The TapTap score of the game is also as high as 9.1. Judging from the number of reserved users, this means that after the game is launched, it may cause a lot of shock in the two-dimensional game circle.
On the surface, the game seems to maintain a general similarity with other common two-dimensional products: the same as a beautiful girl as the protagonist, the same iconic art style, and even the background setting uses common two-dimensional games in recent years. The subject of science fiction is the world view. Such a combination, in my impression, as long as two are used, it is almost equivalent to the standard configuration of the two-dimensional assembly line product.
That being the case, why has “Xingjie: Reconstruction” become the “wild horse” in the two-dimensional games? Later, after in-depth investigation, I found out that I totally underestimated it.
Game PV:
Create a “Chinese-style sci-fi” with the spirit of “Man will conquer the sky”
In the two-dimensional game, “doing well in art and plot is not worthy of being a good game” is the most basic law, but fortunately, “Xingjie: Reconstruction” not only does a good job of art and plot, but also integrates it through innovation. The “Chinese style + technology” elements have brought to life the two core elements of the game, art and plot.
The development team Lingye Games refers to “Xingjie: Reconstruction” as a “Chinese-style sci-fi adventure game” in its introduction. There are two main reasons for daring to claim it so: First, the team has integrated Chinese culture on the basis of the two-dimensional category. A large amount of integration of elements and technological elements; second, deep infusion of the spiritual core of “man can conquer the sky” contained in traditional Chinese culture in art and plot.
In the game, the world the player lives in is a society governed by the “all-knowing and all-powerful” AI Taiyi, and everyone is assigned a corresponding life. The One was created by man and represents “heaven” and “destiny”. But as we all know, the gods who were originally born to serve mankind will always short-circuit one day, fighting against mankind, and the game will also revolve around the story of “man will conquer the sky”.
In terms of background setting, the game fictionalizes a city with a cultural prototype familiar to the Chinese as the background, and names government agencies after the official system of ancient China. For example, the organizational structure of the Seven Courts, which governs various forces, originated from ancient Chinese government agencies, including the Central Department, Xuanning Supervisor, and Department of Works.
Tao Zhugong: The prototype is Fan Li, a famous statesman and military strategist during the Spring and Autumn Period in my country (word Shaobo, name Tao Zhugong)
In addition, such as the iconic symbols of various forces, the costume design of the national style clothing, the background and skill design of the characters, etc., the development team has used ancient and modern Chinese culture as the prototype, and then carried out the two-dimensional style evolution on this basis, and Insist on using all Mandarin as the dubbing of the game plot, both in terms of macro and details, it well reflects the design core that contains Chinese culture.
Of course, this design path has also been extended to the vertical painting. At first glance at “Xingjie: Reconstruction”, you can hardly not be attracted by the magnificent scenes, such as the contrast between giant AI and tiny humans, the haze of the future world armed with technology, etc. In addition to letting giants phobias directly call “something”, the painting also portrays the contradiction and confrontation between humans and AI in the game world.
Although from the essential point of view, the art of the game still cannot escape the frame of celluloid style, but in the current situation of serious involution of the art, this kind of vertical drawing level is placed in the same kind of game, and it is also the top existence, not to mention the interspersed among them. Many elements with Chinese characteristics show the team’s ingenious mind in interpreting the core of “Chinese-style sci-fi”.
Thanks to this, many players on TapTap are also attracted by the high-quality avatars and plots.
Lingye has his own thinking about what is “Chinese-style science fiction”. In the developer log they mentioned that “Chinese-style sci-fi” is not simply “robots wearing Hanfu to fight”, but requires the development team to “draw inspiration from ancient treasures to modern characteristic elements, and try to escape the shackles of foreign works.” , Try to create a familiar story environment.”
In my opinion, this may be the most fundamental reason why “Xingjie: Reconstruction” can stand out from the crowd.
From LBS to placement, the gameplay changes with twists and turns comparable to novels
At the level of gameplay, the game did not copy the mainstream tower defense or turn-based gameplay of the two-dimensional element, but took a different approach to combine “text decryption + semi-placed combat” as the core gameplay, and added the card-drawing krypton gold mechanism.
Players will encounter deciphering organs in the process of walking the main line, but the overall proportion is not much. The main thing is to return to the use of words to promote the development of the plot, and then deepen the player’s understanding of the plot through the deciphered gameplay.
