Manufacturers who have built blockbusters are trying to find new breakthroughs, and IGG is one of them.
The follow-up performance of "Time Princess" still needs to be precipitated, and "Kingdom Era" is still the core product that supports it, although we have seen that IGG has tried in different game categories since 2021, but the company's product line is still in a relatively weak state.
The situation facing IGG is a microcosm of most of the game companies in transition. At this time, the best thing to do is naturally to take out high-quality products to do the total breakthrough, which is not, their high-hope ARPG new product "Yeager" opened the undeleted test at the beginning of the year.
Will it be IGG's next trump card? It's too early to answer that question, but in terms of game quality, Yeager is undoubtedly the product they've put down.
01
A rare high-quality ARPG in IGG products
Let's push the clock a little further and go back to last year's ChinaJoy show, when IGG had already moved yeager, which advertised itself as a "high-freedom hunting ARPG".
What is a combo hunting game? Simply put, it is to challenge various bosses in the case of four people, get item rewards, and use these props to make more advanced equipment and props, forming a closed loop of "battle production battle". This type of game consumes a long time and the threshold is high, so the head effect is obvious.
In the past two years, there are not many similar products in the research institute, but the "picture" and "action" of "Yeager" have basically reached the head level of similar mobile games except for some small flaws in the details.
(Game Plot Illustration)
Taking the real machine as an example, the overall game screen has no sense of cheapness, although there will be some familiar immediate vision, but it is more or less in the vegetation and village architecture.
For example, Compared to monster hunter's original village environment, Yeager will obviously be more different, after all, the theme of the game is not a story about the balance between man and nature, but a human settlement built by energy, which is bound to have a science fiction color.
(Villages and scenes experienced in the novice period)
The environment is naturally a part of highlighting the game style, but the most representative of the hunting game style is the costume design: the muscle lines show the biological sense of the costume, coupled with the mechanical and exoskeleton background, the overall design style is more similar to the "biological armor" that appears in works such as "Strong Breeding Armor" and "True Kamen Rider".
(Although this style is not obvious in the novice period, the mall has already placed many similar styles of clothing)
IGG picked a good direction of clothing design, this style of clothing has a unique sci-fi aesthetic, like users will like it very much, just in line with the hunting game "warm" essence of the game.
It can be seen that Yeager has invested a lot of effort in the specific content level, and the same place is also in terms of weapons, and the modeling will be even more elaborate than the costumes.
And when it comes to the above-mentioned crafting type of equipment, we have to mention the monsters that will be made into comfortable pants.
The monsters in the game fit well with the alien theme, and it is the complex and strange composition of the monsters and the sometimes multiplicity of exoskeleton organs that highlight this feeling. These design ideas, unlike the theory that ensures the logical self-consistency of reality, are a metamorphosis of a creature leading to the unknown, so yeager's monsters can easily create a sense of danger and fear.
If I were to conclude at this point that the high-quality graphics and differentiated gameplay style are where Yeager attracts users and makes differentiation, the smart reader may have already discovered the mystery and will immediately spit out: "Isn't this The Star Wars-style Monster Hunter?"
This description is very vivid, and it feels like it can make people understand the style and gameplay of this game in an instant, but it is still too one-sided:
Whether it is "Ghost Hunter", "God Eater" or "Soul Sacrifice", the basic gameplay of the hunting game will not be much different, but more is the difference and adjustment of the theme and rhythm.
(However, the only ones that can now stably update the sequel are Monster Hunter |.) "Soul Sacrifice")
The real problem IGG has to face is mobile game. This is a topic about the establishment of a distinction between Yeager and the same kind of games on handheld and console platforms, and it is also a problem that hunting mobile games have faced so far.
02
Hunting game mobile game "broken" and "standing"
Why is this a problem, because the head of the co-fighting game is very effective, but in the past, no co-fighting hunting game could be made into a head product in the field of mobile games.
Even products like "Soul Hunter Awakening" that rely on big manufacturers and continue to cultivate this category are not ideal in their market performance. There are many reasons for this, such as hardcore gameplay, niche circles, immature operation after mobile games, etc., but this also shows the reality that this genre has not been fully tapped in the mobile game market.
(Soul Hunter Awakening, which celebrates its fourth anniversary)
We certainly can't beat it to death, thinking that this kind of game just can't do mobile games. At least now, this batch of new products is opening up the possibilities of mobile games, and "Yeager" is undoubtedly a representative of them, which has handed over a mobile game plan with reference value.
1. Break the stereotypical characteristics
Since it can form a category, the hunting game must have an existing impression. For example, three lives in one game, monster blood bar hiding, rolling invincible, etc., these are the characteristic points of hunting games.
These characteristics have developed to the present, whether good or bad, they are basically conventional content.
It may be a source of pleasure for us to play, such as part destruction, monster stiffness and struggle, or it may be our extremely complaining anti-human operations, such as monster escape zone, monster blood bar hiding, and blood drinking pose... But after so many years of development, core players seem to have gotten used to this set of hardcore flavors.
(For example, the post-shake pose of taking medicine, although very stupid, is also a famous action of strange hunting)
However, the pursuit of mobile games should be to simplify the threshold for getting started, so as to popularize to a wider range of user circles.
