Author: Aiden
"Wish You Good Death" chose a more cost-effective Roguelite game, and the overall experience was a bit disappointing. This disappointment manifested itself in all aspects of the game's design, except for the plot design, the overall performance was too mediocre to lack enough highlights to attract players.
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End with a new beginning
Speaking of the past and present lives of the development team of this game, it is always inseparable from Ubisoft, an old French game company. For Ubisoft, the reputation of the cannery in recent years has indeed deteriorated, and the newly released games have become more and more lacking in highlights, and it seems that Ubisoft's own game planners cannot get rid of the suspicion of being obsessed with the flexible use of copy and paste to cope with errands. As a result, a large number of developers began to flee Ubisoft and set up their own independent game teams, hoping to justify themselves through new works. However, even if the gongs and drums are reopened, the game design "genes" in the bones of these developers also determine some of the way they have worked in the past, so there are always some new works that will give the author a feeling of being different. In the case of Magic Design Studios, the developer of this game, they clearly belong to the less successful wave.
Most of the core developers of Magic Design Studios are former Ubisoft employees, and even the most core founder, Lu Yang, was the artistic director of the marketing department of Ubisoft's Montpellier Studios, who was personally responsible for the production of the famous "Lehman" and "Crazy Rabbit" series of games, and he was also a Chinese. It can be said that in the case of multiple halos, Magic Design Studios has made a good start. Their first work is "Very Heroic", a model of the story setting of "Journey to the West", through the "Trinity" style of gameplay design to skillfully combine combat and puzzle solving, the overall experience although the fluency of the action and combat experience is slightly regrettable, but the other parts are very interesting, is a very successful debut.
However, with the success of the previous game, their next work should have been taken to the next level, but the new work "Wish You a Good Death" chose a more cost-effective Roguelite game, and the overall experience was also a bit disappointing. This disappointment manifested itself in all aspects of the game's design, except for the plot design, the overall performance was too mediocre to lack enough highlights to attract players.
As the protagonist, I turned out to be the great evil one
The author believes that if you want to rank all the commendable highlights of this work, then the plot design of this work must be ranked first. Black humor is its most obvious feature, and although the developers express their views very cryptically, they can still bring strong resonance to the author. In particular, the character setting of the protagonist of this work, although he is the CEO of the "Prefectural Government Company", is always squeezed by the endless labor of his subordinates, which can be said to be a very interesting irony.
The background of the world view of the plot of this work is derived from the Western mythological story, the story takes place in the underworld, and the protagonist of the story is the god of death who is in charge of life and death. However, unlike the public perception, the underworld in charge of life and death in this work is more modern, and it is a "prefectural government company" packaged in the style of a modern company, and the management of the cycle of life and death in the human world is of course the company's employees. What's even more different is that the only employees who really work in this work are the protagonists themselves as CEOs, harvesting their own lives and handling rebirths themselves... So under overwhelmed pressure, he finally broke out and finally decided to start a complete reorganization of the company's order. Thus, there is a scene where the game begins...
The form of the plot is black humor, so the performance of the whole plot is full of funny and ridiculous feelings, which makes the author feel very relaxed and funny when I first watch it. However, when I think about it again, the more I think about it, the more wrong it is, combined with the whole story and the subsequent NPC dialogue and other information, the author realized that under the seemingly relaxed and humorous appearance of this work, a very serious social problem was discussed, that is, the increasingly serious overtime culture and workplace PUA, sexual harassment and other practical problems that everyone in the modern workplace least wants to face but cannot hide. The whole story seems to be joking, but it is serious, it seems absurd, but it is actually realistic, and there is always a creepy feeling after thinking it through. In terms of plot interpretation and picture performance, an exaggerated and funny performance style is highlighted, which makes people laugh while feeling the cruel reality, and after laughing, there is a feeling of discomfort of being spied on. It can be said that the plot that the developers of this work want to express does make the author feel that there are some ups and downs, and it is indeed ironic to combine the social contradictions in some contexts at present. Indeed, whether it is the 996 blessing or the workplace PUA, the vast number of social animals will eventually give up after experiencing unbearable oppression, and the vast number of capitalists should indeed sit down and think about it.
Back to the design of the game itself, the in-game NPC dialogue seems to be very social, each time the player refreshes back to a specific scene, there will be a corresponding dialogue, and the NPC dialogue may change when the player goes through different stages. For example, if the player is repeatedly ravaged by the boss, the NPCs will talk behind the player's back, and even mock and laugh, and when the player defeats the boss, then the next time these NPCs come back, they will begin to complain about the defeated boss, which is really a sinister social scene pushed by everyone. On the other hand, the pre-boss battle level dialogue is carefully designed, and each time the player reaches the boss's position, a new dialogue is triggered, and it is a unique line that has been carefully designed for the boss. When the player sees the boss again after N battles, there will be changes in different situations, the player loses at the beginning, the next boss will taunt, and if the player wins once, the boss will appear inward, there is a clear sense of fear in it. The meticulous design in this regard makes the player's game story experience more reasonable and logical.
