On December 3, 2023, "Neon Life" released its first promotional PV, and elements such as "two-dimensional", "cyberpunk", "GTA-like", and "open world" all seem to be full of ambition for this game, and the tsundere studio behind it has also become a hot topic for a while.
Neon Life" real machine screen.
Tsundere Studio is an old friend of many two-dimensional enthusiasts. It's a "traditional" enough two-dimensional company. Nowadays, the second tour track is pursuing pan-users, and its "cute" temperament has not been attenuated, maintaining a pure flavor. Many players don't often call it by its real name, Hangzhou Zhangpai, but instead call it by the more "two-dimensional" name of Tsundere Studio.
Tsundere Studios currently has a number of projects, both gaming and non-gaming. They are generally less "commercial" and more motivated by some kind of faith. For example, the "Meng Niang Encyclopedia", which establishes a knowledge base for ACG-related culture, is currently the largest ACG wiki in China, and is also well-known overseas;Another example is the free, interactive wallpaper software "Tsundere Wallpaper".
Horcrux Academy was their first game and a famous title, and when it launched in 2019, the casual simulation idle game had a somewhat counter-market flair to it. At that time, many second-game games aimed to occupy the player's time and energy as much as possible, and it was one of the more "liver-protecting" ones, so many two-dimensional enthusiasts regarded "Horcrux Academy" as a "rest stop". On the contrary, the game is quite popular, with good income, and has become a cash cow for Tsundere Studios in one fell swoop. With financial security, Tsundere Studio has opened a number of more projects.
According to the data of "Second View", the profitability of "Horcrux Academy" has been very stable.
Recently, Tsundere Studio's other product under development, "Blind Box Party", has obtained the version number and is preparing to be launched. This game is not large, with strong gameplay as a selling point, and the art is distinctive enough. Taking this opportunity, Touch and Dashan, the main creator of "Blind Box Party", chatted about the design and concept of the product.
Touch:Tell us about yourself and Blind Box Party
Daisen:I am the main creator of Hangzhou Tsundere Studio's "Blind Box Party", and I have 8 years of experience, and I have previously participated in "Ninja Must Die 3" and "Horcrux Academy".
Blind Box Party is a five-way horizontal, straight-line defense tower defense game, the gameplay borrows from the "predecessor" "Plants vs. Zombies" (hereinafter referred to as "PVZ"), and adds more content.
Blind Box Party has the feel of a delicate sketch game.
Touch:It's rare for a game to advertise a game that says "we borrowed from the game", and some players feel that your attitude is very sincere. Why this propaganda tactic?
Daisen:First of all, we can graciously admit that we have learned some ideas from PVZ. On this basis, "Blind Box Party" abandons the complex route design, but puts forward higher requirements for the design of monsters and characters (defense towers), which is also what we are pursuing. What's more, legally, the reuse of gameplay is not plagiarism.
Back to the original intention of this project, most of the current mobile games, in order to avoid making mistakes, will first choose a gameplay that is mature enough in the market, and even gradually compress the living space of the gameplay. For example, the standard automatic battle,You can only manually amplify the moves,The ultimate can also be opened and released.,And then with a set of numerical cultivation system.,At most, one volume of art resources。 In this way, a standard "mobile game" was born.
A sweeping feature that many games have.
I think that after the baptism of the first period of mobile games in recent years, as well as the "battle royale" of the second game, everyone has been a little aesthetically tired of this kind of industrial canned "mobile game" that cannot be interacted with and operated, so I want to return to the tradition and make a game that focuses on mobile platforms, weak values, strong gameplay, and strong operability, which is the original intention of the project of "Blind Box Party".
Touch:How many people are in your project team now?
Daisen:At present, there are about 11 people in the R&D team, I am the producer and chief planner, and there are 2 level students and 1 copywriter. There is one student at the front and back end of the program side. There are 2 original painting students, 1 animation student, and 1 UI student.
Touch:Since you want to learn from it, there are many gameplay frameworks with strong gameplay and high expansion, why should you learn from "PVZ"?
Daisen:This brings us to the original intention of the project. When I was working as a battle planner at Horcrux Academy, one day I was working overtime until 11 p.m., and my boss suddenly stopped me and asked me to start a new project and make a game where "players can control many different styles of characters at the same time".
