This column aims to recreate the beauty of games for the game market that has already shown a weak state, dedicated to every player and industry person who truly loves games. The column will combine game history, game culture, and the views of game producers, etc., to deeply analyze the inheritance and evolution of independent games on classic game design from the product level, and discuss the most essential things in the game with players with personality and thinking.
Finally, Dragon Tiger & Leopard would like to thank IndiePlay and its director, Mr. Simon Zhu Lihui, for their support of this column, and thank the independent game teams for their patience!
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In 1978, "Space Invaders" appeared in the Japanese game hall, and it can be said that the birth of The Japanese game industry was actually due to the great success of "Space Invaders".
It is very important that the game begins to present specific characters, no longer using symbols such as "blocks" and "letters" to symbolize the characters, and begins to appear specific images of "UFOs" and "aliens". Because the symbols represented by the images show both the core gameplay and the world view, the opening of the world view gives the game artistic value.
In addition, one of the differences between commercial games and indie games is that although games are considered not to express too much of the producer's own ideas, indie games still choose to maintain their own style. Therefore, when it comes to the development and evolution of games, we have to talk about the artistic value of the game itself - self-expression. In this issue, Dragon Tiger And Leopard lists three "freehand" games of "Mr. Pumpkin Adventure", "Breeze Bay" and "Everything Grows", and analyzes the "poetry and distance" in the game for you.
"Mr. Pumpkin's Adventure": "Once you start fighting fate, you have overcome it." ”
Sketch of Mr. Pumpkin's Adventure
Underneath the sketch of Mr. Pumpkin's Adventures, a sentence reads: "Once you start fighting fate, you have overcome it." ”
"Mr. Pumpkin Adventure" is a puzzle adventure game developed by the domestic development team Cotton Game, the game tells an adventure story: one day, Mr. Pumpkin wakes up from a dream, he finds himself amnesiac, in order to find himself, he embarks on a journey.
Concept art of Mr. Pumpkin's Adventure
◆ Hollow man
The beginning of this fairytale story was designed by guo Liang, the team mastermind, and this is also his fourth game. Guo Liang himself has a tall nose and two eight-character mustaches, which is very close to the image of "Mr. Pumpkin" in the game. "The protagonist of the game is called Mr. Pumpkin, and I designed him a double-skimmed moustache, and like me, he is neither brave nor intelligent; like an egg, he looks muddy. However, like our group of independent gamers, he is constantly looking for hypothetical ideals in life. Guo Liang described "Mr. Pumpkin" on the homepage of the website, and Egg Egg was another member of the team.
In the early days, Guo Liang created a series of images of "Hollow Man". It is difficult to imagine that today's creator, whose painting style is casual and lively, his early works are filled with repressed emotions.
Guo Liang's early works - "Hollow Man"
"Hollow Man" comes from the poem "Hollow Man" by the famous American poet Eliot: "We are hollow people / We are stuffed people / Leaning on each other / The head is filled with straw." Sigh! When watching "Mr. Pumpkin's Adventure" and "Lost Island", Guo Liang's mentality has also changed with time.
"When I created 'Hollow Man', I was relatively young and my life was very smooth, but my heart was more bitter, I felt very lonely, I wanted to change my life, and I was full of fear and uncertainty about the future, so these emotions were naturally expressed in the painting. With the increase of age, experienced some setbacks in life, slowly adjusted their mentality, although they still want to change their lives, but they know the meaning of living in the present, but also understand the truth of good as water. Personality becomes like to joke, like to laugh at themselves, but also inevitably become somewhat sophisticated. But in essence, the psychology of wanting to express something through painting becomes stronger. Guo Liang said.
◆ Mr. Pumpkin Adventure
Although Guo Liang has deliberately avoided the expression method of "Mechanical Maze" when developing "The Adventure of Mr. Pumpkin", there are still people who compare the picture styles of the two works together. In fact, the operation mode of "Mechanical Maze" and "Pumpkin Adventure" is still different, in "Mechanical Maze", you can operate the game character to move, more inclined to the action puzzle game type; and in "Mr. Pumpkin Adventure", it is mainly from the perspective of the third person to obtain props through touch. Depending on the way of operation, the reasoning settings in the natural puzzle solving process will also be different.
In the puzzle solving of "Mr. Pumpkin Adventure", the game character rarely appears
"Mr. Pumpkin Adventure" was inspired by another foreign puzzle game "Little Planet Big Bang", and the operation method of "relying on sliding the screen up and down, left and right to change the scene" was also integrated into "Mr. Pumpkin Adventure".
