There are still options.
2024 is already halfway through. Among the various new games launched this year, there are already a lot of buzzing titles, such as Dragon's Dogma 2, such as Sword Star, or the newly launched Elden Ring DLC "Shadow of the Golden Tree".
However, counting the works launched this year, everyone will be surprised to find that in terms of the degree of popularity and discussion, the most striking of them is not those masterpieces of big manufacturers, but the fanwork of a single-player tower defense game from 15 years ago - "Plants vs. Zombies: Hybrid Edition".
This is a "Plants vs. Zombies" fanwork created by the main "Submarine Weiwei Fan" of Station B. In the work, the author gave full play to the huge advantages of his brain, and created a series of "hybrid plants" and "hybrid zombies" - the hybridization of "pea shooter" and "sunflower", so that the production tools gained combat effectiveness, and the "newspaper zombie" drove an ice shovel and rejuvenated the second spring.
Plants vs. Zombies: Hybrid Edition quickly became a craze in the player community. For the past few months, whether it is Douyin, Bilibili, or Xiaohongshu and Baidu Tieba, there has been a lot of discussion about "Plants vs. Zombies: Hybrid Edition". The developer of this work, "Submarine Weiwei Fan", has increased the number of fans on Station B by millions in just a few months after the game was launched, and his thank you video launched on June 1 has now approached 19 million views. The players' love for this work can be seen.
There are quite complex reasons behind the huge success of Plants vs. Zombies: Hybrid Edition.
On the one hand, as a "childhood classic", "Plants vs. Zombies", this work naturally has a certain ability to "break the circle". On the other hand, "Plants vs. Zombies: Hybrid Edition" itself is brain-opening, which also makes the work itself a wonderful appeal.
In addition to these factors of the game itself, the external game environment is also an important reason why "Plants vs. Zombies: Hybrid Edition" can be popular.
Even the most knowledgeable gamers must admit that people who like "tower defense" games today don't have much choice - in a sense, "tower defense" is indeed a game category that has declined.
The "Warcraft RPG map" has long been a thing of the past, and the "Three Phantom Gods of Tower Defense" has long been gone. Like the orthodox sequel to the "Plants vs. Zombies" series, there is already a trend that one generation is not as good as the next, not only the 2nd generation has fallen into the kryptonite quagmire, but "Plants vs. Zombies 3" has also attracted a lot of scolding in the fan group because of the sudden change in painting style and unsatisfactory gameplay innovation.
"Tower Defense" in the field of current games, often will not be used as a separate gameplay of the game, but as a gameplay element and is integrated by some games that attach importance to strategy, such as the "Orcs Must Die" series, pure "tower defense" games have been quite rare.
Especially in the field of mobile games, which are becoming more and more important to players, most of the few "tower defense" games that are still introducing new ways to play are deeply bound to the "two-dimensional game", and it is difficult for players who are not interested in the "two-dimensional" style to be interested in it.
However, at the moment when the "tower defense" game is declining, there is a non-"two-dimensional" style "tower defense" mobile game called "Watcher of Realms", which has sprung up.
"Tide Watcher" launched by Mutong Technology has quickly become popular since it was launched overseas in July last year, and on the first day of its launch, it entered the top ten iOS free games in United States, France, Germany, Canada and other countries and regions, and even occupied the top spot in the dual-platform download list of France and Germany for a time.
Overseas players and media have paid great attention to this work, and more than 50 game media have reported and promoted this game, and the promotional CG of the game itself has exceeded 10 million views on the video platform early.
In terms of revenue, Tidewatcher's performance is just as impressive. According to the report of Diandian Data, the double-end turnover in the first month of its launch is estimated to have exceeded 65 million. As of May this year, its total turnover is also close to 500 million yuan. In April this year, "Tide Watcher" also successfully entered the top 30 on the overseas list of Chinese mobile game revenue, and its commercial performance was extremely bright.
Source: SensorTower
To be able to have such a brilliant result, it is inseparable from the excellent quality of "Tide Watcher" itself. Whether it's the external appearance of the game or the internal gameplay design, this work gives a very beautiful answer.
The unique aesthetic style is the first impression of "Tide Watcher".
In recent years, "two-dimensional games" have become more and more "academic", and the Japanese cartoon art style has become more and more popular. In comparison, the rest of the art styles are niche, and the traditional European and American fantasy themes are regarded by many players as representatives of "earth".
However, the outstanding visual performance of "Tidewatcher" fully illustrates that under the attitude of excellence, any style has an extremely high ceiling. In the aesthetic style of the fantasy department, this work chooses to emphasize the route of 3D realism - one of the most difficult routes.