Like other games, the newly added placement gameplay also incorporates common fetters, lineups, occupations and other mechanism settings, which to some extent neutralizes the tension brought by brain-burning text decryption, making the threshold of the game lower to accommodate A wider group of players; on the other hand, it also gives players more relaxed and in-depth strategic experience.
The reason why the game has a dual-play setting is not unrelated to the early experience of the development team.
It is understood that Lingzhi Game is a young team composed of college students who love traditional culture and science fiction, originally named Yixing Game (1-XING). The team started the development of the Xingjie series in 2014. The first work is the mobile game “Xingjie: Zero” that focuses on LBS gameplay. This work is also the predecessor of “Xingjie: Reconstruction”.
“Xingjie: Zero” was launched on the Android platform in December 2015, but it was really known to the public in July 2016, when Nintendo’s popular AR game “Pokémon GO” was launched, AR+LBS The gameplay started to explode. But because “Pokémon GO” has not obtained a version number, it cannot be introduced, and it happens that “Xingjie·Zero” has a very similar gameplay. Therefore, the game was gradually discovered by domestic players.
In the same month, “Xingjie: Zero”, which took the lead, gained 90W downloads with almost no marketing investment. At its peak, it added 150,000 users a day, and the total number of players exceeded 700,000. By the way, he won the pea pod game design award, which was quite authoritative at the time.
However, what the development team did not expect was that it was also July. The game was quickly suspended by the radio and television because it did not have the qualification to apply for a version number. . At the same time, due to the regulatory agencies no longer reviewing LBS and AR games after January 2017, and the lack of domestic map data, the path of LBS gameplay was completely blocked.
For this reason, the team can only start again. After undergoing a reorganization and renamed Lingye Game, the new team began to drastically cut down the LBS gameplay, added new gameplay such as text decryption on the basis of the original story, and finally converged into today’s “Xingjie: Reconstruction”. Perhaps it was because of the fact that the game after the rebirth received a lot of attention, and it can be regarded as the fate of the team after the twists and turns.
Two-dimensional forces are gathering, Chengdu is actually the next Shanghai? !
No matter in terms of art, plot, or gameplay, Lingye doesn’t look like a fledgling team. Later, I found out through official inspections that Lingye actually belongs to a studio under Chengdu Dowan.com.
The shareholding structure of Buwan Network shows that its parent company is Chengdu Fengji Network, which was established in 2013 and has more than 8 years of experience in the industry. Among them, Fengji Network even includes the figure of the old game company Nibiru (tap4fun). Therefore, it is not difficult to speculate why the Lingye team has such a wealth of experience and mature performance in game research and operation.
In 2020, “Xingjie: Reconstruction” appeared on the well-known fan exhibition CP26 in the two-dimensional circle. It showed the latest gameplay of the game for the first time, which aroused the discussion and expectations of many people, including colleagues. .
As a studio in Chengdu, the explosion of Lingye and “Xingjie: Reconstruction” has forced people to focus on this city, which has the reputation of “a city of a thousand travels”.
In the past, when talking about 2D, we always focused on the city of Shanghai. After all, the reputation of 2D companies such as Mihayou, Yingjiao, Folding Paper, etc. has broken out of the Chinese market and resounded all over the world. But everyone does not know that in Chengdu, the power of the second dimension is also quietly rising.
Looking at the list of local game manufacturers, it is not difficult to find that Chengdu actually has a large number of two-dimensional and casual game developers. These emerging forces have a radical attitude different from traditional manufacturers. After getting investment or product profits, they are more inclined to expand new projects again, especially in the second dimension.
For example, “Food Language” under the banner of Baiao Interactive is a mobile game for women who use a variety of food as their creative themes to go to the second element. When it was launched in early September 2019, the game won the first place in the free list of IOS games and the eleventh place in the best-selling list, and it is still active in the forefront of the best-selling list.
It must be admitted that it is a very normal and understandable phenomenon that the industry has attracted all the attention by “Yuan Shen” and “Tomorrow’s Ark” while ignoring other products. But it should also be noted that Chengdu, the city that has emerged the most profitable mobile game (“Glory of the King”), is evolving at a speed that the industry can’t imagine, and bringing more new possibilities to the industry.
As a work “produced” in Chengdu, “Xingjie: Reconstruction” will make a big splash after the public beta, which is obviously worth looking forward to.
This Article is curated from Source and we only provide the English version of the Story.