"The Adventures of Mr. Pumpkin" enriches the framework of the plot and sets up a different way of solving puzzles. In terms of plot, "Little Planet Big Bang" contains a lot of content settings for finding things, and there is not enough storyline to support the entire game, while in "Mr. Pumpkin's Adventure", the story leads the game forward, and the same prop, in another way of use, can have different story endings, and the production team designed a total of four endings.
Some puzzle games test the player's logical reasoning ability, while some puzzle games require the player to understand the designer's thoughts, and "The Adventure of Mr. Pumpkin" belongs to the latter. In the game, some rules are slightly "absurd" from the actual logic, but in this already imaginative world, these rules seem so natural.
For example, the fruit that grows rapidly after watering, the antenna-like props on the roof that can be used as matches after processing, and the mushrooms that can emerge like Super Mario in the question mark box are all interesting settings that show the rich imagination of the production team.
Put wings on the Pegasus
"Usually, when I question a certain text and picture in 'Pumpkin' that is too special, afraid that the player will not accept it, the egg always says: 'We are game makers, we should express what we want to express, not what others want us to express.'" Guo Liang said.
◆ Lost Island
Currently, the team is working on another puzzle adventure game, Lost Island. Different from the fear psychology of the early creation of "Hollow Man", when creating "Lost Island", Guo Liang has begun to embark on the process of "finding himself".
When Guo Liang played "Mystery Lighthouse", he decided to make a lighthouse-related game, "I like the lighthouse thing, every time I see the lighthouse, I feel lonely and beautiful." 」 ”
Lost Island
In the story, there are relict and independent lighthouse keepers, abandoned astronauts, mysterious temple old men and sad captains, who have different lives, because they have forgotten some objects or memories, they will be trapped in this "lost island", Guo Liang said, "These people, love or do not love their own lives, are already their own destiny." "However, every player can resemble their own character in Lost Island to help themselves retrieve something they have lost for a long time.
◆ "Lost" afterword
Obviously, the characters in "Lost Island" still need to be rescued by the player, but Guo Liang seems to have firmly established his life path.
When asked why Guo Liang wanted to embark on the road of making games, he replied, "Part of making games is to make money, and part of it is to be able to express myself, but I thought that once I am rich enough not to make money, will I still make games?" The answer now is, 'definitely'. What about the answer for the future? Only the future can be answered. ”
"Breeze Bay": "The meaning of the game is to transmit ideas, infect people's hearts, and change the world"
SLG's full name is Simulation Game, which is generally referred to as a strategy game. In fact, SLG encompasses two completely different game genres. When Simulation Game was abbreviated as SLG, it represented a war strategy game; however, when it was abbreviated to SIM, it also represented a simulation game.
From "Civilization" to "The Sims", SLG's sub-category - business simulation games should be considered different, there are not too many strategic elements, and they are loved by all kinds of players for the fun of development and creation. In recent years, community games have developed rapidly, and a number of simulated business web games have emerged in the market, such as Hay Day, Japanese Wind Story, and so on.
"Breeze Bay" is also among them, which is a social simulation business game developed by domestic independent game makers An Fengqi. Developer An Fengqi once worked for Hitcents China, "Before the Spring Festival in 2015, Hitcents laid off the development of China, and I went home with severance pay to start "Breeze Bay". An Fengqi said. Now, the production of "Breeze Bay" is basically completed by An Fengqi full-time, and the original painting, dubbing, numerical and other work are all helped by friends, who are Ghibli enthusiasts.
Breeze Bay
◆ Ghibli
The members of the team are related to Ghibli, and the game's graphics naturally carry a fresh and beautiful fairy tale style, but An Fengqi's understanding of Miyazaki is not limited to exquisite graphics, and when conceiving the game, he was also influenced by miyazaki's three principles of film production - "interesting, meaningful, and profitable".
Among these three principles, An Fengqi first considered how to make a meaningful game. "The meaning of games, like animation and books, conveys ideas, infects people's hearts, and changes the world." An Fengqi, the producer of "Breeze Bay", once said this on her own Weibo.
Screenshot of An Fengqi's Weibo
Since An Fengqi High School, the process of replacing books with games to complete teaching has emerged. He believes that words are media, carrying thousands of years of human civilization in an original way; movies and animation are media, loading information in a more intuitive, concrete and attractive form; games are also media, an interactive medium that can actively participate and give feedback according to the text, a kind of training. This echoes the view of Steve Seabolt, vice president of global brand development at The Sims, which is an entertaining and educational game to Steve.
