Picking up the flower in the evening, the story is newly compiled, and it can also be unique.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Game Grapes” (ID: youxiputao), author Isaac .
Today, Tencent NExT Studios launched a Roguelike game “Unbelievable Crown”, which is also Tencent’s first self-developed Roguelike game. As of press time, this product has reached the third place on the Steam platform hot-selling list and the ninth place on the global hot-selling list. The live broadcast popularity in the Douyu host area has also reached the first place.
Before the deadline, the game’s MC score was 84 points
Ma Xiaoyi, senior vice president of Tencent, once said in an interview that they need to make up some homework in their understanding of “randomness.” It, like the other three points (more tactical, more open, and more interactions between large-scale users), are keywords that may make major breakthroughs in the future.
Roguelike is precisely the type of game that best reflects the “randomness”. It can be said that it has a long way to go. But now that Tencent’s first self-developed Roguelike game has surfaced, we have seen that NExT Studios has taken a road off the beaten track.
Why do you say that? Because the most unique thing about this game is that it is a strategic turn-based Roguelike game.
It’s not like “Hades” or “Killing the Spire”, but like the earlier “Cylin of the Wind”, “Pathos” and even the ancestor of Roguelike “Rogue”—— On the grid map, the protagonist does not move and the monster does not move. This kind of gameplay is actually very rare now, and it can even be said to have declined.
In fact, NExT Studios isI am not surprised that today’s market makes such an attempt. Because although the gameplay of “Unbelievable Crown” is retro, it is not as simple as it seems.
To do turn-based, but also to do differentiated experience
If you want to summarize the core mechanics of this game in one sentence, I want to say “one poke, one jump”.
In “The Unbelievable Crown”, the map is divided into squares of the same size, and the protagonist moves in square units. The attack range of its weapons and skills is also measured in squares.
The battle in the game does not happen in real time. Only when the protagonist makes an action, the monster will move accordingly. This “I won’t move the enemy” rule is similar to earlier games such as Pathos.
The story of the game explains this rule: This is the realm of nightmares, a different dimension, so only the protagonist acts, time will flow.
However, many people still think the gameplay of “The Unbelievable Crown” is “ancient”. After all, functions and technology were limited before. Is it still necessary to adopt a synchronous turn-based gameplay now?
But in the actual experience, Mr. Grape can feel that “The Unbelievable Crown” is trying to give players a different experience.
In the early days when there was no art intervention, the project team would determine some design content through paper prototypes. At this stage, they set the goal of accommodating “routine Build” in a synchronous turn-based mode.
Paper prototype designed by the project team
After their design, it can be seen that the game has at least 3 key dimensions in the genre Build. One is the weapon. There are nine types of weapons, each with its own range of attack, and a balanced design according to the distance. For example, the fire blunder has the longest distance, and it needs to be manually changed when used as a restriction, which is equivalent to the protagonist being banned for one round from time to time; the dagger has the shortest distance, which is used as compensation and comes with a double attack; and the glove is a medium-range weapon , There are often additional effects at the farthest point.
Long sword, pistol, battle axe, fire gun, glove, long spear, dagger, shotgun, staff Attack range (picture from player finishing)
In addition to many categories, weapons also have different attributes and passive skills according to their quality, which has become an important source of output for players.
The second is the Horcrux, which is equivalent to the “relic” in other Roguelike games. They also have quality points, and often have some far-reaching bonus effects, which can continue to perform throughout the entire game.use.
The third is the envoy. The player will unlock the corresponding skills after defeating the envoy for the first time. You can choose to carry up to two envoys, that is, four skills. These active skills combined with the passive skills effects of weapons and Horcruxes can produce many chemical reactions.
On the whole, “The Unbelievable Crown” mainly wants to bring players not the refreshing feeling of the current mainstream Roguelike, but similar to the game of war chess, using their own thinking and prejudgment to play various Sao operations Senior happy. From the perspective of Roguelike, such products are really rare.
But such a mechanism has certain requirements for players. A large number of unfamiliar monster behaviors and item descriptions in the novice stage may form a high threshold. And to form the “muscle memory” that suppresses monsters at the strategic level is obviously more difficult than being proficient in action games.
At this time they also found a big problem-the game is not fun enough. During the user’s play, emotions such as surprise, panic, happiness, regret, expectation, and fear are very scarce in the game.
