This year's casual game track can be described as wonderful, especially at the end of the year, after the launch of Tencent's family carnival mobile game "Yuan Dream Star", it has dominated the iOS free list for 13 consecutive days, and ranked among the top 10 best-selling lists, refreshing the industry and players' perception of party games in one fell swoop.
However, unexpectedly, while the family carnival sub-category is in full swing, Tencent launched a new leisure product "Chong Ya!" todayCookie Man: Kingdom (hereinafter referred to as "Cookie Man Kingdom"), and on the first day, it was on the iOS free list TOP1 and the best-selling list TOP10. It is obviously not easy to break out of the encirclement under the attack of family resources.
What makes the cookie man rush out of the cracks?
We can't help but look at its R&D manufacturer, DevSisters, who has incubated the top IP of "Cookie Man" for more than 10 years, and has appeared in many IP derivative games such as "CookieRun: Ovenbreak" and "CookieRun: Darkestnight". According to relevant statistics, the cumulative number of registrations of this series of games has exceeded 200 million in the past ten years.
In 2021, after the card development + simulation management game "Gingerbread Man Kingdom" was launched overseas, it not only quickly became a "national-level mobile game" in South Korea, but also won many awards such as Google Play's best game of the year + the most popular of the year that year.
Although the highlight results in the overseas market confirm the excellent quality of the work, considering that the game itself is not a new product in the absolute sense, and the limited influence of the "Cookie Man" IP in China, it means that introducing it to the country as it is not necessarily easy to "lie down and win".
Perhaps it is based on this consideration that we found that Tencent chose to focus on "localization" innovation in both content and publicity, and simultaneously focused on "localization" innovation, not only polishing the experience to better meet the needs of Chinese players, but also completing the accurate penetration of the core audience group of young people.
Under the cute IP image, it is a fairy tale charm that is brave and optimistic and keeps running forward.
When it comes to the content characteristics of "Cookie Man Kingdom", in addition to the soft and cute art style, what cannot be avoided is the world view with a strong "fairy tale" atmosphere.
The work is based on the plot of five "cookie heroes" against ** "Dark Witch Biscuit", which tells the story of a biscuit protagonist group exploring the bread continent many years later, and rebuilding the biscuit kingdom together while traveling to the pure vanilla kingdom, the holy berry kingdom and other places.
When mountains, rivers, lakes and seas are transformed into bread and desserts, and when monsters that should be vicious appear in the form of playful "cake puppies", a fairytale-like immersive world is formed.
In the journey of following the protagonist's group of adventures, players can not only immerse themselves in the development of the plot through well-made animated CGs, but also establish a three-dimensional cognition of the whole world and each character little by little through witty and interesting stories, and feel the relaxed and casual atmosphere of the game.
The protagonist of the story, Brave Biscuit, is loved by everyone, because of the bloody lines and settings of two of them, he is ridiculed by hot-blooded fools. Such a fairy-tale world, the story of the constant struggle to defeat the witch and the evil dragon, may make the real players feel a touch of relaxation. Such contrasts are not uncommon, and the explosion of Kapibala and Loopy does not confirm the user's need for relaxation and childlike empathy.
On this basis, Tencent also followed the idea of "localization innovation" this time, and added the first national style biscuit "Golden Cinnamon Biscuit" to the national costume with the "Golden Cinnamon", which symbolizes noble wealth and auspiciousness, as the anchor, so as to better arouse the emotional resonance of Chinese players.
Under the skin and "emotion", the skeleton of the gameplay has become the key to carrying it all.
On the basis of polishing the "skin" and "emotion" to be brilliant enough, it further integrates the two sets of gameplay of "leisure cards" and "simulation management" to make the fun more diverse.
Among them, the casual card gameplay carries the function of promoting the development of the plot, unlocking the map, and providing conditions for upgrading, and the battle is almost in the form of "placement", and the player has no operational needs except for the release of skills, so that the zero threshold and lightweight design consolidates the casual main tone of the work, and because the combat process is smooth and cool, the sensory feedback in the whole process is all in line with the theme of bravery.
The "simulated management" gameplay has a very low threshold in terms of design, and at the same time, it is rich in building types, high in construction freedom and very outstanding in interactive expression.
For example, in addition to the functional buildings involved in production and combat, the game also provides more than 600 decorative buildings for players to freely create a vast "cookie kingdom" that meets their own imagination, instantly adding a lot of freedom to card play.
What's even more eye-catching is that each "cookie man" in the kingdom not only has vivid movements, expressions, lines and other dynamic performances, but also interacts with specific decorative buildings through the player's dragging, so that the entire kingdom can also present a vibrant scene, bringing players a stronger sense of satisfaction.
It is worth noting that in order to bring players a better "simulated operation" experience, Tencent has also carried out a lot of "localization tuning" for the national server. For example, the new characteristic UGC gameplay "Sea Breeze Map Society" has built a platform for players to share and use various molded building modules.