An Fengqi also chose to make a simulation business game that can simulate the real world to express her ideas. In "Breeze Bay", An Fengqi constructed an ideal life for the player to build a beautiful bay, and the player can build various workshops in the "Breeze Bay" to produce resources and create their own ideal world.
◆ Breeze Bay
In the book High score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, the earliest business simulation game was released in 1983 and won an award from Electronic Arts, but given its dismal 30,000 copies, it is difficult to find the game today.
The rise of steam locomotives in the mid-19th century also led to the popularity of railway models, and Sid Meier launched Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon in 1990, which was played primarily by laying rails, placing stations, and selling stocks to maximize profits. Although the simulation business games of that period oversimplified real-life management, they still gained popularity among players.
Railway Tycoon (1990)
In contrast, the system of contemporary business simulation games is more diverse.
"Breeze Bay" sets the story in the era of the Industrial Revolution, in order to let players more fully understand this historical process, it draws inspiration from "Civilization", simulates the real human technology tree, and tries to abstractly restore the industrial chain in real life. Unlike most simulation games, Breeze Bay basically covers the entire category of manufacturing in the era of the Industrial Revolution, and if possible, An Fengqi also hopes to expand its development era to modern times.
An Fengqi believes that the charm of the simulation management game lies in the fact that people can experience the fun of development and creation in the play, which is the opposite of the fun of destruction, and the hundred days of the camp are also a sense of achievement. Therefore, in "Breeze Bay", the development of science and technology and the resource industry is also a basis for "allowing players to experience the fun of making props by hand", players can use yarn balls to weave a scarf, make a jetpack with mechanical parts, and can also equip and use these props, and can personally give their own items to friends in the game.
Jetpacks from Bay Breeze
In October, a Pre-alpha version of Breeze Bay was produced, and An Fengqi told Dragon Tiger Leopard that if nothing else, Breeze Bay was scheduled to be released next year.
"All Things Grow": "Grow, born of darkness, heart to light." ”
At the end of the first level of "All Things Grow", there is a sentence: "Growing up, born in darkness, the heart to the light." ”
The first level of "Everything Grows"
"Everything Grows" is a casual game incubated by the experimental group within Leheng Interactive Company, "Leheng Lab". The game is about a companionship process: the player needs to accompany a seed to grow, starting from its darkest time, to help it overcome the difficulties of the underground, until it breaks through the surface, the game has a total of "spring, summer, autumn and winter" four levels, the four seasons are represented by different shades, through the change of cold and warm tones to represent different moods and experiences.
The game that won the 2015 Indie Play Best Mobile Game is from the producer Chen Hongqu, who graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, he pays great attention to the details of life, and when he planted a osmanthus tree, he had the idea of "growing", and because of this, he also integrated various feelings about life into the game.
At the end of the game, "All Things Grow" interprets Chen Hongqu's understanding of "growth" in the way that a plant "confesses" to the player: "Thank you very much for accompanying me for this unforgettable time, in 95 minutes, you kept guiding me to grow in the direction of the light, although I encountered 34 injuries, we still moved forward; after growing 620 meters, finally, I saw the sky and the sea of stars again." The numbers in this confession will change depending on the performance of different players.
The end of "All Things Grow"
Of course, "All Things Grow" wants to express not only the joy of "breaking through the ground" after growing up, it wants to emphasize the obstacles and help in the process of growth, the people and things that happen in life are often not single, no one can determine a thing, a person's good or bad, these things are often a combination of good and bad. In the game, this contradiction is also visualized.
"The Growth of All Things" contains cicadas, rolling stone plates, mirrored blackened seeds, etc., "cicadas" are like friends, there are blue cicadas that help seeds grow, and there are red cicadas that hinder progress; "rolling stone disks" are like various things encountered in life, which can give people the strength to grow and can also make people die; "mirrored blackened seeds" are also like the other side of everyone's heart, only by complementing another self, can we pursue ourselves.
Cicadas, stone plates, mirror plants
For the concretization of abstract concepts, the production team believes that "games of abstract concepts are often very imaginative, and in "All Things Grow", abstraction is the concept of growth, and figurative is the experience of growth." It can make everyone feel empathy, and let everyone get a different experience in the game, which is the charm of the game. ”
At present, Leheng Lab is busy with the incubation of the second project" "Qiannu Soul", a 3D puzzle game with an art style similar to "Limbo", which is expected to be launched by the end of the year.