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GameLook reported/Not long ago, the topic of the “Introduction of Lie Painting” in the two-dimensional mobile game has aroused widespread discussion. From “Blue Fantasy”, “Ark of Tomorrow” to “White Night Aurora”, the game’s requirements for Liehui are getting higher and higher. The background of Li-painting is getting bigger and bigger, and online painters have expressed that they will be “driven to a dead end.”
In GameLook, this is actually just the inevitable result of the manufacturer’s investment in “hardware” such as graphics and motion performance. Each manufacturer’s self-developed engine pursues better light effects, more realistic physical effects, etc., which is the same in nature as the “li painting inward scrolling”.
However, when developing games, the pursuit of high-spec “hardware” requires not only a large amount of capital, but also sufficient technical reserves. Even for some large-scale manufacturers, it is difficult to make industry-leading modeling and actions. The work “New Sakura War” by the veteran and powerful Sega was criticized for modeling, which shows that this road is very difficult to follow.
To avoid such competition and find a route with controllable costs and sustainable development, more effort is needed on the “software side.” Mihayou combined mobile game mode, open world and single-player experience, which greatly impacted the console and PC platform, making “Original God” turned out; Cygames combined traditional sports, two-dimensional personification, cultivation and IP thinking. Together, let “The Horse Racing Girl” change the ecology of Japanese mobile games.
Gameplay, operating mode, and even the maintenance of the player community, these “software” are the magic weapon for young manufacturers and unicorns to break through.
It can be said that XFLAG, the developer of “Monster Pinball”, knows this well. The gameplay of “Monster Pinball” comes from a pinball game. The novel gameplay has created a new category of mobile games, level design, IP operations, and content linkage are also in place. This game has occupied the top of the best-selling list for a long time, and it has been TOP10 so far. Evergreen tree.
However, today’s protagonist is not “Monster Pinball”, but another game of XFLAG “Spirit Warrior”.
Target local players and create a new category with the word-filling method of “speaking with the law”
Like “Monster Pinball”, “Spirit Warrior” once again targets unexplored categories on the market. The core gameplay of this game is “Crossword Puzzle”. It was launched on April 16, 2018 and has already entered the market. In the fourth year of operation, he was a frequent customer of the TOP100 best-selling list, and from time to time he was able to rush into the TOP30.
Compared with the former, “The Warrior of Words” is bolder. The foundation of the crossword puzzle is language. All the card designs in this game revolve around hiragana, which means that the game gave up its plan to go to sea when the project was established and was firmly locked in the Japanese mobile game market. On the other hand, crossword is a game that everyone has been exposed to when they were children, and has the advantage of extremely low barriers to use. Choosing this development strategy not only requires a lot of courage, but also shows that the team has strong confidence.
Game producer Nakamuraira said that because there are no games with similar gameplay and style in the market, he thinks this project is feasible.
This work does not focus too much on the world view and plot setting. The game tells about the “Speaking Spirit Warriors” who use the “rule of war” to fight against other “Speaking Spirit Warriors” who have been confused by the “Sound Relics” to restore the Word Spirit World The story of peace.
The main interface of the game is very small. Like “Monster Pinball”, the game does not have PvP, but supports 4 players to play together. The basic functions are roles, formation, drawing cards, shops and settings. Pve content is divided into main storyline and activity tasks.
The gameplay is very worth studying.
Each character in the game will represent a hiragana. Fill in the blanks with the kana and form words with the text to cause damage to the enemy. There are a total of 50 pseudonyms in Japanese, and since each role can only be used for one pseudonym, this limits the scenarios in which the role is applied, and the balance and appearance rate of the role will be guaranteed.
When the player fills up four blanks, the system will scan the entire line of text and calculate how many words the player has put together to achieve a combo. In order to encourage players to pursue high combos, XFLAG will also hold events from time to time to reward players who have achieved more than 10 consecutive games.
