Animation team to do the game, only the trailer was praised
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “fly quadratic elements” (ID: kpACGN), Author: fire pigeons, editor: fly ACG editorial department.
“Escape from the city is not to work in the fields.”
In 2021, players’ expectations and perceptions of domestic mobile games will continue to refresh. Gamers with unique themes and interesting gameplay can tolerate some “learning”, and it is not a problem even if the online time is delayed for a year or a half. However, the actual experience of the long-awaited exchange is often far from the propaganda expectations, and players can only call them “deceived”.
The Komori Life, launched on March 31, is such a game. This pastoral simulation mobile game, developed by Ruiluo Technology invested by Shengqu and released by Tencent Games, has undergone many tests since it was released in 2018. The launch time has been postponed from Q3 in 2020 to Q1 in 2021.
Because of the unique farming and leisure theme, the players have given enough patience and expectations. There were a total of tens of millions of appointments on the entire platform before the launch. The tapap score has been maintained at around 8.5 points. It was once known as the most anticipated hand in March. tour. After the release of the OP in May 2020, players believe that “Xiaomori Life” will be “the mobile game version of “Assemble! Animal Crossing Friends” (hereinafter referred to as “Dynamic Forest”).
The opening animation of the game tells about the “community animal” players away from the crowded heat of the city and return to their hometown “Komori” to start a rural life. The delicate depiction of the urban steel forest in the video, the eye-catching Ghibli style, and the soothing “Until the Sunset” soundtrack render the Japanese pastoral style to the extreme.
Cherish this OP, perhaps this is the highest quality part of the entire game
However, after the game was launched, players realized that “Life in Komori” was far from worthy of the title of “Mobile Game”, and even the most basic “copying homework” did not understand.
The cheapness of modeling and image quality is not as good as the page tour 5 years ago
In an interview in 2020, “Komori Life” producer Zongzi said: “”Komori Life” benchmarks and simulates classic products and Tencent mobile game boutiques in the game experience. It is necessary to create category benchmarks.” Games such as “Story”, “Dynamic Forest”, “Stardew Valley”, “Portia Time” and other games have completed the popularization of pastoral simulation games, and “Komori Life” allows us to see pastoral models.How low can the lower limit of the intended game be.
Hoshino, a player who participated in the test of “Life in Komori”, told Kaopu Two-dimensional (ID: kpACGN) that she experienced the process of this game’s tapap score from 8.8 points to 5.3 points, which is the same as that of tens of millions of reserved players. Hoshino, who has watched the opening animation, can hardly imagine that this is the game she has been looking forward to for 3 years.
“Cheap” may be the most appropriate adjective for this game. The first thing Hoshino enters into the game after watching the exquisite opening animation is to pinch people. The strange head-to-body ratio makes it difficult for her to pinch her satisfaction. Image. After entering the game, a sense of cheapness came to the face: “The grass and trees in the distance and the distance look like textures put together, the color and texture lack levels, and the level of “Dynamic” is too far behind the imagination.” .
Scenery should have been the biggest selling point of “Xiaomori Life”, but it shows a big gap between the fineness of forest and grassland and “Light·Yu”, which focuses on landscapes. It is even worse than the “Peace” which fights chickens. Elite.
Modeling is another big problem. The character modeling of players and NPCs is not full of granularity. Hoshino mentioned: “I can easily pass through NPCs when doing tasks, but the boxes and trash cans on the roadside of the village I often get stuck in automatic pathfinding. It is hard to imagine these problems occurring in a popular mobile game in 2021.”
In addition to being stuck by objects on the side of the road, players will also be stuck by the weeds of their own homes. Weeds need to be removed with a shovel. There is no gradual change in the process of shoveling the grass. Hoshino said, “It’s just a bunch of greens blocking your way. The shadow disappeared.” The unsmooth game is also reflected in the fact that it is difficult to aim at the ore when mining, there is no sense of hitting when cutting trees, and it is difficult to aim at the prey when hunting. Hoshino feels that the texture of this game is not as good as some 5 years. Former domestically developed page games.
“Xomori Life” also has many dumbfounding settings. The upper limit of the mail system in the game is 60. When the upper limit is reached, new mails will automatically replace old mails, and players will not be reminded. Many of the rare items obtained by the players themselves have disappeared so unexplainably.. After the complaint on Weibo, the official only replied “received feedback~”, and did not reissue the items lost due to the bug.
A fragmented world and an imposed sense of reality
Compared with the world that can be explored at will in “Dong Sen”, there are few interactive content in “Komori Life”. Most of the grass on the roadside and the scenery in the distance cannot be approached and observed. Look in the distance. And this part of the interactive content has to be loaded through frequent cutscenes.
