Ten years ago, "Seven Nights" played "Bad Ending" because of market factors. Ten years later, the creators made a comeback, not believing they would play the "reincarnation" ending in the game.
Text/Team Leader
Seven Nights, full name seven nights: Redemption, is a one-person horror adventure mobile game released in 2009 and produced by Chengdu Dingguo Technology. "Seven Nights" has a 3D technology and narrative standard ahead of the times, but it was born in an era that was particularly gray for domestic single-player games.
It was nominated for "Best 3D Game" at the 2007 International Mobile Game Awards (IMGA) as early as the Demo stage, an award of nature equivalent to the "Oscars" in the field of mobile games. Dingguo Technology was also invited to participate in many exhibitions, but they refused one by one because they could not afford the booth fee. Two years later, the game was released, and the flood of cracking and piracy made the production staff who guarded the backstage sales data feel desperate. "Seven Nights" has thus become a legend of early death.
However, in May this year, the news of the remake of "Seven Nights" came out incredibly, and the development team invited the original producers and some of the start-ups. The team's development logs on the Indienova website show that the remake of "Seven Nights" has reached 40% progress and is scheduled to be released in 2021.
Seven Nights: Redemption homepage on Indienova
More than a decade ago, Nokia and its often equipped Symbian system still dominated the domestic mobile phone market, due to performance limitations, the games on mobile phones were basically 2D or 2.5D. However, in 2007, "Seven Nights" has won the top spot in the technical level with more delicate 3D pictures in a number of stand-alone mobile games.
From modeling, light and shadow to operation, Seven Nights has achieved the 3D architecture that very few games can do at that time
The game is based on Ding Guo's self-developed Soft 3D engine, and all game graphics and cutscenes are rendered in real time without any hardware acceleration, so it can support most of the popular mobile phone models at that time. The game also runs smoothly on multiple platforms including Symbian, Brew, and Wince, with reduced capacity to just a few megabytes.
As a horror adventure game, Seven Nights has really put a lot of effort into creating a creepy atmosphere. The separate opening animation with the sound of "squeaking", the eerie background music with "just the right timing", the loud sound of running water in the general scene, the loneliness and anxiety created by the sound of footsteps, and the sudden turn into a bloody scene make many players who want to experience "Seven Nights" prohibitive.
At that time, a popular saying was to compare "Seven Nights" to "domestic Silent Hill", although it can be seen that there is indeed a reference, but "Seven Nights" still has a unique temperament.
"Seven Nights" tells the story of a famous horror writer who one day encounters a strange incident in the suburban villa where he usually lives, and is trapped in it and cannot leave. Over the next seven days, the protagonist will experience a series of events that are both real and illusory, each with a specific theme. Players will need to explore the room to find key props to advance the story based on letters and narration prompts, and encounter some symbolic monsters along the way.
Bloody scenes usually mean that the protagonist is hallucinating
Compared with the "Silent Hill" series, the clue guidance of "Seven Nights" is clearer, focusing more on the personal experience and heart of the protagonist, and the novelist's identity setting brings the strange intersection of imagination, text and reality. Although the game's plot is relatively linear, it also provides more than one ending depending on the degree of exploration.
Anyone who remembers Seven Nights today wouldn't mind using the word "God's work" to describe it. In that era, on a mobile platform, Seven Nights could afford all the praise. However, no amount of praise will help, due to market factors, "Seven Nights" and Dingguo Technology eventually came to an end.
Screenshots from the comment area under the homepage of Douban's "Seven Nights", almost all of them are five-star reviews
According to the original producer Tang Kai recalled, when they first wanted to do "Seven Nights" only because they saw that IMGA had a competition, they thought that if they won an award for making a game, they could bring more opportunities for Dingguo Technology, and they did not consider too many questions about the market environment.
In December 2007, "Seven Nights" was nominated for "Best 3D Game" by IMGA, and Tang Kai and several creators were very excited and sprinkled with the bold words "We will be China's Blizzard". In order to complete the production as soon as possible, the development team of "Seven Nights" was expanded from the initial 7 to 13 people, and all the staff participated in the research and development.
Records from the IMGA website
During the period, the IMGA organizers wrote to ding guo many times to invite Ding Guo to attend some important meetings, but Tang Kai said that they did not have the money to "travel" at all. Later, they were invited to participate in MWC2008, knowing that MWC is the top event in the field of mobile communications! But in the same way, they could only refuse on the grounds of being "too poor", after all, the exhibition fee had to cost 6300 euros, and the average salary of their team at that time was about 200 euros, that is, less than 2000 yuan.
What Tang Kai did not expect was that the enthusiastic organizers thought that they did not see the price clearly, resended the email three times in a row, and reissued it with the label of RSVP (French: please reply), and marked the price in black bold font. At this point, they felt that they could not easily cope with the past, and carefully replied to a long email explaining their situation and saying that if possible, they would ask the organizers for help.
Of course, IMGA is not a charity, and Dingguo Technology ultimately failed to appear on the international stage with their most proud works.
In June 2009, in order to officially release the game on the 15th, the development team worked overtime to solve the problem of the server, after "Seven Nights" had announced an extension. However, the problem of the server was very tricky, and they could not handle it until the 15th, and they could only manually restart it as soon as they encountered a crash.
Unable to negotiate with the publisher, they chose to sell the game activation code on Taobao, with a unit price of 18 yuan. Taobao can't automatically ship before reaching a transaction volume of 8,000 yuan, and can only operate manually, which further increases the workload of developers - they originally have no dedicated customer service.
