Text/Yiguang Flow

On August 20th, all Chinese players were playing the best domestic masterpieces, and I was playing the worst (to be strict, the penultimate worst).

Not long ago, a new domestic second game called "Lost Star Map" was on Steam, and a new round of testing was opened in EA mode, and then a few days later, it became the third worst game in the world and the second worst game in China with a Steam rating of 13%, ranking first with a gap of only 4% after "Three Kingdoms".

It's all 2024, how far does a second game have to go to make more than 2,000 players give such a low evaluation? The more I thought about it, the more curious I became, and finally I couldn't help but try this game, and then I came up with an evaluation that it stepped on almost all the pits that the domestic second game could step on.

01

Take the player for a fool

Before it was launched, "Lost Star Chart" became a small hit.

Although this game is labeled as a space theme and space air combat, it is strictly an online game with limited content. In the first half of this year, almost all of the promotional videos released by several official accounts were inseparable from rubbing edges, and some were even straight balls. Most people who are new to this game can easily equate it with R18.

Official video

Last month, an official promotional map, because of the high degree of exposure and straightforward position, caused a lot of spread in communities such as Tieba and Q group.

Adding another fire to this foundation is a "reverse promotion" video of the main whale Lady Sister of Station B's UP:

And "what you can't get is always in turmoil", although the video is a debasement of the game's scale on the surface, but through the hazy filter of coding, it has made LSPs more interested in this game, so with the spread of the video, "Lost Star Chart" has more or less made a splash in the second game circle.

Not only that, but the game's official page on Steam is also full of hints and explicits.

The large-scale publicity, coupled with Steam's more relaxed environment, has made more people sure that this new work is under the banner of R18 to save the older two-dimensional magicians.

However, when I entered the game, I knew,In fact, most of the time in the game revolves around the air combat gameplay、Plot,And all kinds of miscellaneous systems are turning.,The really astringent content,Not only is the amount not much.,The qualitative level is far from reaching R18.,At most, it's a rubbing.。

One is the addiction of looking at modeling in the plot.

The other type is the interaction that comes with the furniture in the lounge area.

How to put it, the experience gives people an indescribable emptiness.

As a result, the vast majority of players have a feeling of being "propaganda fraud", "being a fool", and "red stone":

It took 1h to experience the dormitory plot, but it turned out to be just some soft O feelings that rubbed the edges, which was completely fraudulent propaganda, which gave me the feeling that I spent an hour feeding the dog. The scale is pitiful, and this kind of edge ball game is not competitive on Steam at all.
This is Steam, nmlgb is when the big guy hasn't seen good goods or what, dare to put this kind of thing out?
Do you also want to learn Mirror2 and put this cyber fairy jump?

Strictly speaking, propaganda fraud cannot be discussed, but propaganda misleading is certain. The game uses secondary content as the main promotion, and the UP main criticism scale magnifies the player's expectations, so the expectations are misaligned with the real thing, which inevitably makes people feel "played".

Regardless of the cause, purpose, or process, from the player's point of view, the conclusion is that the game treats the player as a fool: in the big dye vat of Steam, against a group of old fritters who have seen everything, they play a low-level routine to deceive and sprout.

In response to the player's sentence "If you don't spray, who will you spray?"

02

I didn't learn to walk, I wanted to go to heaven

If it's just because of the misleading publicity, the player's resentment is not so high. What's worse is that the quality of the game itself also makes people's scalps tingle, and there are deduction points everywhere.

Let's start with the core gameplay.

The game's combat setting is a cosmic air battle, and it stands to reason that you can move up and down, left and right in the universe, but the game's perspective locking mechanism can be said to have lost the Y axis.

The whole battle process is like jumping back and forth on flat ground, but if it is a flat battle, the camera should be pulled away from the plane at a certain angle to make it easier for players to watch the battlefield. In Lost Star Chart, the camera is behind the character most of the time, which makes it easy for enemies to be blocked by the character.

Enemies are easily blocked from view, which further disrupts the feel. For example, there are multiple variants of the protagonist's big sword heavy attack, and the judgment mechanism is the relative distance from the enemy, and when the camera is blocked by the model, there is basically no way to judge the distance, so it can only be brutal.

And sometimes the camera will jump inexplicably, especially when the character model is full of bells and whistles, and the whole battlefield is a piece of light pollution.

In addition to the problems of lenses and perspectives, the feel of the battle is also very poor, on the one hand, the sense of impact is not strong enough, which is limited by the polishing of lens details and action details; On the other hand, it is difficult to judge the enemy's attack hand and trajectory due to the limited viewing angle, and the early warning signs are not obvious, resulting in weak feedback on attacks and hits.

Let's talk about the plot.

The game's worldview is quite interesting, but the storytelling is very poorly done.

The first is obscure words. Although the dubbing of the game is very complete, the line skills and performance collocation are dragging its feet, and a large number of exclusive nouns will appear in the novice guidance stage, such as galaxy vocabulary, feng shui vocabulary, feudal dynasty vocabulary, and power vocabulary...... Pile after pile, leaving the player with little time to digest.

