In recent years, many practitioners have begun to talk about the concept of "Chinese-style second tour". On the one hand, with the increase of pan-users of the second game, the traditional concept of the second game can no longer meet the needs of more players; On the other hand, the competition in the second game track is becoming increasingly fierce, and how to break the situation has become a difficult problem that many manufacturers and project teams are thinking about.
"Walking with the New Moon" was born in such an environment.
So far, the number of reservations for "Walking with the New Moon" has reached 1.23 million. I've met some players who are interested in New Moon Walk, and many of them said that they were attracted by the Cantonese style and new weird elements in the game's PV.
Crescent Moon Companion reservation interface.
At the beginning of December 2023, "New Moon Companion" opened the second test "box-level test". After participating in the test, my feeling is that the game is in a pretty good state by the standards of small manufacturers, and it can be said to be an excellent attempt to integrate Chinese elements and niche culture. On the other hand, there is still a lot of room for polishing the game, and more refined polishing means higher costs, which is often a difficult requirement for small manufacturers, but "New Moon Companion" obviously has more possibilities.
After the second test, I chatted with Van Ba, the producer of "Walking with the New Moon", about the design concept of the game.
The development team of "New Moon Walking" has nearly 10 years of experience. Their predecessor was 3000 Tang in Shenzhen, and they did a second game called "Mind War", which had a good reputation in the player circle, but due to profit problems, "Mind War" was closed in mid-2019. Subsequently, on the basis of a certain experience in the second tour project, they began to plan a new project, which lasted one year and conceived the concept and core idea of "Walking with the New Moon". Fanba told me that after they received investment from Shenzhen Shangyou Network in the second half of 2020, Candlepay Network was established as a subsidiary, and "New Moon Companion" entered the formal research and development stage.
The last dynamic of Mind Wars.
The main reason why the project team chose New Weird Talk as the core idea was because of "liking". Every creator is a lover of supernatural works, and in the plot of the previous work "Mind War", there is content with the theme of urban supernatural fantasy.
"We loved supernatural things, we liked new weird stories, and we liked science fiction. In the final analysis, these themes are all about people—what kind of attitude will people present in various situations, and what kind of thinking can this presentation bring us? ”
He recommended the award-winning short film Black Hole at the Cannes Film Festival. In the film, a company employee prints out a piece of paper with a "black hole" on it while working the night shift, which gives the paper the ability to penetrate. So the clerk had evil thoughts, pasted the paper on the boss's safe, and kept taking out the money inside. In the end, he was too slow and got into the safe, only to see the paper fall off and he was trapped inside.
The actor who is excited after taking out the money in "Black Hole".
The key element of the short film is this piece of paper. In this bizarre setting, people may have some inspiration or associations with the audience by using these things to interact. This is also closer to our understanding of the 'new weirdness' - to interpret it in a modern, rational and scientific way, or to understand those things that are relatively grotesque, weird, and incomprehensible. Combining our understanding of new strange stories with the appeal of humanistic stories is the original intention of the project of "Walking with the New Moon". ”
Boss design with a new weird twist.
Starting from the direction that the project team is good at and wants to do, this choice is certainly good. I asked the Brahma, "How do you think about the commerciality of the subject matter?" And how do you find a balance between two-dimensional and new weirdness? ”
We've done a range of user research. When discussing the second dimension in China, it is difficult to detach from the influence of Japanese comics, so we will also pay attention to the development of Japanese ACG culture. In this process, we will also find many literary and artistic works with strange stories, new strange stories or supernatural themes, which are not too niche. "In 2020, there may be a large number of games on the market, such as machine girls and 'ship likes', so we will think that we must first avoid these mainstream things, and then look for something worthy of further research and polishing." So we chose New Weird, which is not necessarily a win or has a lot of commercial value in the market, but it is worth choosing. ”
The pixel-style weird dialogue has a certain "cuteness".
In addition to "New Strange Tales", "Walking with the New Moon" also shows a large number of Cantonese cultural elements. This is always reminiscent of the common "Chinese-style second game" saying in the player base. I asked the Brahmanas how to understand this concept.
