At the beginning of March this year, the EA version of "Backpack Brawl" on Steam was launched, and 100,000 copies were sold in 2 days, and the core gameplay of this game, "Build and match (space management) through backpack organization", has sparked a lot of discussion for a while.
Good gameplay brings good inspiration, and it's up to who can seize this wave of opportunities. In the past, there was Voodoo "Bag Fight", a slime-like+ backpack finishing product, but unfortunately it did not make much splash in the overseas market. On the other hand, in the domestic market, in May this year, the backpack like "Garden Assault Team", which integrates elements such as TD tower defense + Rogue + two-in-one games, was born, and the fourth place on the WeChat mini game list was born, becoming a dark horse in the IAA mini game track. The integration of mature gameplay, the original simple casual puzzle gameplay to Rogue, tower defense and other medium to heavy gameplay to improve retention, this product can be regarded as opening up a new vertical track, so we also gave birth to the so-called "garden like" genre.
A few days ago, we noticed that a new IAA product landed on the Douyin mini game new game list TOP1, this product is called "Can't Eat Me", although it is a "garden like", but after a deep experience, it has made some new innovations on this basis, (the creative direction is very similar to the recently popular mutant version of "Plants vs. Zombies"), so it is different from the game feeling of "Garden Assault Team". It's worth nagging.
01
Fusion ideas are opened, a big step for "backpack like".
It is understood that the manufacturer behind "Can't Eat Me" is Changsha Youpin, which was established in 2019 and has been focusing on small game projects, and has launched "Desert Island Survival Simulator", "Attack on Chinese Characters", "Storage Story", "I Raise You" and other popular small games, according to their own exposed data, their products have reached a maximum of 3.8 7-day ROI. Based on this, we are even more curious about this product.
To sum up, there are four main aspects of the special features of "Can't Eat Me": painting style, Build construction, synthesis and illustrated book (collection), and cultivation inside and outside the game.
In terms of painting style, "Can't Eat Me" can be described as "all ugliness is hidden behind the good", the initial fruit that came up was relatively normal, but after synthesis, it immediately changed its face, reminiscent of the mutated version of "Plants vs. Zombies" - the same "ugly cute".
(The small mark in the lower left corner is the fruit grade)
For the main light-hearted puzzle game, the ugly and cute painting style is indeed a big highlight, which can make people attracted at first glance, and then have a strong curiosity about the game. But after all, "ugly cute" in addition to ugly also occupies a cute word, the fruit in "Can't Eat Me" can be synthesized many times, and the appearance of the fruit after synthesis at each stage is different, such as the "Banana Shooter", the appearance of level 1 is an ordinary banana, level 2 evolved an expression, and the appearance after level 3 is gradually becoming more and more anthropomorphic. Overall, the art style is a good trade-off, and it won't be too difficult for players who are new to this type of game to get used to.
In terms of gameplay, "Can't Eat Me" is similar to "Garden Assault", both of which dig deep into the underlying gameplay and success factors of many popular games in the market, and do a fusion that fits their own themes. It is mainly TD tower defense, 2-in-1 synthesis, Rogue, backpack organization, as well as the card deck matching of "Hehe Heroes" and the card development mode inside and outside the game.
Its backpack is gradually unlocked, the initial stage of the grid is 3x3, the maximum can be expanded to 5x7, the shape of different fruits and the shape and size of the space they occupy are different, players need to place and choose the fruit within the range.
The game adopts a two-in-one synthesis mode, two fruits can be combined into a more advanced fruit, and the fruit of the same level can be fused again. However, in addition to the basic fruit synthesis upgrade, "Can't Eat Me" has also added the Build construction of "Fruit Hybridization", such as bananas and poisonous mushrooms above the 4th level can be hybridized into poisonous banana shooters, and other hybrid formulas such as "Baby Melon", "Peerless Double Melon", "Durian King Fried" and other hybrid formulas need to complete certain mission objectives to be unlocked one after another, and different fruits will also affect each other (buff), which is also more strategic for construction.
In this way, there is differentiation and depth, playability has increased, and certain short- and medium-term goals have been set for players, according to the performance of this product on Douyin, it has been ranked in the TOP2 of the new game list for 7 consecutive days, and to a certain extent, the 7-day retention situation has been fed.
