As more and more mobile games celebrate their tenth anniversary, the mobile game market has begun to enter adolescence. However, in Japan, some old games that have been around for many years still have strong gold-sucking abilities: works such as Monster Marbles, Fate/Grand Order, and Dragon Ball Z: Burst Guild Wars are in the top 200 of the best-seller list, and sometimes even in the top ten.
Not long ago, mobile game data analytics company Game Refinery published a blog post explaining the changes that GungHo's best-selling game "Zhilong Maze" has undergone in the decade since its launch. At the same time, the article also briefly introduces the current situation of the puzzle RPG category in Japan, and the performance of "Zhilong Labyrinth" in overseas markets.
How to define a puzzle RPG?
Puzzle RPGs are a subdivided category of mid-core games that often combine addictive match-3 core gameplay with a large collection and cultivation element. Game Refinery's research shows that puzzle RPG players tend to prefer collecting, exploring, nurturing, and completing milestones over social elements, personalized dress-ups, or resource management.
Compared to the U.S. or Chinese market, puzzle RPGs are more popular with players in Japan. In the fourth quarter of 2021, puzzle RPGs were the fourth largest segment in Terms of Revenue in Japan, accounting for approximately 7.44% of the total revenue of the entire market in the quarter. In this segment, the most representative best-selling works include "Zhilong Labyrinth" (more than 65% of revenue), "Dragon Ball Z: Burst Battle" and "Monster Watch Punipuni".
In comparison, in the U.S. mobile game market, the revenue of puzzle RPGs ranked 15th in all sub-categories, accounting for only 1.77%. In the Chinese market, this proportion is only 0.07%.
The performance of "Zhilong Labyrinth" in different markets
"Zhilong Maze" has performed very well in Japan, always ranking in the top 50 of the best-seller list, and new games under the puzzle RPG category cannot shake its position. However, the game's revenue in the home market is also gradually declining, and developer GungHo has to continue to add new content to retain loyal players and increase player activity.
The revenue trend of Zhilong Labyrinth in the Japanese market
However, in the United States, the performance of "Zhilong Labyrinth" is not so good. There are many reasons for this: maybe the brand isn't interesting enough for European and American players, or the choice of characters makes most players think it's too brain-burning. The puzzle levels of Dragon Puzzle Are lengthy and frustrating at times, which can also "dissuade" some players... In contrast, another Japanese puzzle RPG mobile game, Dragon Ball Z: Burst Battle, is more popular with American players - "Dragon Ball" is a more widely known brand, and the core gameplay of the latter is easier to get started.
Another reason is that although Zhilong Maze often links with other brands, the influence of those brands (such as Japanese manga) is often limited to Japan, and European and American players are not necessarily familiar with it.
How to play "Zhilong Maze"?
First of all, Zhilong Maze is a puzzle RPG. The game uses a match-3 mechanism, where players need to move a bead within the board each turn to connect as many beads of the same color as possible and form an elimination. The board may be affected by various effects of enemies or player characters. In each level, the player's goal is to reduce enemy health (HP) to zero. Compared to regular match-3 games, the core gameplay of Dragon Maze requires players to pay more attention to skill and strategy.
Players take a team of different characters into battle, and each combo affects the damage that the player character does to enemies. Each character comes with their own skills, such as attacking enemies, influencing the board in some way, or providing boosts or healing to the entire team. Therefore, when forming a team, players are best to choose characters that can cooperate with each other and complement each other's advantages. Later in the game, if the player chooses only the characters with the highest attack power, the effect may not be very good.
In addition, character upgrades are also an important part of The Dragon Maze, and players can make their characters stronger in a variety of ways. But as the characters' combat effectiveness grew stronger, GungHo had to make many of the games more difficult, otherwise players could easily assemble a team. For casual players, too much difficulty can be prohibitive.
All in all, players who have mastered the gameplay of Dragon Maze can often reap a great sense of accomplishment – especially in the more challenging levels. But if you look at it another way, this may also be the biggest failure of Zhilong Maze: it is less friendly to new players and seems to be more suitable for veterans who have been playing for many years.
What changes has Zhilong Maze undergone?
upgrade
In the ten years since its launch, the character cultivation system of "Zhilong Labyrinth" has been greatly improved. At first, character upgrades were simple, including leveling, evolving, and skill upgrades, but over time, the system became more complex: characters could evolve into a variety of ultimate forms, from which players had to choose the one that best suited their play style. Some characters can even be turned into weapons and used to equip others!
For a hardcore (character) collecting enthusiast, it's like a dream come true, but new players tend to feel at a loss. Players spend a lot of time reading the material to find out which evolution is most worth investing in, but when they finish collecting the relevant materials, they may find that it is outdated... At the end of the day, this may be more suitable for veteran Players of The Dragon Maze than for beginners who are new to the game.
From the perspective of the game's graphics, "Zhilong Maze" has been improving over the years. While the overall look of Dragon Maze remains the same as it did a decade ago, the characters look more dynamic and personal than they used to, especially as they entered their evolved form. In addition, GungHo has added a light animation effect to the character's latest ultimate evolution.
Monetize
In the Japanese mobile game market, the card draw/gacha mechanism is very common - more than 92% of the top 20% of mobile game works in terms of revenue use some form of card drawing mechanism. However, like many other best-selling games, Dragon Maze has begun experimenting with other monetization modes.