Brahmanba said they didn't pay much attention to the title. "For the Japanese, the second dimension is already a relatively common visual carrier, and it is possible that generations have been familiar with this form of expression. Therefore, after many domestic two-dimensional games 'go overseas' to Japan, they will find that the portraits of users are not quite the same, and the age group is higher overall. According to the same logic, ACG will also have a unique development situation in China. We will find out now,Guoman's influence is getting bigger and bigger,Is Riman not good enough? Not necessarily. For example, I also began to find that the children in my relatives' families are more willing to listen to Chinese matches even if they watch Japanese comics. ”
According to Van Ba, "Walking with the New Moon" is more like a natural state of development of Eryou in China. In addition to the two-dimensional art style and the content performance of the new weird theme in the game, there are quite a lot of Chinese elements. It's not easy to bring these things together and pursue coordination. It is worth mentioning that in the design process, the project team did not deliberately pursue the current popular national fashion style. "If you go after [Guochao], you may immediately understand that these are Chinese elements, but we want to make something 'Chinese' that has a little flavor and is different from others. ”
Van Ha told me that many Cantonese elements are used in the game, and this is not "making characteristics for the sake of making characteristics", but this kind of local culture is originally in line with the needs of new weird topics.
For new weird stories, emphasizing a certain regional characteristic is a natural expression - to make a familiar thing around the character suddenly become unfamiliar, in order to achieve a weird and unique effect, regional characteristic symbols are one of the most convenient materials. For "New Moon Walking", Cantonese culture is precisely to meet the needs of domestic players.
We chose a familiar angle to cut into. Many people in the project team have the impression that the city in Guangdong is a 'city of people', and the living atmosphere here is full of human touch, which meets our desire to tell people's stories. This is also quite in line with the public's impression of Guangdong cities - "vest slippers" and "drinking idle tea", with a strong market atmosphere.
Eating is also an important part of Cantonese culture.
Van Ba gave me the example of Guangzhou, which is the prototype of the city of Nanting in the game. "Guangzhou is a city where East and West, ancient and modern, and different cultures converge. It has a history of thousands of years, and at the same time it is a highly developed and modern city, in which we can see many places that seem to be separated, but in fact they are naturally integrated. For example, during the Midyear Festival every year, there will be many elderly people burning paper at the intersection to worship, which has a very traditional atmosphere; And when you go to the Tianhe side, you will see many skyscrapers, all of which are high-tech. This sense of fragmentation and impact provides a good foundation for us to tell a new Chinese-style weird story. Moreover, Guangdong culture is widely spread and relatively well-known, and the acceptance of domestic players is also relatively high. ”
"Canton Tower" in the game
In the second-game market, the selection concept of "Crescent Moon Companion" is unique, but it also brings some problems - lack of learning and reference from previous experience. For example, for the artists in the project team, their previous experience was more focused on some fantasy things, but now they have become less confident when they want to paint some more down-to-earth and humane Chinese content. It's not that they can't draw it, but they think about it, "Is this feeling correct?" and "Is it really okay to draw like this?"
A humane, down-to-earth streetscape.
For another example, in the plot performance, in order to achieve a better sense of immersion and experience, Van Ba hopes that the characters will hide ** and equipment during dialogue. This approach is somewhat contrary to the logic of commercial games - on the one hand, second-game players pay more attention to the image of the character, and ** and equipment need to be displayed as the selling point of the character; But on the other hand, from the perspective of the story, when going through a very lyrical plot, the characters carry a lot of bells and whistles, and it is inevitable that there will be a sense of disobedience. For a long time, the project team was thinking about balance, and they were worried that if the ** and equipment were not revealed, the character's performance in the plot might become mediocre.
In the end, we chose to strengthen the display in battle, but hide the ** and equipment during the story. Judging from the results, the story atmosphere is better, and the test also confirms that we are doing the right thing. ”
In a sense, the test of "Walking with the New Moon" is the process by which the project team members test these "uncertainties". Luckily, most of the feedback from players on the game's features has been benign.
Compared with the first exposure, the content related to the second test has a higher popularity.
In terms of game features, another thing that interests me about New Moon is "stylization". I asked Van Ba how the project team thought of the stylistic characteristics of "Walking with the New Moon".