Let's start with the push-back - action games aren't suitable, and the player controls up to three or four characters;Although there are many characters that can be controlled in war chess games, the pace of gameplay is slow, which does not meet the needs of short, flat and fast mobile games. Later, we decided to make a tower defense game, but tower defense was the most popular gameplay category in the second-game market at that time, and we couldn't compete with those dazzling predecessors.
Touch:So you see that the gameplay of "PVZ" has highlights, and no one does it, so you choose to do it yourself?
Daisen:Yes, because we all played PVZ as kids and we all thought it was a lot of fun. We talked until 1 a.m. that day, and the more we talked, the more speculative we became. When I went to work the next day, I asked my boss if it counted, and the boss said that of course it counted. Then the project team was formed, and I was also a producer for the first time.
Touch:But there is a question, will this gameplay framework not be profitable?
Daisen:We didn't think about it.
Touch:Didn't think about it?
Daisen:This project, we have been developing for 2 years, and the first 1 and a half years were done as a stand-alone game, and I didn't think about making money, but now for the needs of project cost maintenance, we may have to change to a free plus in-app purchase model. However, even if "Blind Box Party" lost money after it was launched, the boss, me, and other project team members didn't have much opinion, at least it was made, and we were quite satisfied and found it interesting. Of course, it's best if the game pays off. You see, there are some well-known mobile game manufacturers that are also trying in the field of stand-alone games.
Touch:It sounds pure - your priority is whether the game is fun or not, and the commercial side is secondary, and you can do it as soon as you think of it.
Daisen:Yes, that's our company culture. The whole of our project team is happy to make such a game, even if it doesn't make money. Moreover, we implement flat management, anyone can put forward opinions, they are all young people, and there is no generation gap. When making games, money is an issue, but if it's fun enough, the boss will support it. When we first started the project, there were only three or four people in the group, but after we made the demo, the boss was very satisfied and allocated more resources to us.
Resources not only refer to money, but also include the publicity positions of their own platforms such as Meng Niang Encyclopedia.
Touch:Let's move on to the game. What does the user group anchored by "Blind Box Party" look like?
Daisen:I hope that our games are not limited to a specific group, because our playstyle should be widely accepted, and young people, people who like trendy toys, men and women, can enjoy collecting, cultivating, fighting and creating.
Touch:That's an interesting statement. Most of the users under the reservation interface of "Blind Box Party" are male two-dimensional enthusiasts who come for the art style, which seems to be inconsistent with the original intention of your project and the audience.
Players who give good reviews for their art style.
Daisen:From a traditional point of view, the painting style of "Blind Box Party" does serve the majority of male two-dimensional lovers, and this part of the group is our basic plate, and we don't want to abandon it. Among them, there may be players of "Horcrux Academy", as well as old users of the Cute Girl Encyclopedia. But we have been very conservative to draw, in terms of the degree of "charming house", the vast majority of second games on the market are better than our games.
Judging from the design of "casual games" and "strong gameplay", it is suitable for all ages to a certain extent, and people of different ages can quickly get started. We hope to attract players through the real gameplay, rather than "the art is plump, the gameplay is skinny". In fact, according to the statistics of the background data, we have a large proportion of female users.
Touch:Not only does it take care of old fans, but it also makes the game more popular, which is not a bad result. But why did you choose this style of pop art-based cuteness?This style of painting is indeed flattering, niche, and unique, but it is also quite recognizable in the game market, and the products that use this style are quite successful and well-known.
Blind Box Party" promotional image.
Daisen:This is also a manifestation of our "borrowing from mature frameworks". The worldview of most of the second tours on the market is relatively depressed and heavy, and most of them are "solemn", either the world is destroyed, or human beings are hungry ......And we wanted to make a second game based on the gameplay of "PVZ" that was casual enough and not too heavy, and the art style you mentioned was just right for our needs.
Touch:Do you have any additional innovations in the arts?
