Text/Isaac

Today, NetEase has a major project that has been developed for more than five years, with a team of more than 300 people and a total investment of more than one billion.

THE GAME IS CALLED "SEVEN DAYS OF WORLD" AND IS DEVELOPED BY STARRY STUDIO, A SUBSIDIARY OF NETEASE, AND IS A "SUPERNATURAL OPEN-WORLD SURVIVAL GAME". At present, it is only open for the open beta of the PC side (Steam/Epic/NetEase fever games), and the mobile terminal will be opened in the future. However, on the first day of its launch, "Seven Days World" was given a "mixed" review on Steam, with a positive rating of only 56%.

In fact, even earlier, "Seven Days World" conquered foreigners overseas. At the Steam New Product Festival, which opened on June 10, it topped the three lists of hot new products, the hottest wishlist, and the number of new products online. Before it was launched, it also ranked in the Top 10 of Steam's global wishlist, and sat at the same table as "Black Myth: Wukong", NetEase's wave is real.

If it is so praised, why is there still mixed reviews? Judging from most of the reviews, the negative reviews seem to be concentrated in the Steam version of the game, with various optimization issues such as queues, download stalls, and game lag.

In terms of gameplay and content of the game, the problems of "Seven Days World" are relatively small, and there are even many commendable points.

In terms of hands-on experience, this game gives me a taste of a single-player project. It's not that it's played in single-player, but a lot of the design doesn't look like a mobile game. For example, after the protagonist wakes up from the shelter, he has to search for survival materials around on his own. The password on the door also needs to find the file to obtain, and it is not a mindless guide to follow the guidance process.

This is not surprising, because in the early stage of research and development, "Seven Days World" was positioned as a product with a partial buyout + internal purchase system, and later switched to the F2P direction. So you can see a lot of similar designs, including the introduction of the world view, which also uses some fragmented narrative techniques to bring it, and by the way, let the player understand the function of "space law" - almost equivalent to the demon hunting vision in "The Witcher 3", which can find some hidden interactions.

After the guide, the game entered a very standard, unpretentious SOC pre-three-piece set: picking trees, quarrying, and building a base. The character needs to eat when he is hungry and drink water when he is thirsty, and the water also needs to be purified, otherwise he will have diarrhea and lose his stomach when he drinks it. However, compared to hardcore survival games like Scum, survival in Seven Days is not so strict, and you don't need to pay attention to these attributes all the time.

Just like many SOC games, you'll have to build all sorts of facilities in your base, burn charcoal, smelt metal, and break down garbage, and then use these materials to craft what you need.

Familiar with this process, the game uses a plot and a boss to teach the battle and pet hunting system. Combat in the game is centered on shooting from an over-the-shoulder perspective, where players can rub their guns by hand or draw them from a pool of cards.

And the gameplay of catching pets is very similar to "Phantom Beast Palu" at first glance. There are three different types of containment creatures in Seven Days World, which are distributed in map scenes, and different types of gameplay, which can be used to help in battle, provide buffs for characters, and work in the base.

For example, this little green dragon belongs to a containment creature that specializes in cooking, and it even has a special cooking action, and will breathe fire by itself to assist in cooking...... It's kind of cute indeed. Other working creatures include beavers who cut down trees, elemental boys who mine, and so on.

Seeing this, many people may think that "Seven Days World" is a pure palu like. I thought so at first, but it wasn't true, and it was far more exaggerated than I thought......

Why, because the two are not essentially the same thing: Palu likes build a map around Palu, and use the collection of Palu to drive the player's exploration; And the number of contained creatures in "Seven Days World" is not large, and it cannot reach this level.

The latter drives the core of the player, on the one hand, the supernatural element of the worldview. The monster design in the game is a very big highlight, and at first glance it looks weird, a little weird, and even a little Cthulhu. Many people can see that the project team referred to the style of works such as "Stranger Things" and "Annihilation".

One of the rare things is that many of the monsters are not just interesting in terms of art, but also have some interactive mechanics in terms of design. For example, zombies whose heads have turned into searchlights and purses, after killing, you can pick up their heads and use them as weapons, which can be regarded as another level of concept infiltration.

The game's various puzzles and small explorations are also distributed around the map in some weird ways. For example, this bus, which has several long legs, will wander around the map. Find them and climb them to get the treasure chest in the carriage. Many players describe it as an escort convoy in the Old Man's Ring, which may have been one of the inspirations for the project team.

Strange spectacles like this appear in front of you, and there is more or less some impact during the opening period. After there are more similar contents, players will naturally have some amazing feelings, and they will also have more motivation to explore the map.

Nature, on the other hand, revolves around the growth of the character. Growth requires all kinds of resources, and "Seven Days World" piles up the amount of resources at all levels on the map very full and rich. If nothing else, take a look at this player-made interactive map, and you should be able to feel it......

From the low-level collectibles, one-time collectibles, to limited-time or randomly triggered events, to the vaults and elite monsters of large and small strongholds, at least the process of clearing the wasteland will be very fulfilling. You can also build small strongholds here and there, just like in Palu, and build different resource pipelines between different locations.

In Seven Days World, players can also form an adventure squad of up to 8 people, with resources shared among members. If you have friends and relatives to play with/fixed play/partner, the above experience may be more comfortable. Because the skill tree in the game is huge, there are different large branches such as fighting, building, cooking, etc. If it's a lone wolf, it's a bit difficult to juggle everything, but with teammates here, each person can be responsible for a profession, you are the chef to ensure logistics, and I carry a gun to fight zombies.

In addition to these gameplay and content, what is even more surprising about "Seven Days World" is the overall game framework and commercial design.

In terms of framework, the project team chose the season system, and the PVP and PVE gameplay will be divided into different regional servers. Their argument is that players can choose different "playbooks" with different objectives and parts of the gameplay.

Taking the large-scale gameplay "Battle of the Roots" as an example, the gameplay of the PVE server may be similar to a group of players occupying points and arranging the battlefield together, attacking a large boss to farm resources; The PVP server, on the other hand, involves bidding between different groups, grabbing the stronghold first, and then obtaining the right to attack. Some players have pointed out that this line of thinking is similar to the design in Mythology of Empires.

At the end of a season, all players' progress is reset, but items such as equipment blueprints, cosmetics, furniture recipes, weapon accessories, etc., can still be accumulated, and the buildings built will remain in a setting called "Eternal Island". This approach may solve the problem of SOC long grass to a certain extent.

In terms of paid design, "Seven Days World" is really like the advertisement, and it has achieved "no selling values". The payment points in the game are mainly passes, character skins, weapon skins, and some house building materials accessory packs. The resource of the card draw is called "Star Color", which cannot be obtained by charging money, but can only be obtained by the liver.

The lottery mechanism of the card pool in the game is also very bold, for example, some card pools only have 40 draws, which is almost guaranteed to draw what you want, and if you are lucky enough to draw it in advance, you can also manually reset it.

Overall, it's hard to summarize the gameplay of Seven Days World after just one day of experience.

However, it belongs to the kind of players who don't like SOC, as long as they take a look at the huge technology tree and accessory library, they are particularly scared and want to stay away; But players who like SOC can play for 8 hours without eating or drinking, and dive headlong into a game that they can't get out......

Some players also commented that it belongs to a product that has been sewn countless games, but it is sewn quite well.

Such a product may not be a super innovative hit in the SOC, but it is also a bold enough attempt.

If the performance of "Seven Days World" is good enough, it should not be the second "After Tomorrow" as some players said, but it will be a turning point for NetEase to enter the next big stage in the SOC track.

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