Putting aside the theme of the plot of this game, the social system design in the game is indeed unique, it allows the author to return to the stronghold after intensive battles to feel some real presence, and for a moment the author really feels that the game world of this game is alive. Of course, it is only a moment, because this work is too superficial in terms of content design, and there is a feeling of eating fast food after experiencing it, coming and going fast, and there is no depth.
Very adhesion gameplay design
If the plot design of this game can still see some of the unique thinking and design of the developers, then as the core gameplay part of the game, it can only show that the developers are obviously in a bad situation. The core gameplay part of this game can be clearly seen as the product of the formed gameplay combination of many well-known Rogue games, and it only takes the design of others directly to simplify the use, does not do local design, and does not add its own new ideas. The problem, however, is that this simple take-ism does not play a 1+1>2 effect, but rather appears to be indiscriminate, and the various systems are completely incongruous. And the things taken are also completely superficial, all the game systems do not have any depth, the player plays once and plays a hundred times the experience is almost no difference, if you have to find out the difference, it must be played a hundred times when you are tired of not being able to do it.
1. Room stitching logic like Hades
If you ask a player who is familiar with the characteristics of Rogue games what is the biggest feature of this type of game, then I think it will definitely give the answer of "a highly random game world automatically generated by the system". Yes, in the early days of Rogue games, the biggest feature of this type of game was that it was the most exciting thing except that the high penalty mechanism of everything was cleared after death, which was the world randomly generated by the system. Because this means that players can get a nearly unlimited gaming experience in a very limited game volume. However, with the advancement of electronic computer graphics display technology, the form of game expression has also undergone earth-shaking changes, and even Rogue games have to start to focus on improving the game's graphics performance. Therefore, the original design scheme of automatically generating game worlds by the system must also be changed, and the original automatically generated true infinity has now become a random pseudo-infinite from the developer's pre-designed map scene. At this point, the size of the player's game space in the Rogue game depends entirely on the developer's pre-design.
Nowadays, the common game promotion method of Rogue games is to do Rogue random gameplay design on the basis of linear levels, and only in terms of the random part of the map level, it is the random design of the level by region and chapter, and through the randomness of rooms within a limited range, it is necessary to make a pseudo-random that seems to have a different game map in each game. The map of the sub-region is to ensure the linear fixed connection between the various areas at the same time, in a single area to do random design; the chapter map is to ensure that the characteristics of the map of each chapter are consistent, the map in the chapter is split into multiple small rooms, by increasing the number of rooms and disrupting the random splicing order of the rooms, so as to ensure that the game has a high map randomness.
Taking "Dead Cells" as an example, in the initial situation, the developer prepared a pure linear level process for the player such as "Prisoner's Cell - Avenue of the Guilty - Barrier - Black Bridge - Fog Harbor - Bell Tower - Clock Room - Mountain Castle - Between the Throne", in which each node is a large area of the game, the order of connection between the large areas is fixed, but each time the player enters a new area, a map of the area with different numbers will be randomly produced, the map inside each area is different, and the terrain route in the map is different , enemy distribution, chest location, weapon shop, teleportation points, etc. will change according to different maps, so the player's experience will feel different after each entry into the game, which also constitutes the random part of the map experienced by the player in the early stages of the game.
I believe that through the above description, readers and friends can basically understand the basic principles of the random interior of rogue maps. However, one of the obvious drawbacks of such a design is that it relies too much on the number of area maps preset by the developer. The more developers do, the more the game volume and development costs will go up, which is time-consuming and laborious. Developers do less, and will give players a monotonous and boring scene, the experience is too single feeling. Therefore, there will be great challenges in the balance of internal capacity. Many rogues that I have played in recent years with this design basically have this problem, and "Dead Cell" is an outlier, because its single-area map is too large, and it has a large number of weapons, props, etc. as content filling, so it does not have this problem.
So, it wasn't until the advent of Hades that it seemed to temporarily solve this awkward design problem. Hades' solution was to increase the variety of random rooms in the unit area and give the player the right to choose, allowing the player to decide their own action strategy. In terms of map randomness, the randomness of the map is made to a higher level through the arrangement and combination of multiple different rooms.
This work is the use of This kind of room splicing logic of Hades, which is still the random splicing logic of the room of the follow-up level of "Hades", which is designed according to currency, resources, health, shops, skill props, elite enemies, boss rooms, etc. The overall innovation is not much, but the play is stable and the playability is very high. Because of the difference in the type of room available in the same random scheme, many different level combination schemes will be generated, so that each level of the game will be as different as possible and have more freshness. But the problem is that the developers of this game have made their own clever subtraction on this basis, through a few hours of experience, the author obviously feels that the number of random maps in this game is very small, the number of each category is not more than 3, so even if it adopts The map repeatability of the Hades-like design game is still very high. In terms of the level design inside the small room, each room level of this work appears to be very three-dimensional on the two-dimensional plane, and the action route on a single screen can be divided into multiple levels up and down, so that the level of the plane can be less straightforward during the game, but on the whole, the single small level is more linear, and the overall process is not long, so there is not much fun to explore.