Van Hachi denied my claim: "The project team rarely talks about the word 'style', and they don't think that 'Walking with the New Moon' is a research and development that is done with 'stylization'. We think that 'stylization' is an extremely prominent state, giving people a very strong visual feeling. "Walking with the New Moon" is not yet 'stylized', and we prefer to say that it has its own characteristics. ”
According to this logic, the characteristics of "Walking with the New Moon" are very obvious. As a small to medium-sized project, it is not easy to do this at a limited cost – there may not be enough people and time. For this reason, it is important to make content trade-offs during the development process, i.e. "spend the money where it is".
Van Hachi told me that "Walking with the New Moon" has also made many trade-offs. At the time of the project, they considered whether to do 3D, at that time there were already some 3D second games popular in the market, "Honkai Impact 3" and "Battle Double Pamish" have a strong ability to attract money, and many people in the industry regard 3D as the mainstream of the second game in the future. But Van Ba is very clear that a 2D second game team, if they want to switch to a 3D project, it will take a considerable amount of cost and energy, and it is difficult for them to make such a choice.
We decided to do 2D anyway, and we wanted to do it to the extreme. Van Eight said confidently.
In order to achieve a good enough and distinctive 2D art effect. The project team has extremely high requirements for art-related R&D personnel, from characters, scenes to animation, almost every person in charge of the art module has a very beautiful work experience. When doing the publicity and distribution of PV, it is not a certain two or three people who are responsible alone, but from the person in charge of operations, the person in charge of copywriting, to the art staff, multi-post collaborative design, repeated polishing, and finally presented to players.
This polishing has a fairly intuitive visual presentation. I was particularly impressed by one of the main factions in the game, the "Super Authority", the character's costume design and the overall color coordination, which made people feel that the game put enough effort into the art aspect.
Sketch of the design of the SuperAuthority.
Van Hachi introduced to me: "The Super Control Bureau is an organization that specializes in dealing with all kinds of crisis accidents, and it needs to maintain a high degree of rationality at all times and face all kinds of supernatural phenomena with a scientific attitude. Therefore, the unified colors we set for the Supercontroller are orange, black, and silver-white, which is similar to the stainless steel color in the sci-fi films of the 90s of the last century, which will give players the impression of a brutal aesthetic and can present the sense of age in the game; As for orange, there is a saying in the international environment called 'international orange', which is relatively easy to identify in various rescue missions and symbolizes high-risk mission workers. At the same time, the character will have a pattern such as a scale, ruler, or pointer. ”
The equipment of the Super Control Bureau characters is also different from the traditional guns and swords. Because their primary purpose is not to fight, but to 'deal with' a variety of paranormal phenomena and events, the equipment needs to embody a 'sense of tool' that can solve problems. Combined with this line of thinking, as well as early copywriting design, the devices we can see today include pliers, compasses, vernier calipers, ......and so onNot only the super management bureau, but when we do each camp, we will first finalize the core element of impression setting, and then continue to move forward based on this criterion in the subsequent design. Vatican said.
Equipment display of the role of the Super-Management Bureau.
Compared to the new weird theme, Cantonese cultural elements and quite distinctive art style, the gameplay of "Walking with the New Moon" is more "conventional" - using a 2D turn-based system. Frankly speaking, this kind of combat system, unless it can be designed to be innovative enough, is not very attractive to today's second-game players.
But for "Walking with the New Moon", turn-based is a more suitable choice for the project team. "Human energy is very limited, and when you want to excel in a lot of things, it can end up causing each of your modules to be balanced. The end result is a mediocre thing, with no features. "Many of our main creators are fans of action games, such as the 'Souls' series, and they also thought about making action games with heavy gameplay when the project was first established, but action games are expensive and a big red ocean." With these in mind, we will choose a gameplay that can do a good job, and our past experience is relatively turn-based, so we chose turn-based. ”
Despite this, it is not an easy task to deal with the conventional gameplay well, show a good state, and not show shortcomings. Van Hachi taught me that no matter what kind of game, the gameplay is important. The main creators have experienced many side-scrolling games, such as the works of the Vanilla Society, as well as "Mountain and Sea Traveler", "Shadow Torch City", "Raccoon Hard Detective", "Dark Detective", "Darq" and so on.
Battle-versus-enemy interface.