Over the past decade, character collection elements have been crucial for Dragon Quest. In this game, players can collect tons of monsters, dragons, gods, and linked characters. To date, "Labyrinth of Wisdom Dragon" has held more than 150 linkage events, including "Final Fantasy", "Duel Master", "Attack on Titan", Marvel and Hello Kitty.
Players can collect characters in different ways, such as challenging dungeons (with a chance to get dropped characters), buying them from the shop, or drawing cards. For Japanese mobile games, card draws (characters) can have a huge impact, for example, in 2018 and 2020, two highly popular characters' card draw campaigns have pushed the download volume of "Zhilong Maze" soared.
It's also interesting to note that The Labyrinth of Wisdom Dragon seems to be particularly generous, often offering players free virtual currency, gifts, or number of draws. However, as the number of materials required for character evolution becomes more and more abundant, players are often faced with the dilemma of not having space in stock, and it is time to spend money to buy more space.
In addition, players need to use stamina to challenge dungeons. Since many monsters are materials needed for the player's character to level up, and only drop in certain dungeons (sometimes even for a limited time), players tend to use a lot of virtual currency to refresh their stamina, potentially depleting them quickly... When this happens, it's easy for players to spend money on getting more virtual currency.
In Dragon Maze, challenging the dungeon shown above costs 99 Stamina
There is another way for players to refresh their stamina, which is to watch ads. Zhilong Maze has recently increased the number of ads, introducing a set of card draw mechanisms associated with ads, expanding inventory (space) and providing a chance to refresh physical strength. Historically, Japanese best-selling mobile games have always been reluctant to add ads, but in the past two years, more and more Japanese games have begun to use light advertising as a means of monetization.
It's understandable that Dragon Labyrinth seems to be trying to encourage players to level up their accounts as quickly as possible: most of the characters and dungeons in the early part of the game are too weak compared to the characters they get by drawing cards. By upgrading their account, players can also refresh their stamina and increase the upper limit of the team's cost, so this is crucial for (character) development. There are a lot of dungeons in the game that drop experience points - as long as the player defeats the boss monster, they can accumulate a lot of experience points.
Each character in Dragon Labyrinth has a cost to acquire, and players must ensure that the total cost of the character does not exceed the maximum cost of the party when forming a team - determined by the player's account level.
To satisfy those who are eager to earn experience points, Dragon Maze has also added a new monthly subscription plan that provides subscribers with exponentially higher experience points (within a month) to help them quickly increase their account level. Interestingly, unlike most similar programs in other Japanese mobile games, The Labyrinth of Wisdom Dragon doesn't offer virtual currency to subscribers on a daily basis.
Expansion of social elements and content
The Labyrinth of Wisdom Dragons started out as a single-player game with relatively simple mechanics, but it's evolving over time. The game underwent many changes in terms of social: in the beginning, the social gameplay was very simple, limited to allowing players to borrow other players' characters to fight.
In 2015, GungHo added a cooperative dungeon (mode) to The Labyrinth of Wisdom Dragons, allowing two players to challenge the dungeon together and earn more rewards than playing solo. Later, the game also added a mode that allowed three players to team up.
Some players want Dragon Maze to introduce a PvP mode that will allow players to really compete with others in technology. In this regard, GungHo has released several spin-offs that allow players to compete 1-on-1, but the market response has been flat. In 2021, Zhilong Maze finally added a PvP mode that allows 8 players to compete synchronously.
It is worth mentioning that in this mode, players do not directly compete against others, but need to compete for points after defeating a series of monsters. Players can only use the system to assign teams in battle, but the character has been modified so that some of the character's skills can hinder other players (not just monsters).
The future of Dragon Maze
On February 20 this year, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the launch of Zhilong Maze, GungHo brought the game to the Nintendo Switch platform. Compared to the original game, The Dragon Maze Switch Edition has upgraded graphics and some new elements, such as allowing up to 4 players to team up to work together, and the PvP mode is divided into local and international (networked) play.
However, the new "Edit Mode" in the Switch version is the most eye-catching. This mode allows players to build their own dungeons, during which the player can select monsters and pick background music. In addition, player-made dungeons can be played by others – making the game even more fun for players who have completed all levels and are eager to seek more challenges. In time, will GungHo add the edit mode to the mobile version of Zhilong Maze?
What will the future of Dragon Maze look like? The development team can come up with nearly never-ending characters, making dungeons increasingly difficult, but this will cause new players to simply not be able to get started... Or they can switch directions and have players challenge each other. PvP is obviously an option that GungHo can consider, and "Edit Mode" sounds interesting as well.
Although the gameplay of "Zhilong Labyrinth" has been very rich, there is still room for further expansion. For example, a development team might consider adding a collection-related buff effect: when a player completes a collection of a particular character combination, they can get a buff. Development teams can also add bondage buffs to interrelated characters and refine their backstories in this way. At present, GungHo has added some storylines to the game, and seems to be interested in expanding the worldview of Zhilong Maze.
At the same time, GungHo should also find ways to enhance the social features of Zhilong Maze. Players can add friends to the game and play cooperatively, but there are not many ways to communicate with other players. In the long run, if GungHo adds features such as guilds to Zhilong Maze, it will help the game bring a strong community atmosphere to players, further enhancing player participation and activity.