(Source: Douyin Publisher Program Mini Game List)
In terms of Build construction, there is another point that needs to be added, that is, the current number of fruits in this product is not very large, and there are only less than 20 kinds of basic fruits plus new forms after hybridization, and there are only 1-2 fruits that can provide special buff bonuses.
Compared to the dazzling number of equipment, complex buff forms and damage calculation modes of "Backpack Brawl", "Can't Eat Me" chooses to simplify the complex construction, and everything is based on the core cycle experience of binding, Rogue (randomness of fruit refresh & buff bonus) and backpack grid placement and arrangement.
First of all, in the game, the fruit refresh is random, so that the type and level are different, and when the grid is not enough, the player needs to carefully choose and adjust the placement (the grid is also random), and at the same time, it is necessary to consider how to synthesize higher-level fruits or even hybrids in the future, which brings a longer backpack finishing time, which is a bit like "Lucky Defense" in terms of luck and randomness (to a certain extent, a bit of a "bet" component). On the other hand, the game also provides a buff bonus of one of three, and some buffs can be stacked, which also requires careful consideration of the choice.
In addition, the fruit upgrade mode of "Backpack Brawl" is the same as that of "Heroes of Hop", which uses shards and gold coins to upgrade, and the number and type of fragments obtained are also random. To get more shards, you need to go to the store and buy them with in-game currency (gold, diamonds) or watch ads, and then beat the levels to get the gold you need to level up. Due to the limited amount of gold, the upgrade route also requires a strategy (this form of out-of-game development is very mature and is used in many mini-games such as backpacks and tower defense).
From a long-term perspective, the reduction of the construction difficulty of "Can't Eat Me" further lowers the threshold, and although the overall product architecture is simple, it integrates different gameplay well, providing players with diversified strategies and stronger "toxicity". But perhaps only by doing so can players be willing to watch the ads.
According to incomplete statistics from third-party data, the total revenue of the iOS store since the launch of "Hehe Heroes" last year has exceeded 9.59 million US dollars, indicating that this kind of small game products with sufficient strategy are suitable for adding IAP and have good monetization capabilities, but "Can't Eat Me" is a pure IAA product, which has certain limitations. Its advertising spots are all over the inside and outside of the bureau, and in the bureau, you can get grids, high-level fruits, and all buffs can be obtained or refreshed at the same time, as well as an unlimited number of respawns. Outside, it can be used in the shop to obtain/refresh card fragments and obtain coins.
According to the author's experience, the difficulty can be clearly felt in the second chapter, and the difficulty of the third chapter has soared, due to the small number of initial grids, and the randomness of grid refresh, if you want to clear the customs, you must need to watch several advertisements to get different gains, for example, the author cleared the third chapter and watched more than 10 ads, mainly used for resurrection, obtaining grids, and high-level fruits. So if you look at 10 ads in one chapter, then you have to watch five minutes of ads in a game, which is equivalent to five episodes of short dramas...... It's fine in the short term, but in the long run, the emotions are interrupted several times, which can easily affect the game experience and user stickiness. In addition, the three-choice build in the game is more repetitive, and the buff can be stacked singlely, so if you replace the stack with an upgrade, there should be more operability.
But in addition, "Can't Eat Me" has almost no hard injuries, and the highlights of the product itself are very prominent, which is another rare masterpiece in recent backpack gameplay. Further, it may push the vertical track of "backpack like" to a big step forward (there will definitely be a lot of research and make new fusion products of IAA+IAP).
02
"Backpack like" gave birth to several combinations of gameplay, why is it difficult to do it overseas?
If we look at the overall "backpack like" track, it is actually constantly fermenting, and the emergence of fusion backpack products such as "Garden Assault Team" and "Can't Eat Me" is actually an inevitable trend in the development of "backpack like".
Looking at the global market, searching with "BackPack" as the keyword, we found that there are already a number of fusion backpack likes, such as "Warriors Merge" that integrates backpacks with "We are Warriors" gameplay, pixel style backpack + PVP battle "BackPack: Fantasy Battle", Voodoo's backpack + "slimelike" "Bag Fight", PaulSoft backpack +Rogue "Rucksack Rumble", Playrix dungeon exploration + backpack management "Bag Hero - Idle Dungeon RPG", backpack + mowing shooter "Alien Hunter: Master of Weapon", etc., but unfortunately, despite the successful game prototype in the front, some are not good in innovation and numerical values, and some are unreasonable game design. Both revenue downloads and delivery data ended dismally (and some of the products under test performed poorly).