Daisen:We've found that if you just have a character standing dryly facing an enemy in a grid map in PVZ, you don't have a sense of perspective. Plants can stand like this, but the Q version of the villain definitely cannot. Station B up master "Zhuang Buchun" once did the "Plant Niang vs. Zombie" mod,The plant in the mod was replaced with a beautiful girl.,The actual combat effect is a bit weird.,There will also be a blocking relationship between the characters.,Affect the player's perception.。
The combat interface of the early version is similar to Zhuang Buchun's thinking.
It took us a long time to figure this out, and now in the beta version of Blind Box Party, the Q version of the villain is combined with the corresponding themed item, and the height and position have been adjusted through repeated testing. This design not only reduces the learning cost of players, but also brings a lot of novelty.
Another point is to make the blind box in reality into the game. Figuratively speaking, blind box tide play is a very interesting design, which fits the Q version of the villain battle image we want, and the concept is similar to some of the derivative gameplay similar to "random copycats" (a very random mod) in "PVZ". When we set up the project 2 years ago, blind box figures were already very popular, and considering that they may be adapted to some peripheral commercialization in the future, it is also a good creative element.
Touch:I'm still curious about commercialization. There is only one second game like "PVZ" on the market, how can you make a profit?As mentioned earlier, "Blind Box Party" was originally intended to be made into a stand-alone game, but judging from the recent testing, it seems that you are planning to switch to an F2P mobile game
Daisen:We intend to log in to both PC and mobile. The PC side is launched on the Steam platform in the form of a buyout stand-alone machine, while the mobile side is more complicated. In the face of this fact, there are many players who want to experience it for free first, and then consider whether to pay after recognizing the quality of the game, so we will use the free form on the mobile side, even if there is an in-app purchase, it is expected to take the route of light payment, such as opening a monthly card or something. Overall, we felt that by doing so, the project had a better chance of survival.
Steam version of "Buyout Standalone".
This is also the characteristic of the domestic game ecology, making a game with free plus in-app purchase mode is always better than making a stand-alone buyout game. There may be a lot of players who want to see us make a two-dimensional version of "PVZ", which sounds great, but we are only a small project team, and we still have to weigh the pros and cons.
Touch:The game seems to be still being tested. Blind Box Party is tested very frequently, almost once a month. Why do you have so many tests?
Daisen:Because game development is a very long process, if there is no feedback, it is easy to fall into a situation of development behind closed doors - there may be a deviation in the direction of development, but we are unaware of it, and I believe that anyone who has developed a game will understand. And without player feedback, the morale of the whole team will also suffer, and we want to hear more from players and optimize our game based on that feedback.
Touch:This is an attitude that takes the player very seriously, but will too much frequency affect the player's expectations?Most games on the market are only.
The first, second, and third tests, the time of the test is fixed, and the content is concentrated, why is the test process of "Blind Box Party" different from other games?
Daisen:Honestly, the kind of testing process you are talking about works better because the data is centralized, and the team has more time to observe the test, think about the problem, brew, and then improve. But there is a premise of this process, that is, the overall gameplay and tone of the game have already been set, and the test is just to verify the player's experience and stitch up some details.
The gameplay, art and other content of Blind Box Party have some uniqueness, and it is difficult for us to have a clear idea of how it performs in the market. First of all, it's not a bad thing for a small team like ours to collect more data, compared to the big teams, they have a lot of mature experience and may have all kinds of data that can be used for comparison;Secondly, the cost of our test is also lower than theirs, and the cost of modifying the content is also lower, for example, if a player gives us feedback on a bad experience, we can fix it the next day.
Touch:It stands to reason that after two years of precipitation, your current goals and directions should be relatively clear.
Daisen:Yes, there's another important reason why we test so often – we want to create a sense of "co-development with players". We have a dedicated QQ group for players, and every day there will be players in the group who give feedback on their game feelings or specific problems. For example, we will design several avatar schemes for a character, and then give it to the players to vote on, and whichever one gets the most votes, we will make it into the game.
Vote on the character design proposal on station b.
Touch:In a sense, this feeling of walking with players is also in line with the company culture of your Tsundere Studios
Daisen:Yes, we are a small company, and many places may be more casual, but as long as it works. For large team projects, player feedback is easy to fall through, and we want to make an effort to do this for the sake of the player's experience. But for some veteran players, the testing is indeed too frequent, and they will also complain about why they are not yet online.
