Steam has a positive rating of 96%, and this category with countless explosive models has a demon again?
Text/Yiguang Flow
In a mature category that has been developing for several years, continuing to innovate requires more imagination.
The popularity of Slay the Spire a few years ago made deck-building (DBG) games all the rage, and like many of the genre-setting benchmarks, there are plenty of imitators, but there are very few products that can truly achieve a high level of innovation.
Among these imitators, the most impressive aspect of gameplay innovation is the equally popular "Monster Train", the second is the "Overload Dungeon", which has been unfinished for 4 years and renewed, and the third is the new work "Dice Wanderer" that is going to be recommended today.
This "Dice Wanderer" is developed by the domestic independent team Super Thick Skin Pig Studio, after the official release on the 10th of this month, it has received a total of 96% praise from more than 1,000 players on Steam, and has sold more than 5W copies so far. Among the praises in the comment area, there is no lack of "palace-level card meat pigeon, whether it is creativity, numerical balance, or art, it is impeccable".
Without further ado, let's talk about the highlights of this game.
01
Out-of-the-box gameplay design
In a word, "Slaying the Spire" can be regarded as the most simple and straightforward classic template for DBG, and the creative point of "Dice Wanderer" is to break this template.
The vast majority of the designs in Slay Spire are in line with the subconscious and universal perception of people. First of all, the numerical aspect is calculated and designed around the most basic offensive and defensive addition and subtraction. Secondly, three of the four basic characters represent the three basic gameplay of DBG games, the value flow of the warrior, the check flow of the assassin, and the cost flow of the viewer; Finally, the player's onboarding process emphasizes graduality, and most of the learning costs can be replaced by intuition.
This kind of positioning that can stand the test of the public, although it has achieved the classic status of "Slay the Spire", will inevitably make players feel stereotypical after playing for a long time. Personally, after about 300 hours of gameplay, I started to open Slay the Spire less often, and after more than 600 hours, I stopped opening it.
After that, most of the DBGs I've played have struggled to harvest more than 100 hours of gameplay. Most of the reasons are that they can't jump out of the basic framework established by "Slaying the Spire", and the innovation of most similar games basically stays in the complexity of genre mechanisms, special effects, characters, and additional props.
In contrast, the three battle scenes of "Monster Train" + the stacking of monsters, as well as the royal war-like explosive gameplay of "Overloaded Dungeon", give me a stronger sense of freshness. And "Dice Wanderer" is even more radical, directly with the purpose of "overthrowing the stereotypical routine of DBG", adding a core gameplay of the official plug-in "Dice Change Value".
At first glance, the setting of "Dice Wanderer" may be thought to be more like the comprehensive and complex "Slaying the Spire".
For example, the cost of the game is divided into five attributes: colorless, water, fire, life, and chaos, and the game needs to consume the corresponding number of costs for different cards, and it is also necessary to consider the problem of converting the cost attributes.
Another example is mechanics, this game has a lot of mechanics, in addition to some DBG mechanics, there are also a series of game-specific mechanics.
One of the most special is the judging mechanic, which involves almost all of the player's main actions, and rolls the dice to determine whether the action can be successfully performed based on an intermediate number.
On top of the vast number of new things to learn and adapt to, players also have to think about how to build cards, how to deal with different enemies, how to choose passive items, etc.
In addition, it is especially necessary to consider how to find the best route to develop in the map, firstly, because this game allows players to retreat, secondly, the shop, enhancement, deletion, health and other areas are more finely divided, and thirdly, as time progresses, the purple mist will be refreshed behind the player, forcing the player not to procrastinate.
However, the complex content and mechanics are more like paving the way for the "dice to value" mechanism.
The reason for this is that players can modify almost any number in the game with the help of active dice items, or Supreme Dice cards. Whether it is the enemy's HP in the battle, the remaining cost, your own HP and blood limit, the value of the card, and the value of the Buff; or the amount of gold on hand outside the battle, the selling price of items in the store, and the number of rewards after the battle is settled; Even the data described in the in-game encyclopedia entries can be modified.
So when players cross the initial learning threshold and start trying to explore the routines, the real fun of this game is revealed. Reasonable use of the modification mechanism, the player seems to directly incarnate the wind spirit O shadow, at this time the game can be said to have no stereotypical routines at all, and the solution to the problem depends on the player's imagination.
What's more worth mentioning is that the game also counts the player's self-release into the scope of the core gameplay. For example, if you don't take into account the cost of modifying the game, you may quickly lose the novelty of the game, but in Advanced mode, the game takes into account the various situations that the player may modify the game one by one, and limits them, resulting in a more challenging game.
For example, if the effect of a card is permanently modified in a single game, a distorted entry will be added, which will bring some burden to the game; For example, players can repeatedly try and error to find the best modification data through Save/Load, but in high difficulty, this practice will also cause negative effects.
So on the whole, "Dice Wanderer" first uses the threshold at first sight to screen out tower climbers who like challenges; Then, the out-of-the-box modification mechanism is used to greatly increase the player's choice, and enhance the fun brought by variables and solutions. Finally, in the difficult mode, the player's game tendency was predicted, and the player who was released was pulled back.
Strictly speaking, this game is no longer a tower-climbing product in the traditional sense, but a dialogue between the developer and the player around the tower-climbing experience, which has the meaning of breaking the dimensional wall. This is also what I think is the most innovative thing about Dice Wanderer.
02
An innovative work with a high degree of finish
Of course, in addition to the gameplay, "Dice Wanderer" has a lot of remarkable, and it can be said that it is an independent game with both innovation and a very high degree of completion.
Regarding the degree of completion, you can see the clues in the gameplay design, and the appearance of the modification mechanism can easily make the game value collapse, but the production team can anticipate many situations and brake the car in the serious and difficult gameplay, and you can see that the details of the game are more thoughtful.
What can better reflect the degree of completion is the artistic expression of the game. Dice Wanderer features a fully hand-drawn art style, with animations for all hostile creatures and some cards. This makes the always boring DBG pile fighting process more interesting and fresh.
Once upon a time, the traditional construction was boring, the output of the station pile was rigid, and the SL was cumbersome...... In this new work, all kinds of experiences have been replaced with non-martial arts openings, silky and interesting small animations, and small challenges that the production team and players understand. It can be said that "Dice Wanderer" has grasped the game psychology of old DBG players, and has taken care of them one by one.
I think that sometimes the fresh ideas of games often come from the player's overturning of the past experience and the desire for a new experience.
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