In addition, there are also details such as the addition of the "Mutual Aid" function in the production of the Wishing Tree Train, which strengthens the social nature of the game, and reduces the pressure of the game and improves the player experience by reducing the number of daily needs of the Wishing Tree, optimizing the convenience function of the research institute, and increasing the initial supply of gold.
After the actual experience, Gamerres believes that whether it is the fairy tale atmosphere set off by the world view, narrative, cookie man characters, etc., or the combination of lightweight card gameplay and high freedom of "simulation management", it marks that the game has a unique competitiveness in the current leisure track, and it is easy to win the favor of young office workers who prefer fragmentation and casual game fun.
With young people's content preferences as the anchor, we will create "localized" creative breakthrough publicity
As the saying goes: "The aroma of wine is also afraid of deep alleys." ”
The excellent quality alone obviously can't support the top 1 performance of the iOS overall list, and Gameres observed that what complements high-quality content is Tencent's publicity breakthrough of accurately anchoring the core audience group of "young people".
On December 8, it took the lead in disclosing the linkage with the national snack brand "Want Want", in addition to saying that it will "mimic the cake" of snacks such as Want Want Snow Cake and Want Want Xianbei, and launch creative linkage characters, players will also have the opportunity to get exclusive decorations for linkage.
Immediately afterwards, the game further officially announced the linkage decision with "The Legend of Zhen Huan" on December 10, and released a witty and interesting vlog to convey the relaxed and casual product atmosphere of the game to young users.
On the same day, the game also joined hands with Lan Yingying, the actor of "Shen Meizhuang" in "The Legend of Zhen Huan", as well as the actor of "Huanbi", Huan Xi, and Tao Xinran, the actor of "An Lingrong", respectively, released a group of ** carrying "biscuit conspicuous bags", thanks to the influence of the two, this blockbuster linkage has also completed the rapid fission spread in major social media.
The official also announced the free exchange activity of the "Cookie Conspicuous Pack" on the same night, which completed the aggregation of this wave of traffic and the targeted conversion of interested users for the first time.
Thanks to the "publicity and distribution combination punch" played around "The Legend of Zhen Huan", a national-level film and television drama that everyone loves, the work has completed the directional breakthrough penetration of the pan-entertainment group before it is launched, and many players have also expressed their expectations for this linkage through secondary content such as emojis and personality tests on Weibo and other social media.
From the 21st to the 28th, "Biscuit Man Kingdom" held a number of offline themed flash mob activities on Yuyuan Road in Shanghai, and implanted a large number of "Biscuit Man" and "Shuangdan" element designs on the scene to enhance the atmosphere.
During this period, the game also cooperated with Xiaohongshu to launch an online activity with the theme of "Cookie Man Escape Plan", which attracted a large number of young people to check in, and many people posted the scene on Xiaohongshu**, which made a sufficient warm-up for the game's launch today.
And at 7 o'clock tonight, the work is even more hand-in-hand with Huang Zihongfan, the young gang master, the B station up master sheep cuisine, Xiaoyao Sanren, as well as Hua Ling, Liu Zhaokun, Zhong Ke three well-known CVs, ** opened a live broadcast of the "cake conference", which pushed the popularity of the game to a new climax.
Looking back at the promotion strategy of the game, Gameres believes that the core keywords are "precision" and "localization".
Among them, "precision" is reflected in the fact that after the work has insight into "young office workers" as the core audience, it has penetrated and covered them through publicity and distribution"Localization" is reflected in the fact that all its publicity and distribution behaviors have always revolved around the living habits and content preferences of young Chinese people.
For example, the linkage with "Want Want" is not only because it has the interoperability point of "cookies" with games, but also an attempt to seek resonance with the daily consumption of young people such as China's post-95s and post-00sThe linkage of "The Legend of Zhen Huan" is to hope that the game can link the content preferences of pan-entertainment young user groups and form a benign resonance with themThe pop-up event in cooperation with Xiaohongshu is also based on the habit of contemporary Chinese office workers and college students who are keen to visit stores, citywalk and share their lives online.
Thanks to this, the game also successfully won the favor of a large number of players during the warm-up period, laying a solid foundation for its success after its launch.
Conclusion
It's not hard to imagine that the soft and ** "Rush!".Biscuit Man Kingdom" has a firm heart, so as to get out of the trap of the family carnival.
Excellent localized operation and publicity have directly found the inner belonging of national server players, and telling the stories of national server players through the IP of cookie people has undoubtedly become a warm current under the current game market. However, the market competition in 2024 is still fierce, and the results on the first day are commendable, but the hard work of long-term operation still needs to be verified. Looking at the Want Want linkage and Zhen Huan biscuits that will be launched in the future, as well as countless biscuit adventure stories, next year should be more worth looking forward to.
Everyone may have their own answer to what kind of cookie person to become, but running forward bravely and enthusiastically should be the common answer of all players and project teams. (Wen Nanshan).