On the evening of the 15th, Tang Kai and three colleagues stayed up late to work overtime to send activation codes to each buyer who did not know at what hour. But you can't believe that a few people have been working all night and have sold more than 10 games in one night, earning less than 200 yuan.
What makes them even more chilling is that there are people disguised as buyers who mix into the after-sales group in order to deceive a little so-called "technical information", and then run to other forums to post to discuss how to crack it.
Within a few days, the pirated version of "Seven Nights" had spread all over the Internet. At this time, some genuine users are still complaining that the verification method of the game is too cumbersome.
Ding Guo Technology silently endured everything.
"Seven Nights" sold less than 200 copies in three days. They no longer have the courage and confidence to spend two or three years developing a high-quality game, and then drowning it in the so-called "garbage bin" mobile app "treasure chest".
After "Seven Nights", Dingguo Technology released the 3D action game "Heaven and Earth Road" in May 2010. The following year, due to disagreements with the investor's ideas, the original team of Dingguo Technology resigned en masse.
Poster of "The Way of Heaven and Earth"
In September 2011, some members of Ding Guo reorganized Chengdu Qilu Technology Co., Ltd. In 2013, Qilu Technology received new investment and changed its name to JimuQile Technology Co., Ltd., but in 2015, with the withdrawal of investors, the team was dissolved. During this time, QiLu has only appeared in some lesser-known games such as "God vs. Zombies", "Magic Defenders", and "Demon King Momoda".
In May 2018, the registered company of the original Qilu Technology cancelled its corporate certification, and Dingguo Technology seems to never see us again.
Who would have thought that a group of gamers with too many unwilling and regretful hearts have never forgotten their own work "Seven Nights", and have always noticed that players have been mentioning "Seven Nights" from time to time over the years. In Hangzhou in 2019, a group of new and old members gathered together and invited Tang Kai and other original creators to plan the use of Unreal Engine 4 to remake "Seven Nights: Redemption" according to the standards of contemporary console games.
"Seven Nights" remake launch screen (in development screen, does not represent the final state)
It was also a redemption for themselves.
How the decision to remake was made is unclear. But what is certain is that there are unimaginable difficulties in this: the re-integration of personnel, the learning cost of new engines and new technologies, the degree of restoration and expansion of the work... To complete a project that benchmarks the main game at an industrial level, even if the original process is only a few hours, it is not easy to do.
Anyway, they want to try again. One of the important reasons is that they believe that "the domestic stand-alone environment is getting better."
Although the latest development logs on Indienova show that the remake of Seven Nights has reached 40% progress, the actual development difficulty is still much higher than they expected. The team "walked into some pits in the early stage and encountered many problems in tool development, scene optimization, and art assets." ”
Screenshot of the remake of the game (in development)
The remake version determines that the starting platform is PC, the host platform is a little later, and the mobile port plan is also under consideration. The company where the new team is located is Hangzhou Yupo Technology, just like the original "Black Myth", the most pressing problem is still to recruit people. They are currently releasing recruitment information on platforms such as Boss Direct Hire and Indienova, of which 3D modeling art, Unreal 4 technical art, and 3D animator are urgent positions.
So, how will the remake of Seven Nights change from the original?
The most intuitive, of course, is that the expressiveness of the picture will not be the same. Judging from the real machine screenshots in the development log, the remake of the screen is basically close to the first-class level of this generation's masterpieces.
Such expressiveness is not easy to come by. For example, when the team first made the character models and scenes separately, they were satisfied with the effect. However, once the character model is implemented into the scene, various problems are encountered. Too much or too little light will make the character model look a little strange, either lacking texture or pasting together. In order to solve this problem, the team tried a lot of solutions, and optimized the scene and character synchronously, and the current effect is not bad.
Light and shadow effects before optimization
Optimized light and shadow effects
The remake will be fully faithful to the original, but it will also add more details and even add some side stories to enrich the game content. The background settings of each character have also been improved and refined.
Level event flowchart at 30% progress
In terms of combat system, the remake version has been completely reinvented. Although the original game has some combat flow, it is mostly non-essential combat, and several mandatory boss battles have no action elements. The remake not only adds more types of weapons and monsters, but also makes more complex settings for the enemy's action logic (AI), from camouflage, patrol, and alert to attack, chase, injury, and death, and each state contains a variety of actions.
The strange maid in Seven Nights
A simple schematic of combat system planning
In addition, the game will follow the remake of Resident Evil (2nd and 3rd generation), using a third-person over-the-shoulder perspective, and in some special scenes, in order to create a special game experience, other camera schemes may be used.
The news of the remake of "Seven Nights" has not yet spread very widely, but those who hear about it are all impressed. In many game communities, in addition to repeating the machine-style brush "Ye Qing Hui", there are also many generous admissions that they played pirated copies, this time must make up the ticket back.
Ten years ago, "Seven Nights" played "Bad Ending" because of market factors. Ten years later, the creators made a comeback, not believing they would play the "reincarnation" ending in the game. A member of the development team said in the player exchange group: "'Black Myth' is a step to the sky, positioned as an international 3A. Let's try a domestic AAA first, and play the game as soon as possible. ”
They didn't expect the "Seven Nights" remake to raise a banner and create some unborn miracle, and their decision may have been based on the craftsman's dedication to his work—a good work deserves a more enthusiastic response, right?
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