Touch:When will the game be launched?Are there any difficulties in testing now?
Daisen:It can be launched around the Spring Festival. We now want to make the gameplay a little more interesting, and try to bring more unexpected things to players based on PVZ. For example, we are thinking about how to do elemental reactions in the game, and the elements in PVZ only have a one-sided effect of ice and fire, and lack interaction, but it obviously has more room for expansion.
We don't have an urgent need to make a profit, so we will make the experience in some places very detailed. Let's take a more detailed example, "PVZ" is a stand-alone game, "Blind Box Party" is a mobile game, if we want to take care of the experience of mobile gamers, then we can't copy the levels of "PVZ", "PVZ" The average length of a single game is about 7 minutes, which is slightly longer for mobile game players, so we compressed the rhythm of the level to a certain extent. For example, the sunflowers at the beginning of "PVZ" may wait for 1 minute after planting a column of sunflowers, and from the first level to the 50th level, the beginning is basically this process. We felt that this kind of repetitive work was not necessary in "Blind Box Party", so we gave players more "sunshine" at the beginning of the game, allowing players to go directly to the countermeasures stage and think about how to place the characters.
Deploy first, and then go to war" (*b station "Zhang Mushi").
Touch:Speaking of levels, I see that you have also launched an official editor for players to create freely.
Daisen:Yes, many players may also have creative needs when playing PVZ, but PVZ itself does not have a level editor, so it can only be modified in a more troublesome way. I wanted the level editor to be easy to use, and to be social, so people could share and interact with each other.
Visual level editor.
Touch:Many games with strong level design expansion do not have an official editor, do you have any deeper impetus for the editor?
Daisen:Our level curator itself uses this editor for content design, but there is no UI in the engine, and now we add UI to it, and it becomes an editor that players can use. As far as I know, most games have their own level editing tools, so there should be other reasons for not opening them up to players. But we didn't think too much about it, we did what the players needed. We hope that excellent level creators can be discovered and become well-known level designers in the player community. If you can, maybe invite them to join Tsundere Studio.
Some players have taken advantage of the "nut bowling" mode similar to PVZ to create a music game of smashing monsters and listening to songs.
Touch:This statement is also too pragmatic!
Daisen:Of course, to join, we need a resume and portfolio, and we need to go through the usual process of writing exams and interviews, but having designed quality levels with our editor is a big plus. Now there are 2 level planners in the group, and that's how I got started.
Touch:Finally, I would like to ask you a concluding question, is "Blind Box Party" a special case of the second tour track?It's not commercial enough, but it seems like there's a lot of power pushing it forward, and it's amazing.
Daisen:According to this metaphor, the force can be roughly divided into three strands. The first force comes from the company, many people know that we are a two-dimensional company, but many decisions made are contrary to conventional business intuition, for a long time, my boss and I have not thought about how to make "Blind Box Party" profitable, we just want to make it so that everyone can feel that it is interesting, and the boss has always supported us.
The second force comes from the project team. Our team is small, but the atmosphere is very harmonious. For example, every Wednesday I order milk tea for everyone, and everyone calls me "milk tea tool man" while laughing and working. I am the longest-serving person in the group, and there are some fresh graduates in the group, but there is no generation gap in communication, after all, they are all young people, and they are all two-dimensional enthusiasts.
For example, we have an art classmate who is good at drawing Q version villains, and there are relatively few other projects in the company, and he is more interested in the style of "Blind Box Party", so he joined directly. Or we sometimes lack manpower, so we will often group together to ask for support, and we will get close to each other, and members of other groups will also consider transferring to our group.
The third force comes from the players. Although we don't pursue commerciality a lot of the time, and think more about product quality, the players of the second game track are sticky, and if we do a good job of the product, they will be willing to pay, and have always given us more moral support, as evidenced by the active people in the player base.
These three forces make "Blind Box Party" have a certain peculiarity, but it also has to face some problems with small teams and second-game tracks. If our particularity can bring some solutions to these problems and bring a good experience to players, then I think the efforts of the project team members of "Blind Box Party" are meaningful.