In terms of topicality, there are not many people who can break the wrist with the "meta-universe" in the game circle in the past year, but the mobile game must be one of them. Although it is not a new thing, the needs of players are like a historical cycle, after the explosion of liver krypton, the Placement of Buddhist mobile games ushered in another concentrated outbreak in 2021.
In addition to "One Thought Getaway", which killed everyone in the Chinese mainland market, the best-selling list of the Japanese market, such as "Place Girl" and "Live Wild Ball", is also on the long-term list. Previously, GameLook has also reported on a number of popular mobile games in Hong Kong and Taiwan, China.
Now, the spring breeze of placing mobile games has finally blown to the Korean market, which has always liked to lock players in front of the screen. In the past year's Korean list, there have been several representative popular mobile games. In the middle of a number of explosive liver games, mobile games with diverse styles, rich themes and casual gameplay have also become a rare clear stream in the Korean game market. Below, GameLook will briefly introduce three of these distinctive Korean placement games.
Place the ninja-real machine demo
Idle Ninja
As you can see from the straightforward title of the game, Place Ninja is a place game with the theme of ninja combat. The game, which was launched in March last year, did not forget to rub the heat of "Naruto" in the promotional map, and the game character's iconic blonde orange suit and ninja forehead are naturally reminiscent of Naruto Naruto, the male protagonist of "Naruto".
However, the game content and gameplay basically have nothing to do with Naruto. As a standard placement game, the core gameplay of automatic monster upgrading and accumulating materials is naturally the main content of this game. Although the battle process is completely automatic, in addition to the regular equipment and skills, the game also has a consumable design such as blood bottles, which also makes players need to go online from time to time to confirm whether they need to "replenish".
The art style is one of the main selling points of this game. Compared with the advertising monetization game, "Place Ninja" undoubtedly has a stronger sense of refinement, although the entry into the battle screen uses the Q version of the standing painting, but each character still has a normal proportion of high-quality commercial standing painting. In terms of UI, it adopts a more colorful European and American cartoon style for packaging, and does not give people a negative impression of cheapness.
Of course, just as Korean MMOs want to lock players in front of the screen, Place Ninja also has two "killer skills" to improve user stickiness. One is the PvP system that makes people quite popular. If you're tired of watching the hang-up animation of the protagonist beating the little monster, you might as well enjoy a thrilling duel between two "Naruto" projecting darts at each other in the PvP system.
Another is the secret that really makes this game buzz in the Korean market - P2E (Play to Earn). For players who want to earn digital tokens, the game offers a daily mission system. Up to 5 daily missions can be completed per day, and each mission can be rewarded with 300 NINKY coins. After completing a series of tedious registration procedures, players can withdraw after 48 hours and pay 1000 NINKY coins as a withdrawal fee, after which there is a 72-hour limit for withdrawing again.
The cumbersome withdrawal mechanism and relatively empty content have made the game once hotly discussed in South Korea, but the Google Play score is only 2.7 points, and the ranking on the Korean App Store free list has fallen to more than 260. It seems that the p2E gimmick is not enough to be a long-term way to place mobile games.
Cat and soup - real machine demonstration
Cats and soup
As can be seen from the score of Google Play's 4.8 score, "Cats and Soups" is undoubtedly a word-of-mouth work for Korean mobile games this year. The game is very flattering to choose animal themes suitable for all ages, from music to painting style, it is full of healing, allowing players to enjoy the tranquility of this digital forest without burden.
The mechanics of this game are very simple, the cat in the center of the screen will continue to cook soup, and when the clock above its head turns around, it will present soup in the prop bar at the bottom of the screen, and you can sell it for gold coins when you click. Coins can be used to upgrade buildings in the forest, and new buildings will bring new animal companions. They will collect ingredients, upgrade recipes, or otherwise help the cats who are boiling soup to make a more valuable soup. All players need to do is keep selling soups, building new or upgrading buildings, and make the forest more lively and harmonious.
The extremely simple mechanics of healing also make this game not have too many kryptonite points, so it is not visible on the Korean App Store best-seller list. But this does not prevent its high reputation and popularity. In particular, this game is also very friendly native support Chinese, and many Chinese players have also left long comments on Google Play, sharing game strategies and skills, which is very loving.
As a price of not forcing Kr, this game also adopts the method of advertising monetization, which can effectively accelerate the progress of the game by watching video ads, which also causes many players to complain about the game experience. However, overall, the fresh gameplay of "Cat and Soup" is still favored by players, and its hand-drawn style can't help but remind people of the 2017 worldwide "Traveling Frog".
On the data side, the performance of this game is also quite eye-catching. It has received more than 1.5 million global downloads and more than 600,000 daily active users within one month of launch. Only 5 months after the launch, the cumulative number of downloads worldwide exceeded 10 million. In addition, the game was also named the 2021 Google Play Indie Game TOP3, and the number of downloads in Japan, South Korea, the United States and other markets is at the forefront of the casual simulation category.
It is worth mentioning that hidea, the developer of this game, has a lot to offer. The company has received a 20 billion won (106 million yuan) injection from Neiwiz, the developer of the household name Crossfire. From large-scale end games to mobile games, the adjustment of Neowiz's investment direction also reflects the changes in the direction of the game market in South Korea and even the world.
Black Crown - Live Machine Demo
Black Crown
Unlike most placement games, Black Crown is a game that requires horizontal screen play. The game's publisher, TNK Factory, is affiliated with South Korean social networking giant Kakao, and like Odin: Rebellion, which turned Kakao around in the Korean game market, Black Crown is also a "heavyweight" product in the Korean game market.
From the content point of view, this game also has many royal RPG game characteristics: the protagonist, as a righteous brave, accumulates experience in actual combat step by step from a rookie, and constantly kills more powerful and evil enemies. And Beanie's pixel villain also allows veteran RPG players to quickly flash through countless classic RPG works in the 80s and 90s in their minds.
This pixel-style placement RPG game is similar to "Place Ninja" in terms of core mechanics, and basically revolves around the game of monster fighting upgrades. However, unlike most character-based mobile games in Place Ninja, Black Crown does not have a character extraction system, and players need to draw equipment. In addition to bringing attribute buffs, equipment will also directly change the appearance of the protagonist, which is also another way to solve the boring feeling that no new character can cause.
The reason why GameLook calls this game a "heavyweight" product is in part because the game also uses a complex numerical model that korean-style MMOs have criticized.
For example, this more cumbersome UI is designed to cover up various check-ins, missions, and treasure chest systems that require players to click a lot. For gold coins, diamonds and other tokens and the various gift packs in the store, players need to carefully calculate which is more cost-effective, which also provides a lot of convenience for the game's kryptonite point implantation. As a result, the game ranks a bit higher on the App Store best-seller list than both of the above.
Of course, in other respects, this game is also very close to the placed version of the Korean MMO mobile game. For example, the task system of the main interface and the experience bar design at the bottom of the screen make MMO players feel more intimate. In order to motivate the Kryptonians to increase their efforts, "Black Crown" also joined the ladder ranking system, and if you want to be on the list, it is naturally indispensable to invest real money and silver.
Although the game has been online for more than three months, on the eve of New Year's Day, with the new version update, it once again topped the Korean App Store free list, which seems to indicate that Korean players still have a fondness for heavier RPG gameplay.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material