The second is repeated horizontal jumping. At the beginning, the plot took the perspective of the female protagonist, and then jumped to the perspective of the male protagonist, and then jumped to the perspective of the male protagonist in the past, with the bombardment of various exclusive nouns, it was very easy for people to see in the clouds, and I just wanted to skip the plot later.

Finally, the narrative rhythm is particularly fragmented. In the early plot of the game, the things chatted about online in the story are quite tense, with both the female protagonist entering the set, the male protagonist saving the beauty, and the big scenes in the memories; In terms of actual experience, a few sentences are loaded into the scene, a few words are put into a combat teaching, and a few steps are passed by a functional guide, and the pace is very slow.

This leads to a very boring game to play in the early stage.,Many basic functions are used by individuals.,Can't be forced to guide.,And the most important plot、System teaching、Combat teaching is too fragmented.,Kneaded together to give people a feeling that they can't be up to the top.。

Let's look at modeling.

From the perspective of character design alone, the characters of "Lost Star Chart" are indeed astringent enough, and the costume design, physical effects, character actions, etc., are quite LSP, but these are the advantages.

In terms of details, such as model accuracy, stroke processing, picture clarity, mold optimization, finger processing, etc., obvious flaws can be seen. In the battle scene, the mecha model looks handsome as a whole, but when it comes to detailed performance, there are problems such as light pollution and exaggerated movements.

It can be said that the character design and model of this game are moving closer to the first line, but the level of details determines that its lower limit has not yet reached the first-line level.

In addition, there are many details that make players complain, such as the UI's poor adaptation to the terminal game, frequent black screen loading, and repeated "1" in dialogue...... It can be said that everywhere is wearing down the patience of players with this game.

That's why the idea of "think beautifully, do poorly" applies to the whole game. It can be seen that "Lost Star Map" very much wants to achieve the first-line quality, and wants to grasp all the elements such as two-dimensional XP and astringency, cosmic air combat, and mecha, but as far as the performance of the current test version is concerned, it can neither meet the player's XP, nor polish the battle, and the quality cannot reach the first line.

For an emerging team of 30 people, the first game wants to go straight to the sky, and I can only say that there is everything in the second dimension.

03

Blindly follow miHoYo

The propaganda makes people angry, and the details make people crazy, so the blind obedience of "Lost Star Map" to miHoYo directly makes people speechless.

The underlying design of this game's card drawing and cultivation basically follows the set that miHoYo likes to use the most. The first is the poison pool. Low probability, plus a three-color mixed pool of weapons, characters, and furniture, highly dilutes the player's gacha to gain value.

Then there's the standard grow-out kit. Character levels, weapon levels, holy relics (inner celestial bodies), skills, and constellations (constellations) are all available, and the UI layout is similar, so there is no threshold for rice players to get started.

Many game companies always think that success is the right thing and what players want, which is outrageous. miHoYo did harvest the market with Genshin Impact, but from the player's point of view, in the market four years ago, the irreplaceability of this game was too strong, so players had no choice at that time.

Over the years, although the use of rice kits has become more and more widespread, it is obvious that the market can see that the rebound of players is getting stronger and stronger. Some time ago, even miHoYo himself was pulling back.

It can be seen that not everyone likes this set. So now, when the product has not reached the irreplaceable level, and then use the same commercial design, will players choose it? The answer under normal logic is no, right, does everyone like the "rice-style cultivation + card drawing" family bucket now?

Nowadays, "Lost Star Chart", like many follow-the-trend games, does not solve the problem of "why do players recognize this set of payment + cultivation mechanism", but it is just used in the game as a matter of course.

Just rubbing the side, everyone is willing to use $30 to draw a shot with a probability of only 1.8% of the ten-in-a-row? Not to mention that Steam users laughed angrily, savvy mobile game users may not eat this set now.

So in the end, the only plus point of this piece of "Lost Star Map" in the card draw is that the card drawing result is made into the style of train delivery, which is more fresh. It's just that since the official compensation of 1000 draws, the long card drawing process of 10 seconds of hard control for players with a ten-shot series has also consumed their last patience.

04

detached from the player's demands,

Everything is empty talk

It's hard to imagine that this Lost Star Chart is a two-dimensional game in 2024.

He has a lot of right paths to take, such as finding the right target users, panning for gold in the mobile game circle, and not messing with more picky Steam players.

Another example is that R18 goes to the end, gives players some dry goods, and runs away early, at least to ensure that a lot of people are willing to pay for this deal.

Or learn "Drive Fairy", pinch off the set of mobile games and make a stand-alone machine, at least you can accurately harvest a group of paid fans.

No matter how bad it is, there are also previous failed cases "Mirro 2" as a reference, so as to control the caliber of propaganda and avoid the collapse of public opinion.

Even if the details of the game are polished better, at least it can be decent.

But "Lost Star Chart" wants too much, but avoids all kinds of correct answers, which belongs to making a "negative teaching material" for two-dimensional games.

In the end, only the cute "Three Kingdoms" players will give it a good review.

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