These games did not bring a complete gameplay breakthrough inspiration to "Walking with the New Moon", but they also gave the main creative team a lot of references. This is where the game's combat is based on performances - as a commercial second game, "Crescent Moon Companion" needs to achieve as good results as possible.
Some puzzle-solving games will split the plot to give players more room for choice, which we also intuitively present in several large exploration dungeons. The management took the time to learn about film and television directing, which is then used to support the current show. "We will spend more energy trying to add emotion to the performance, so that players can have a better content experience." We have made considerable efforts at the narrative level to present a variety of pictures through details such as **, lens, light and shadow, and even standing. ”
The dynamics of the skill during combat.
Although the project team strives to bring players a unique feeling in terms of combat, objectively speaking, the game's development module has been criticized by players during the testing process. Many players have reported that there are too few resources, and there will be some difficulties in developing characters, although they will not be too stuck, but the experience is not very good. This confirms the project team's "limited energy" and the impossibility of doing everything. But fortunately, the game is still waiting for the version number, and the project team has plenty of time to make adjustments.
Van Hachi is not afraid of these challenges, he has seen the tragic situation of the "Second Tour Battle Royale" last year, and knows that rushing or rushing to the line will not bring good results. "We have all noticed the problem and are trying to figure out how to plan it, but the time for the second test is tight, and we can't make optimizations or adjustments immediately. Overall, the test performed well, and based on player feedback, we have more confidence in the differences and features made in Crescent Companion. But at the same time, we are also deeply aware that in the face of the increasingly competitive market, we still have a lot of things that we do not do well. ”
In the exchange with Vatican Eight, what impressed me was the importance that the project team of "Walking with the New Moon" attached to the content. Or rather, they answer the question: How far can a small vendor go with content? It is true that the manpower and financial resources of small manufacturers cannot be compared with those of large manufacturers, but they can still make the game distinctive enough. They don't have unrealistic goals, they just strive to develop a suitable and good project as a way to impress players and give them a sense of experience.
To this end, "New Moon Companion" has also made some different attempts, inviting online writer Bai Bohuan to be the main writer, which is one of them. Bai Bohuan is quite famous in the online literature circle, and his masterpiece "Strategic Angel" also takes the supernatural phenomenon with Chinese characteristics as the theme, and the creative style and content tend to coincide with "Walking with the New Moon".
Strategic Angel has been hailed as "a masterpiece of original online literary transformation in the past 20 years".
Under the introduction of a friend's friend, Fan Ba and Bai Bohuan met. "We talked a bit and found out that many aspects were very compatible. Fan Ba said that Bai Bohuan is also interested in games and wants to try his hand at game copywriting. However, in reality, although both need to be created, game planning places a lot of emphasis on project experience, and Bai Bohuan is almost blank in this regard. Many players have expressed concern about this.
In the end, the project team still decided to trust Bai Bohuan. "Mr. Bai Bohuan may not be good at labeling resources or performance scheduling, which requires a long adaptation process, but now we are more relieved of the script he is responsible for. Fanba said that they recognized Bai Bohuan's accumulation and ideas in the field of local urban abilities and new weird stories, his thinking and ** on the core of the plot, and the in-depth shaping and portrayal of the characters, "The highly praised 'Day of Great Awakening' and 'Non-existent Apartment' during the second test were all from Bai Bohuan's teacher. The popular Kanban Niang Qianqiu, who is also a character incubated by Teacher Bohuan and me, Qianqiu looks like he is giggling, but he is actually carrying a lot of things. According to our observation of the second test, in the speech of the protagonist in the second chapter of the main story, many players felt the strength and difficulty of Chiaki, which also made them further have a good impression of Chiaki. ”
Non-existent apartment.
The design of the ancestral temple of the "Day of Great Awakening".
Chiki styling. Finally, I asked Vatican what his vision is for "Walking with the New Moon". His answer was very simple: "We hope to make a game like this with local urban supernatural, new weird stories and sci-fi content, and we also hope that the final effort will have a chance to be seen by everyone." During the second test, we will pay attention to a lot of criticism, and we will also thank the players for their recognition. There are some designs, which may be more delicate and smaller, and when there are players who do see them, as creators, we feel very pure happiness. ”