Xiaozhi told Kaopu Two-dimensional (ID: kpACGN) that the game is loaded almost every 5 steps. After receiving the task in the village, you need to load the animation to go home, enter the door to load the animation, go up to the second floor to load the animation, and then go downstairs to load the animation, go out to load the animation, go out of the home to load the animation, if the NPC handing in the task is farther away in a different village area The animation also needs to be loaded.
The appearance of a blue bar means that the animation needs to be loaded
Loading animation frequently appears
“I spent most of the time playing the game watching the loading animation, and I felt like I was watching the PPT.” Xiaozhi said.
Of course, the production team did not work hard either. They tried to add a lot of “real-looking” experiences in “Life in Komori”, but in fact they didn’t really consider the optimization for the players.
The cooking process may be the only highlight in “Life in Komori”, but this part of the interaction is very solid.
Xiaozhi said: “It was very new at the beginning. For French fries, you need to peel potatoes, cut them into strips, and put them inPut it in the frying pan; the grilled fish needs to be turned over and salted. But after a long time, I get bored. “Because peeling strength, oil temperature and heat size, and the amount of salt added have no effect on the dishes, players just passively take steps one by one. It is not like “Hall of Valor”, or even “Monster Hunter: Rise”, “Mario Party”. In the barbeque link in “, the meat is divided into half-raw, freshly cooked or charred according to the different fire conditions. The immersive feeling brought about by various interactions.
In the game, players can build their own houses, but the furniture placement is very troublesome. Players need to pull down from the [Backpack] to the [Furniture Bar], and then select the furniture to place. You cannot drag the furniture directly when placing it. You can adjust the position by moving characters and virtual buttons. The furniture interface that is common in many games is not in this game.
The smell of copper in the countryside
If “Life in Komori” simulates a little reality, it is that “you can’t escape the grasp of capitalism if you escape the city.” Players who come to “Komori” are not unrestrained. There is a complicated and lengthy mission system at the beginning. In the first hour, 40 minutes are likely to be spent in automatic wayfinding, meaningless dialogue, and animation loading.
Hoshino feels like a “workman” in the countryside. Every time you open the game, the first charge will automatically pop up, as well as the super value, celebration, harvest season, gift package and other top-up buttons on the interface to remind you of your capital. The power of is everywhere.
As a “pastoral striker”, your backpack only has a capacity of 60 cells, and the item classification is not friendly, and it is easy to fill up. If you want to expand the backpack, you need gold coins to unlock it. The elementary tool costs 2 points of fatigue to cut a tree each time, and a tree needs to be cut 3 times. Advanced tools only need to cut 2 times, and each time 1 point of fatigue. Sleeping does not return to full fatigue, but can only recover part of it. As the game time increases, players will gradually find that they need to pay to recover the fatigue of the characters.
What makes many players speechless is that if you don’t charge up money in this game, you will lose at the starting line. The slow movement speed of the characters was proposed by the players during the testing phase. The method given by the developer is the monthly card-only 18 yuan can increase the player’s movement speed in a month by 50%. If the movement speed is not enough, not only will it be difficult to play, but the resources in the forest will also be obtained by other players first.
Of course, a bicycle vehicle is also provided in the game to facilitate the player’s travel, but it needs 3088 diamonds, which is about 308 yuan. Few people spend 3 at the momentIn the case of buying a bicycle for RMB 00, “Xiaomori Life” provides another “humanized” way to experience life.
After feeling the “hegemony” of capitalism, players can also experience the contradictions of game design.
If the backpack limit and limited fatigue are for real experience, when the time in the game corresponds to the real time, the player only needs ten seconds from planting to harvesting tomatoes, but the movement speed and fatigue recovery cannot Free acceleration. Obviously, some things can be accelerated, but some are not. The decision is not in the hands of the player.
In the past three years, it has become worse and worse, and the effect of the big factory is not working
As a simulation game, “Komori Life” has a low degree of openness and freedom. As a casual game, the player’s experience is not casual. Many players think that this is more like an MMORPG game, but compared with MMO games, the social interaction of “Xiaomori Life” is not high. The setting that iOS and Android players cannot add friends to each other persuades them to run “online”. Players from “Dongsen”, and although payment is everywhere, there is no gold list in the game to stimulate players to pay, which is equivalent to the money and time spent by players, which are only the freedom of buying the game.
Some people may ask, can a new game made by a team with animation as its team be more tolerant of problems with graphics, modeling, loading, and optimization? But in fact, these problems have existed for at least one year, and “Life in Komori” has always had time to improve.
In many tests of the national server, the low quality of the picture texture, poor modeling, strong sense of walking, and the stuttering problem of multiple operations have always been the core of player feedback. Even the fact that a lot of animation loads and poor equipment optimization lead to heat has been repeatedly raised after the launch in Taiwan, but these problems have not been improved after several tests.
Even when we open the 2018 demo of “Xiaomori Life”, the 2020 Taiwanese server, and the picture of the national server in 2021, we will find that the picture quality has not been optimized too much, but the UI and interface 3 years ago are more concise and bright.