In response to this problem, they added three designs to the game.
One is element interaction. When the eight map elements meet each other, they will react differently. For example, water and fire will produce steam, electricity will trigger electric shocks, etc., and even elemental interaction can be used to cause additional damage to the BOSS;
The second is flashing. Players can use flashing boots to teleport to the surrounding area without consuming rounds. This is a “life-saving vellus” design, which can help the player get away in a critical moment, but the number of uses is also limited;
The third is the Break system in battle. Players can temporarily gain power bonuses as long as they kill monsters. If the order is right, this bonus can create a “Snowball” effect.
By introducing these three designs, they improved the combat experience of the game. Players can use the natural elements and terrain in the scene to cleverly kill monsters, use the flash to control the station, and use the Break system to continuously kill and hit high injuries.
After these improvements, many players can clearly feel that the game’s strategy and interactivity have improved.
NExT caught the turn-based what points of Roguelike
From discovering the problem to solving the problem, what did the “Unbelievable Crown” project team do right?
They wrote in the development log on Steam that the original intention of this game was to make a “synchronized turn-based Roguelike” game for modern players. After determining the goal, their decision-making is very flexible.
The first is the Roguelike element aspect. Early turn-based Roguelike games often enriched the game process with complex rules close to DND and detailed content.
For example, in Pathos, almost every item is divided into three categories: curse, non-curse, and blessing, and some items need to be authenticated before they can be judged. Therefore, the game process will become very complicated, and the player may also make a wrong step and lose all the games. In contrast, today’s mainstream Roguelike is more forgiving and simple, and players need to make decisions in a very clear direction.
In “Pathos”, Mr. Grape was forced to stop for eating the wrong food
I think “The Unbelievable Crown” probably found a balance between the two-it left out those complicated elements, but used more interesting rules on the basis of turn-based To improve the experience, such as the Flash Boots and the Blood Recovering Demon Bottles similar to the Primitive Bottles, all have reserved fault-tolerant space for players.
Next is the Build aspect. In order to match the turn-based gameplay, the game boldly gave players four active skill positions. However, under the restriction of the blue bar, players still need to use weapons as the core in most cases, with Horcrux passively, and the magician to actively fight. This process not only requires luck and decision-making formation, but also requires brainstorming.
B Station Up Master@偶吧丶陈吃吃 I tried many genres
For example, one of the most suitable skills for using Fire Blast is imprisonment, because in a limited number of rounds, Fire Blast’s attack range advantage can maximize the benefit of this skill.
Finally is the strategic consideration of the game. This also involves the natural advantage of turn-based-no need for high operations. Because I do not move the enemy, the player only needs to summarize the behavior of the monster, and then slowly think about the next move.
During this process, the interaction of the monster’s mechanism and map elements can make the strategic pool deeper. “The Unbelievable Crown” is very clever at this point. They adopted a method similar to “The Combination of Isaac” in the map design, that is, a large map on each floor is randomly generated, but each small room is manually designed and arranged. .
So every room is similar to a small puzzle with a non-unique solution, and if the solution is right, it can get twice the result with half the effort. The BOSS on each level is also like a complex puzzle. For example, Dr. BOSS is invincible and teleports throughout the entire journey. You can only eliminate his Shield in order to cause damage to him.
Instant explosion
Combining the adjustment and polishing of the above three aspects, “The Unbelievable Crown” brings a new flavor to the simultaneous turn system.
How many possibilities are there for Roguelike?
During this period of endless Roguelike products, the grape gentleman has also spent a lot of time “suffering”. However, it is actually very gratifying to be able to play a Roguelike with a unique style like “The Unbelievable Crown”.
Because I can feel that today’s Roguelike products are getting better in all aspects. On the one hand, there are more and more products trying to make the theme fit the gameplay like “Hades” and form a more self-consistent logic. For example, the setting of being in a nightmare in “The Unbelievable Crown” is quite flattering. After all, it is in a dream, so Roguelike’s own rules of dying and coming back are reasonable.
Falling on the street in a dream, that is, waking up with a shiver
On the other hand, it is also a very bold attempt to think of starting with a less-traveled gameplay to differentiate, and trying to make the old gameplay new fun.
Think from this perspective, Roguelike is originally a very tolerant game form. The appearance of “The Unbelievable Crown” may provide us with an innovative new idea.