For example, PaulSoft's "Rucksack Rumble" integrates Rogue into its gameplay, with two modes: story and endless, and the gameplay framework is relatively simple; The payment points focus on common aspects such as backpack expansion and equipment refresh, but they do not have any peripheral cultivation elements, so the commercialization is very weak; In addition, its screen space design is not reasonable enough - vertical screen, and the screen is also cut into three equal parts, and at the same time display the store, backpack, character battle screen, if it is placed on the PC side as a desktop game, it may be fine, but in the limited screen of the mobile phone looks very cluttered, and the click effect is not good when playing. According to the vast amount of big data, this product was launched on March 1 this year, and the number of downloads on iOS in April was about 30,000, and the revenue was less than $100.
"Warriors Merge" is a recent new product, on June 11 on iOS to open the beta, the gameplay level of the integration of backpack finishing and "We Are Warriors" synthetic gameplay, the game different weapons occupy different numbers and shapes, according to the shape of the weapons in the backpack, can summon archers, sledgehammers, swordsmen and other different troops, by these classes to attack. At present, although different classes have been added to this product, it has not actually brought much differentiation, and the screen UI also needs to be optimized to a certain extent (there is no strong attraction), and the degree of completion is not high. Follow-up performance needs to be monitored on an ongoing basis.
"Bag Hero - Idle Dungeon RPG" is a Rogue dungeon + backpack product developed by Playrix's Zefir Games studio, players need to control the protagonist to fight monsters, and then place & upgrade the dropped props in the backpack, and constantly walk the grid to advance the dungeon level. The appearance of the props obtained is relatively unified with the tonality of the game, and the integration with the dungeon is also relatively novel, and the most important thing is that the Rogue element further enriches the types, skills, and attributes of the props, and then derives a variety of variations and combinations, which is relatively strategic. However, as far as the current version is concerned, the game thread is still relatively simple, the dungeon changes are not rich enough, and the core experience is still the randomness brought by Rogue, so player retention will be the main problem it has to face.
(Source: TapTap Overseas Edition)
In addition to the above integration of backpack organization as a core gameplay into the game, Alien Hunter: Master of Weapon takes backpack organization as an exception. In the game, this product is a basic lawn mowing shooting model, and there is no Rogue mechanism added, players only need to control the character to move, the weapon is automatic shooting, the graphics and UI are relatively rough, and the monster is a variety of colored insects that are common in the purchase material, and there is not even a blood bar and progress bar display. At a certain stage of the battle, the player will be pulled into the backpack sorting session, where the player will spend gold to buy weapons, which will then be placed in the backpack, and then enter the map to fight, and the purchased weapons will also be displayed around the character.
(Source: TapTap Overseas Edition)
Although the completion and performance of this product are too rough, in terms of gameplay combination, it is indeed a good idea to integrate the backpack as a peripheral development mechanism, integrating other popular gameplay such as Rogue lawn mowing, and even give the in-game gameplay more room to show.
03
epilogue
As the game industry enters a more competitive stage, small games have become one of the few areas with rapid growth in recent years, at last year's game growth trend forum, DataEye estimated that the small game market will reach 40 billion this year, and Sanqi Mutual Entertainment gave a valuation of 50 billion (recently, we have also observed that Sanqi Mutual Entertainment is making every effort to follow up the small game to go to sea), all kinds of information have revealed the signal of "small games taking off".
However, the follow-up of large, medium and small manufacturers, especially the entry of large manufacturers, whether it is bullseye like, bullet shell like, treasure chest opening and other popular small game tracks, there are basically a lot of explosive products and new products that are being iterated, and the competitive pressure is not small. Relatively speaking, backpack like, as a newly emerging innovative small game category, is a good entry point: first, there are not many products that can be called explosive at home and abroad; Second, some fusion gameplay methods of foreign manufacturers are still in the embryonic stage, but they are worth learning from and further optimization; Third, domestic manufacturers have great advantages in mini game innovation, such as "Garden Assault Team", "Can't Eat Me", "Legend of the Mushroom Brave", "Fat Goose Gym", etc. are all good examples.