2020 Taiwan server demo screen
2021 national service screen
In the past three years, in addition to the unresolved feedback problems, there were also low-level bugs that swallowed emails. Only the payment points and complex task design have increased. This cannot be said to be a problem of R&D experience more like attitude And choice issues.
The attitude of the players is also directly reflected in the number of downloads and revenue.
Data from Qimai shows that the download volume of the game has dropped sharply since April 2nd. There were only 2 million downloads on the IOS terminal within 6 days of its launch. The Qingming Festival that just passed was supposed to be the peak period of the game, but the result has increased. The loss of new players in Life of Komori.
The estimated revenue data also declined on April 1. As of April 5, the total iOS revenue is estimated to be approximately 5.7 million yuan.
The ranking of its free list dropped from 1st on the 31st to 30th on April 6th, and the bestseller list dropped from 3rd on the 31st.Seven fell to 52 on April 6.
According to the convention that Android players are twice as many as iOS, the total number of downloads of “Xiaomori Life” within 6 days of launch is only about 6 million, and only 60% of the tens of millions of appointments on the entire network have been converted. And this is based on the high-quality resources issued by Tencent.
According to Reliable Two-Dimensional (ID: kpACGN), this game has been bundled with in-depth resources issued by Tencent for a long time. Initially, the channel resources of App Store, mobile QQ, and WeChat games are fully populated. According to the boutique game It took two months before and after the release level.
Some people within Tencent have criticized this game. People in the industry close to Tencent’s release revealed that “Everyone knows that this game is not of high quality, but it is still promoted as a boutique.”
Issuing top-level resources, and funding from big companies, Ruiluo Technology received investment from Shengqu Games in 2018. According to industry insiders, “it is equivalent to getting tens of millions of investment with an opening animation.” In terms of R&D, the producer once revealed in an interview that “Tencent Game Academy has helped a lot in the development of 3D.”
R&D, release, funding, time, “Life in Komori” can be said to have no shortage of links. The dismal results of Life in Komori can only show that the joint endorsements of major manufacturers cannot improve low-quality games. Game players are increasing. The more we value content quality and word-of-mouth communication.
The enthusiasm of players who are used to hitting the street can’t stand the consumption
For “Life in Komori”, the players’ requirements are not high, they just hope to reach the current mainstream game quality level and provide a pastoral world that can be easily connected.
Hoshino thought that his “Dynamic Forest” and “Stardew Valley” had been cleared. I originally hoped that “Komori Life” could play pastoral casual games more conveniently, skipping various tedious network and device restrictions. , But spending money to be a “community animal” in the countryside is better than picking up “Dong Sen” to continue the liver.
Looking back, the quality of the OP and the choice of theme song for “Life in Komori” made by the animation team is far greater than the quality of the game. If the OP is a “mobile game moving forest” level, the game is not as good as the page game 5 years ago. It is such a big contrast that makes the players’ waiting for 3 years frustrated. This may also be another classic case of “hot hitting the street” in the game industry.
From “Cyberpunk 2077” to “Subverse” to “Komori Life”, players have become accustomed to the hit works in 2021 that are lower than expected. From another point of view, the current game taste threshold of players has increased a lot, and the expected value of masterpieces with 3A, unique themes and novel gameplay on mobile phones has reached a new high.
The current mobile game market is actually unable to fully meet the needs of players. Under the background that major manufacturers have revealed the layout of 3A games and boutique mobile games, the domestic 660 million mobile game players are in an empty window. The game time and income are willing to transfer to meet the expected mobile game masterpiece.
But “Xiaomori Life” is by no means that “masterpiece”, and does not even meet the standard of “reluctantly play”, but it may be a reference, representing the quality of the game that can not be saved by large manufacturers’ research and development endorsement + release. Standard, and the enthusiasm and expectation of the players can not withstand too many “Komori life”-style toss.
The “Stardew Valley” released in 2016 has sold more than 10 million worldwide as of January 2020, and the estimated revenue is at least 480 million yuan based on the 48 yuan price on steam. “Dong Sen” released in March 2020, as of June 2020, the global sales volume exceeded 22.4 million copies, and the estimated revenue was at least 8.9 billion yuan at a price of 400 yuan. The pastoral leisure games nearly 10 billion yuan in the market is empty. Wait.
Don’t forget, the iOS and Android versions of the mobile game “Stardew Valley” were released overseas in 2018 and 2019, respectively. In November 2018, Tencent Aurora plans to announce the agent of the national server version of the mobile game “Stardew Valley”. Up to now, the latest news of the game’s national server will be traced back to December 2018. The official website of the national server reservation of “Stardew Valley” The display game will be optimized in Chinese and restore the classic gameplay, which is worth looking forward to.