Text / Mobile Game That Little Thing Stephen
Dreams can't be just a meal.
"What is the original intention of making a game?" This is a topic that has been seen many times for anyone working in the game industry. When this content is mentioned, our discussion will always fall to the question, is it better to make a single-player game or a commercial game?
People in the industry also have their own opinions on this answer, some people think that what can make money is good, of course, there are also some people who choose a stand-alone machine from the beginning of the road to the game, or they are the gamers who originally made commercial games, and they ran halfway to do solo games.
Recently, there is such a team from Beijing, called "Rocket Fist", they originally started as an independent game, but what I didn't expect was that a new second game "Hardcore Mecha Apocalypse" in the recent open beta was actually from the team.
This kind of example of making a stand-alone game first and then making a commercial mobile game is rare, of course, because of this situation, this can't help but make people a little worried, a team that started as a stand-alone game, can grasp the commercial game? The reverse was true, and I was curious and I started to learn about the company.
01
What has Rocket Punch done?
As mentioned earlier, this team from Beijing originally started as a solo tour, according to the information of Tianyancha, the Rocket Boxing team has received investment from Gigabit and Bilibili, of which Bilibili is the second largest shareholder of Rocket Boxing.
The experience of Mu Fei, the founder and CEO of Rocket Boxing, can be said to be quite in line with our definition of the original intention of making games. Mu Fei graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in the field of game design at the School of Animation. , once worked for others, as the chief planner, the main beauty, the head of the art team and other positions, and finally he founded Rocket Fist in 15 years and began his solo production road.
On Zhihu, Mu Fei himself also published a detailed introduction about his journey as a solo producer, as well as some details of the development process of "Hardcore Mecha", I will not repeat them here, interested friends can go to Zhihu to view the detailed content.
(Screenshot of part)
In the end, the company founded in 15 years successfully won the favor of Sony with "Hardcore Mecha" and became one of the first products of Sony's China Star Program. After 4 years of development, the game was officially released in '19 and currently has more than 2,000 reviews on the Steam store, with a very positive rating overall.
The game is a 2D side-scrolling action game, and the producer and the entire team are fans of the machine battle genre, which was born. In April of this year, Rocket Fist also had another meat pigeon solo game "Otherworldly Runaway" also released on Steam.
And the style of this new game is very different from that of "Hardcore Mecha", in addition to the change of the theme and character image, the gameplay is no longer focused on action, but it belongs to the same category as last year's game "General Showdown", simply put, it is a meat pigeon that fights turn-based battles on a coordinate axis.
The author has seen Wang Laoju do the game live, whether it is in the comment area of the video or in the Steam store, players still appreciate some of the mechanics in the game, but there are also some complaints about the problems related to outside the game and difficulty.
After all, there were still a lot of problems when "Hardcore Mecha" was first released, so that there were still a lot of bad reviews when it was first released, and the follow-up through a long period of updates made the praise rate rise to the current situation.
02
A reinvention based on the previous work
Such a team full of independent game genes,Recently came up with a two-dimensional mobile game,This is indeed a little surprising,After all, the current second game environment is so deep,It's a big challenge for a mature second game team,Not to mention a small team that started as a solo game?
"Hardcore Mecha Apocalypse" was officially launched on October 11, and as of this writing, the game has a rating of 7.9 and 6.7 on TapTap and Haoyou Kuaibang, respectively, and is in the first position on TapTap's popular list.
Judging from the name, this second game basically inherits the name of the previous "Hardcore Mecha", and from the actual game experience, "Hardcore Mecha Apocalypse" also inherits many characteristics from the previous work.
The biggest difference is that the game has changed the original flat 2D level, introducing the Z-axis on top of the plane, and has the concept of height. When using character skills, the mecha can be raised to the second plane, which can be regarded as adding an extra dimension to the combat experience.
In terms of the design of the mecha, the taste of Rocket Punch is still very positive. You can see a lot of Gundam shadows in the design of the model, and this style can be said to be very pleasing to fans of machine battles.
