On December 1st, the first work "Sleepwalking" developed by Aauto Quicker’s game brand "Finger flick Universe" finally started its first test.
In the eyes of many people, this work represents the highest level of self-research in Aauto Quicker after the game business upgrade. Moreover, Sleepwalking also has a feeling of "the sword is biased" in terms of game types, and chose to build a high DAU product with Roguelite+ARPG as the core.
These factors make Sleepwalking very valuable for research: using GaaS(service game)Is it feasible to make a pure Roguelite?
Let’s look at it bit by bit.
I have to say that Sleepwalking chose an almost perfect theme. In the plot, as a "dream catcher", players have the ability to move freely in dreams, so they will continue to go deep into various dreams to find and solve the secrets and problems of the dream owner-the game therefore adopts the classic narrative method of unit drama+dark line.
In addition, the two concepts of dream and reality, which reflect each other and contradict each other, frequently appear in the plot of the game, which is naturally suitable for discussing various philosophical issues.
For example, in the first chapter of the game, the story discusses the unknown topics about fear and challenge with the help of "deep sea dream";
The second chapter also talks about the concept of money in the dream of getting rich.
With the contrast between exaggerated dreams and reality as the background, players are not so easy to feel "lectured", but more naturally think about life with the game-the plot that allows players to think actively is no worse than those works that rely on adrenaline.
The combat system of Sleepwalking requires players to play three "dream spirits"(role)Each character has three skills: general attack, survival and characteristics. At the same time, each character belongs to one of the six schools, which correspond to different offensive styles, such as melee, barrage, ray, call, encirclement and circle.
At the same time, the "echo" that players get in a single game.（BUFF）Most of them belong to one of these six schools-this setting is easily reminiscent of Hades, and Sleepwalking also draws more lessons from the mechanism of this classic work, such as the design of some rooms and statues that can trigger time-limited challenges and get rewards.
For example, a famous scene like "Xiuluo Field"
Roguelike, a game category, has experienced decades of iteration, and imitation and reference have long been commonplace. The classic Roguelite "Hades" derived from it is also the object of study for many developers. The new knowledge of the game has also been summarized. The imitation of many works only stays at the level of "randomly appearing BUFF by genre", but it can’t "reflect the design sense of the game with random mechanism".
Sleepwalking has made some targeted designs to avoid players being forced to choose the optimal solution, specifically to minimize the importance of "genre theme".
Many similar games are designed with the collocation depth of "1+1>2" in mind, while Sleepwalking emphasizes "2+2=2*2" on the basis of a small amount of "1+1>2": most buffs are designed to add tricks to the player’s character performance, and even some buffs with combined effects will not be so powerful that the player can’t help it after numerical design.
This mechanism also liberates the freedom of players in team matching. There is absolutely no need for the characters in the player’s squad to belong to the same genre, because doing so does not mean higher intensity, not to mention that any two characters in Sleepwalking have a linking effect, which will be triggered after a sufficient number of BUFF are collected in the game.
Under the comprehensive influence of various mechanisms, "Sleepwalking" rarely exerts a sense of anxiety on the player’s role intensity in the process of single game. Players can either plan the specific gameplay in advance and choose the desired construction method tendentiously, or give up thinking after playing the same routine, close their eyes and concentrate on mowing the grass.
This is another design idea. Sleepwalking hopes to directly create a fresh sense of He Shuang with randomness, thus bypassing the hard-core and difficult-to-give-up feature of "players need to learn through constant failure" in fundamentalism Roguelike.
At this time, we should be able to understand more clearly the phrase "sweeping 1.4 billion dreams" when Sleepwalking was published. It doesn’t need many complicated and obscure rules and mechanisms, but it only needs to design different themes and then put them together and collide with each other. The "unrestricted" theme also allows Sleepwalking to give full play to this aspect.
Following this line of thinking, the next problem that Sleepwalking needs to solve is how to effectively show its strengths and let players try more diverse content.
There are still many details that can be polished in a test of Sleepwalking. For example, one of the two sides of the aforementioned "2+2=2*2" is that players will encounter "difficulty in choosing". Let me give an extreme example:
Which one should I choose?
At this time, I thought of Hades, and only a small mechanism was needed to solve the problem.
I don’t believe that we can still choose difficulties in this way.
A big problem in the combination of GaaS and Rougelite is the design of nurturing system: it can increase the depth of the game, but the overweight nurturing system will also make the game deteriorate.
"Sleepwalking" has not become a substantial development game like many Roguelite mobile games. Its cultivation system is very familiar, including role level, skill level, overlapping cards and equipment.
Players who are familiar with the two-dimensional card-drawing mobile game may have begun to feel bad, but in fact, except for the upgrade, the improvement of other cultivation elements is not too great: the full-level skill is only about 50% higher than the initial level, and the player’s most feared card stacking is mainly used to improve the rarity of the role’s corresponding BUFF, and the numerical value is not particularly obvious.
The test of Sleepwalking only lasted less than 4 days. Theoretically, the long-term gameplay does not belong to the focus of this test, but the new knowledge of the game still feels some ideas: grading the gameplay and making the gameplay with lower level become the cultivation process of the gameplay with higher level.
This "lower level" gameplay is the Roguelite main gameplay that we are all familiar with: destroying enemies in fixed-length checkpoints, managing BUFF and resources, and challenging the final BOSS. On the settlement page of the main game after customs clearance, players can choose to save the lineup status at customs clearance to form a "seal".
Imprinting can play a role in other gameplay. For example, there is only one BOSS in the actual process of a short material level. At this time, players only need to choose the pre-saved imprints to directly challenge with the customs clearance team.
This idea can be said to be multi-faceted: special levels create demand for engraving for players, so players get the motivation to play the main mode and explore new construction methods; After a difficult challenge, you can get a new upper limit of material unlocking, forming a spiral play curve.
In addition, Roguelike will force the player to know the progress in the game after a game, which sometimes makes the player feel unfinished-the mechanism of printing can solve this problem to some extent.
Sleepwalking doesn’t look like a game pieced together by randomly selecting several labels. Aauto Quicker’s "highest level" does have something.
I hope Sleepwalking will bring us more surprises in the future.