This route is equivalent to creating a "real fantasy creature" out of thin air, with great emphasis on the texture of the material and the details of the design, and also has high requirements for the proportion of the character model. Luckily, Tidewatcher does a good enough job of this, and every character in the game has a strong sense of design, even the armor of ordinary soldiers has very detailed material changes. In the game, each character has added many complex details and layers according to its own design elements, and its three-dimensional sense is enough to support players to zoom in on the character's model in the game, and the game also supports players to rotate it 360 degrees.
Of course, "Tidewatcher" isn't just about showing off its muscles in the details. In terms of the big theme of Western fantasy, they also have quite pure elements to present, and the game has built a huge epic worldview through more than 100 heroes and more than 30 races. Players will be able to see the shadow of classic Western fantasy settings such as "Middle-earth" and "Dungeons & Dragons", and they can also find some ingenuity in integrating some new fantasy elements such as steampunk and Cthulhu into the game setting.
The detailed and excellent setting makes the game also show a high level of scene design, which not only integrates the different terrain of the level in the background of the story, but also presents the characteristic mechanics of the level itself to a certain extent. This makes "Tidewatcher" show a rather magnificent landscape in the construction of a small scene, and provides a rather excellent stage for players to play.
From the art design of "Tide Watcher", it can be seen that the production team has refined the technical requirements, which makes the work quite outstanding visual effects. Especially in the current era of "second tours", the extremely high-level 3D magic art style of "Tide Watcher" has a bit of a "dazzling" look.
Of course, for a game to be tangible and qualitative, Tidewatcher is not only outstanding in terms of artistic expression, but also in terms of gameplay design.
As a mobile game with "tower defense" as the core gameplay, "Tide Watcher" uses the "defense tower" design in traditional "tower defense" games, and combines it with the more interesting "hero development", turning each hero in the game into a "defense tower" to block the "monster tide".
Depending on the character's class orientation – there are five classes in the game: Warrior, Tank, Marksman, Mage, and Healer – the area where units can be placed and the range of their attacks will vary. In addition, each unit in the game also has attributes such as "cost of placement", "placement orientation", and "number of enemies that can be blocked". It can be said that the basic performance of each character alone has built a strategic framework with a certain degree of playability.
At the same time, as players become familiar with the heroes they master, they will soon discover which faction each character belongs to, and an additional strategy system will be introduced. There are ten factions in the game, such as "Purgatory" and "Secret Magic Society", and the heroes of each faction will receive additional reinforcements due to the "lord" of that faction, which means that the player's squad match before the battle will become an important factor in the outcome of the battle.
When facing the subsequent difficult levels, as well as trying to challenge the high-intensity levels with low combat power, it is important to match the lineup according to the characteristics of the enemy. The game will display the enemy types and specific values in each level in detail, and based on this preparation information, players can continue to specialize their roster before the battle, making the overall lineup more targeted.
In addition to the pure "tower defense" gameplay, "Tidewatcher" has also developed many gameplay modes with different experiences based on the game attributes of its own RPG.
The gameplay mode of the core main line of the game alone includes the traditional "tower defense" level, the "dungeon" level for specific enemies, and the "magic tide" gameplay that combines tower climbing and musou mowing. Among the derivative additional gameplay, there are a lot of excellent featured RPG gameplay.
For example, in the "Book of Bosses" gameplay, players need to face not a "monster tide", but a single powerful boss with specific mechanics. Under this gameplay, the player's lineup matching ability will face a more severe test.
In the gameplay of "Demon Army Expedition", there will also be a situation of "reverse Tiangang", so that players no longer play the "defensive" side, but instead lead their own monster army to attack other people's defensive formations.
In addition, PVP gameplay such as "Guild Wars" and "Arenas", as well as list competition gameplay such as "Oracle Battle", all have their own interests.
As a new "tower defense" mobile game launched in modern times, the quality of the game presented by "Tidewatcher" is amazing.
It has a great visual experience with a high-level 3D magical art style, as well as a core gameplay with a variety of options and team-building possibilities. The excellent strategic space brought by the continuous deepening of the core gameplay of the game, as well as the diverse play modes horizontally expanded by the production team, provide a rich and varied gameplay experience for the game.
These core features all explain why "Tidewatcher" has been able to continue to explode overseas. At the same time, today, when the "tower defense" game has long been ignored by the mainstream game market, the success of "Tide Watcher" also shows that the "tower defense" game still has a broad player market -
It's just that the "tower defense" of the new era needs the appearance of the new era.
By the way, the national server of "Tide Watcher" will start the deletion test on July 30, and will be launched in open beta at the end of this year.