Although this work is a continuation of the previous work to a certain extent, but due to the nature of commercial mobile games, the gameplay of the game obviously can't just be a simple mecha battle. In order to meet the needs of this aspect, the game subdivides the attributes and career positioning of the mecha, and at the same time, different drivers also have different effects.
At the same time, like most of the current second games, the mecha in the game also has a system similar to the "Constellation". It can be said that in addition to the name and theme, it inherits the content of "Hardcore Mecha", but the game as a whole already has many elements of the second game. At present, in addition to the payment point of Krypton gacha in the game, there are also mecha and driver skins available for purchase.
03
The challenges of transformation
Although "Hardcore Mecha Apocalypse" has made an innovative transformation on the basis of the original, it is not enough to see in today's second-game market. In the reviews of players on TapTap, there is no shortage of sharp criticism.
At present, it seems that the problems reported by players are relatively concentrated. It can be summarized in several aspects. The first is the conflict between stand-alone games and krypton mobile games. As a game similar to the original gameplay, the overall gameplay is similar to the original, but for the sake of commercialization, it is necessary to split the values and mechanics into krypton gold points, which brings some sense of separation. And for a team that is making a krypton mobile game for the first time, the relevant experience is not sufficient, so that some players have reported that there is a situation where the level of krypton will be carded, which is more fatal for long-term mobile games, and will have a great impact on retention.
The second is the impact of comprehensive quality. Rocket Fist used to be a solo team,And the overall size of the solo team is not large,Even if you want to improve the game to a high quality, it's more than enough and not enough,For today's very picky second game players,Such a product will look a little "retro" now,The more obvious thing is that the UI design of the game is put in today's second game for a round of comparison,It is easy to leave players with the impression of a "small grade" game。 Especially for the game category that focuses on appearance, such as the second game, there is a more eye-catching and distinctive "skin" with a very high priority, and the underlying content such as gameplay and gameplay is secondary.
Third, it is difficult to enter the player's field of vision. It has always been difficult for a small team to engage in a second game, and it is necessary to invest more costs if the game wants to enter the player's field of vision. Like "Ring Hostel", there are only a few who rely on tap water to earn enough popularity in the service. And the attention of "Hardcore Mecha Apocalypse" on Station B, the mainstream publicity and distribution platform of the second game, generally does not seem to be too ideal.
If I'm not an editor but an ordinary gamer, I probably wouldn't know that this game exists. It can be said that the Rocket Boxing team has to face the pressure of a small team to do a second game to seek a breakthrough, and also face the difficulty of a solo team switching to Krypton mobile games, and this road after transformation is not easy to take.
In the process of writing this article, I happened to find a small essay on Zhihu by a former employee of Rocket Boxing reminiscing about his past solo development time. Some of this is quite realistic. Judging from what he said, Rocket Fist already had plans to make a mobile game a year after the launch of "Hardcore Mecha", but he didn't expect this grinding to take 4 years.
(Transferred from Zhihu user @水曜日鸡)
Although the process is happy, but if you can't make money, you can only face the reality, and eventually you will either gamble on a chance to transform, of course, this process is also accompanied by walls and risks; or just jump ship and join other companies to do business games with more considerable income, and in the end they can only gradually live as they hate the most.
Although with the passage of time,It's not the same as in the past,The domestic stand-alone market has become more and more active,But the solo game works that run out of the small team can get the favor of the market is also a minority,And today's domestic stand-alone game industry has also appeared as a giant team and a lot of teams that may become giants in the future,Compared with doing solo games,Practitioners who want to be deeply involved in stand-alone games for a long time also have a better way out than before,At least if you want to keep the purity in your heart,The hope is a lot greater。
I have to sigh that the risk of doing solo travel is really big, and all those who are still walking on the road of this dream of solo travel are worthy of admiration. So, if it were you, would you go solo traveling?