As of May 2018, the number of vocabularies that the game can recognize has exceeded 200,000, which not only includes everyday words, but also many names of characters. Words are divided into various categories and become part of the combat system. For example, when fighting an enemy of the “bad boy” category, the player spells out the words “learning” to cause additional damage to them. Different enemies are given their own weaknesses, which enriches the strategy of the game.
Nakamura said that compared to various complex level designs, the biggest point of this game is to enrich the vocabulary. By adding buzzwords and new vocabulary, you can arouse the player’s emotions and become happier.
In addition, when the player composes words with three syllables and above, the character will activate skills, which is also a major design to increase the depth of thinking and enhance the gameplay.
It can be seen that the design concept of this game is the same as that of “Monster Pinball”, and the game’s victory or defeat depends more on the player’s strategy and operation, rather than the character. Abundant character skills and teaming also enable some low-star characters to be more objective-oriented and easier to use.
The level design has a big brain, and small crosswords play with thousands of strategies
Nakamura said that at first the team only designed 4 blanks, intending to completely allow players to compose words by themselves, but found that it was not very interesting, so each level presets three pseudonyms to give players certain clues and let them think. In addition, the characters have their own professions and attributes, and the enemies have their own weaknesses. With the combination of these, the battle changes in “Speaking Warriors” have already changed a lot.
But XFLAG’s pursuit of gameplay does not stop there. They have added acupuncture, wall, shield, discharge, transformation, weak body, healing shield and replication to the level, making the game more complicated and more interesting.
GameLook will cite a few examples and introduce them.
Acupuncture: If the words spelled out by the player include acupuncture pseudonyms, the characters of the adjacent pseudonyms will suffer acupuncture damage.
Corresponding methods: 1. Use a needle-proof role. 2. Avoid target pseudonyms when forming words. 3. Use healing skills to cover the damage.
Wall: Make the pseudonyms on both sides of the wall unable to form words. Take the above picture as an example. Kana し on the left and し showing the wall effect can form the word “Lion (しし)”, but cannot form the word “pointer (ししん)” together with the しし on the right side of the wall. Kana ん needs to be skipped. Group words with the kana on the far right. So the words finally recognized by the system are “evolution (しんか)” and “lion (しし)”.
Corresponding methods: 1. Use defensive characters and pseudonyms with wall effects. 2. Use the wall mechanism to group words.
In addition to adding special effects to the fixed pseudonym, the team also made many designs in the player’s fill-in box.
Change: This mechanism will change the pseudonym entered by the player into other pseudonyms, and the player needs to rethink the word formation mode according to the changed pseudonym.
Corresponding methods: 1. Use anti-change roles. 2. Rethink the word grouping strategy based on the changed pseudonym.
There are countless such exquisite designs. Through these operations, XFLAG has played a lot of ordinary crossword puzzles, which greatly enriched the strategy of the game.
High-strength linkage, exerting IP influence
As of July, “Soul Warrior” has held 32 linkage activities, ranging from Youtuber, Famitsu App, Sugita Tomokazu, to “Attack on Titan”, “Ultraman”, “Kamen Rider”, and “EVA”. . It can be said that the coverage is varied and everything. The game is linked online almost every month, bringing a steady stream of new user groups to the game.
After seeing the linkage between this work and “Kamen Rider”, a Japanese player said that although he was not playing the game after the Demon Slayer linkage, he just saw the Kamen Riders’ characters. I’m so happy I want to open a can of beer.
Obviously, the extensive linkage strategy of “strikes” has brought many new players to the game, and it has also prompted them to often return to the pit.
Concluding remarks
Whether it’s marbles or crosswords, they are all ordinary small games. Based on these games, XFLAG has found the blue ocean in the market, and by deepening its gameplay, it has produced games with strong gameplay and low barriers to use. It meets the needs of players at all levels and polishes its “software” to the extreme. . Through the high-intensity linkage, the influence of the game is opened.
The answer to create the next dark horse may be hidden in these little games.
This Article is curated from Source and we only provide the English version of the Story.