IGG took the right direction this time, "Yeager" only uses three lives, part destruction, change areas and other few representative features, and reduce or modify the hardcore parts, as far as possible to make the game easy to be picked up by anyone, but not lose the challenge of hunting itself to face monsters.
(Roar and zone change in one go)
Specifically how to optimize the hardcore part, we take the health bar of the monster in the game as an example. Most hunting games tend to hide monster health bars, leaving the status of monsters to be judged by the player. The "black box design" of the health bar value is a good method, it requires players to rely on their long-term experience to summarize, which will be a manifestation of immersion, just like hunting in the game.
But it may not be suitable for pan-gamers, as users are accustomed to favoring intuitive numerical understanding. Yeager's approach is to display the monster's health and monster flesh directly to the player. Although doing so will reduce the charm of the gameplay, it will also lower the threshold of understanding of the game and improve the pleasure of hunting.
(The hint of the monster's health bar and site weakness in the upper right corner should already be obvious)
The above example is a relatively simple way to do subtraction, so how to deal with the more complex ones? As a result, the pressure came to the side of Xuan Qixuan's movements.
2. Experience-oriented hunting mobile game
Mobile phone rubbing glass to play ARPG games, the experience is basically not too good.
In particular, hunting games that originally paid attention to the operation links of weapon types, genres, continuous segments, and derivations, it is obviously difficult to put these things into a limited number of virtual buttons. What's more, most users will not like complex segment operations.
The trade-off made by "Yeager" at this level is "reduce the number of segments, focus on experience", the basic operation of the segment to the minimum, the following figure equipped with the combat UI when equipped with a chopping knife as an example, the real attack of the button is only two, the basic operation is basically only left with continuous flat A and charge attack.
But of course, this game will not only have simple attacks and defenses, that would be too boring.
In terms of experience, "Yeager" puts the most interesting content of the game into the "genre", different weapons have their own operating characteristics, players can freely match the hunting skills of weapons according to these characteristics, so as to achieve a variety of combat methods.
And the use of these hunting techniques does not require complex concatenations, and often revolves around a core skill.
(The instructions are complicated, but they all revolve around one skill.)
It may be that it is not enough to use only one "genre" in a single game, and on top of this, the game also supports players to carry two weapons, and can quickly switch weapons in battle to achieve a more efficient and refreshing hunting experience.
After this series of subtractions and optimizations, Yeager does produce a large difference from other hunting games: the battle has a solid data support, the simple operation can also experience the thrill of hunting, and the single game length design is relatively short - these characteristics undoubtedly prove that this game will be more suitable for mobile platforms.
3. Use the traditional payment model to stabilize revenue
Compared with the bold refactoring of gameplay, Yeager's paid model looks much more conservative, in addition to fashion, mainly focused on the two major gameplay methods of "Lingpo" and "Supporter", which enhance the game experience.
The main focus is on "supporters", which conservatively introduces a card pool mechanism.
The so-called "supporter" is a character who will follow the player in battle and fight with the player. They each have different types of skills, obey the command, and can provide great help to players in battle.
However, this set of gameplay is more like determining the upper limit of the game experience, even the supporters of the SSR are not strong enough to be masters, but more by cultivating these support characters to make the hunt easier and more comfortable. Using this piece of content as the main point of payment, rather than making a fuss about the old number of hunts, is going in the right direction.
03
Is there still a market possibility for hunting mobile games?
In the past, when I learned that a company was going to do a hunting mobile game, I would never be optimistic.
Not to mention the problem of "like me" and "learners", this set of gameplay has not yet matured in the mobile game market, and in the absence of determining user needs and business models, doing this kind of game is tantamount to crossing the river, and the risk is extremely high.
In contrast, the current mobile game market does lack a hunting game in the head position, which is because the original game was in a state of being left out due to risks such as niche, technical requirements, and planning experience.
But time has come to now, the users of such games at home and abroad have reached a certain scale, and the emergence of tens of millions of sales works is enough to verify the potential of this set of gameplay in the player group.
The market value of hunting mobile games is intuitive, but how mobile games, as a latecomer, attracts old users to join and new users love, will rely more on the performance of the game's own quality.
But how easy is it to make an ARPG or a mobile game of the co-combat hunting type into a boutique temperament?
Investment and direction are all problems, not to mention that the manufacturer of this research and development is still in the transition period of IGG. However, after actually playing Yeager, I have a big change in this product. From the high-quality look and feel of the picture to the simplification of the gameplay that adapts to the rhythm of the mobile game, these levels can almost be seen that they attach importance to this product.
From a more macro point of view, we can also observe that the subtraction of console gameplay seems to have become a direction for the development of mobile games in the future. For example, Tencent's "Codename: Breaking Dawn" and the heartbeat of "Flash Party" are both games in the direction of big chaos gameplay, but they have made different differences on the basis of this gameplay, showing the different understandings of manufacturers on the gameplay.
This is a good thing, indicating that more and more manufacturers are beginning to explore the gameplay construction and innovation of console games. However, how the market response will be, such as the current IGG "Yeager", may need to wait for the future to give us the answer.