2. Dead cell-like skills unlock logic
Players who have played Dead Cell know that the player's initial weapon has very few weapons to choose from, in addition to knives and bows. Most weapon items require the player to obtain blueprints in the game and then use the cells to unlock them at the blacksmith before they can be obtained and used normally in the game. The player's unlocked equipment is loaded into bottles like an exhibition and hung on the walls of the stronghold room. This game also uses a similar skill system unlocking logic, but the related system of this game is severely simplified. For example, in the unlocking process, the step of obtaining drawings is omitted, and the player only needs to obtain enough resources in the game to unlock it, and after unlocking, it will also be hung on the wall of the stronghold for exhibition. On the other hand, the number of unlockable skills has also shrunk significantly, and the current version of the player has only 27 unlockable skills, of which 2 unlock conditions are through the game, and 1 skill hides the unlock conditions. Therefore, there are only 24 unlockable skills, and the depth of content is extremely limited. The only highlight is that the conditions for unlocking skills will be discounted accordingly according to the battle statistics in the game, such as the unlocking of the Iron Fist, if you defeat 5 soul officials in battle, you can reduce the currency consumption by 95%, which is the only feature.
In addition, in terms of acquiring skills and passive effects in the game, this game adopts a Hades-like model. Skills can be obtained through the altar or monster drops, passive effect unlocking, this game uses Hades-like card three-choice mode, that is, NPCs provide players with three passive effects to choose from, from which players can choose one equipment, and unfortunately this part is also subtracted. The design of this system in Hades, in addition to giving players skill effects, will also provide players with the function of upgrading existing skills, which is not available in this game for the time being.
3. Smooth but very conventional combat experience
If that part of the game flow is the most comfortable, you have to choose the battle part. Perhaps the previous game "Very Heroes" fell too badly in the battle part, so the production team did put a lot of effort into the combat part of this game. The operation of this game combat feels great, a change from the previous high-latency operation feedback, in this game the player's operation is more flexible and fast, the feedback is very timely and accurate, can execute multiple instructions at the same time, can cover the old instructions that have not been executed through new instructions, so the entire combat system feels more followed. The percussion feedback is very good, and the appropriate screen vibration effect is very good, but the hit feedback effect is very poor, there is neither animation performance nor sound effect, and it is almost impossible to feel it. Therefore, it greatly affects the player's judgment of his own state during the battle, and the author has repeatedly failed because he misjudged the amount of health in the game and was killed by the boss.
In terms of combat methods, this game adopts the design of dual weapons and double props similar to "Dead Cell", but this game only presets a conventional weapon for players, and changes it to a single weapon plus double skill combat attack template.
The combat mode of the weapon is more biased towards the style of ACT games, and the operation habits and operation logic of this game in the combat design adopt the combat operation logic of the devil's cry. Both players only need to pay more attention to the flat A attack itself when fighting, the input of complex battle commands is more dependent on the input of the arrow keys, through the command insertion of different arrow keys during the battle operation, so that the combat move output is more flexible and changeable, and the continuation of the combo moves becomes more flexible and diverse, and more key combinations or special setting function keys are no longer needed to achieve related functions. The corresponding player's operation density will become higher at the same time, so for the player, the combat operation of this game is the type that is easy to use but difficult to master, and there is a certain threshold. But unfortunately, the available combos in battle are too few and the trigger conditions are more difficult, and many games are preset weak clicks, punctures and other functions that can better mobilize the player's cool points do not exist in this game, so the entire battle process often becomes a face roll handle, flat A and skill rotation, which makes the combat system of this game seem less authentic.
In terms of skills, the skills are divided into two categories: combat skills and magic, with cooldown and magic consuming mana. Players can choose to equip both combat skills and magic or choose to equip only two combat skills or two magic spells. But most of the time, the player can only get what to pack, because in the short level process, the player has very few chances of acquiring a new skill, and sometimes even hit the boss and has not yet acquired a skill. Therefore, when the player is not equipped with a skill or chooses not to equip magic, the long magic bar is particularly embarrassing. In addition, the player can also activate an EX final skill associated with the skill after the anger slot is fully charged. The effect and form of this final skill will be different when the player holds different skills, the advantage is that the game experience is more fresh, and the disadvantage is that the new EX skills unknown during the actual game process often drag back the battle. On the other hand, the functional design such as the types and attributes of in-game skills is too rudimentary and does not carry out deeper subdivisions, so the actual effect is not very ideal, and it is difficult to form different combat ideas and genres.
Cheap graphics and failed sound
At first sight, the first impression of the picture of this work is cheap, but the slightly hades plot of this work is matched with the picture of Hades, which simply complements each other to the extreme. Although the picture is simple and cheap, but it is very flavorful, the overall cool color of the picture processing can indeed give people a sense of fear of cold back. The protagonist image design is the image of the god of death in the general perception of the public, wearing a black cloak and holding the skeleton image of the god of death, but some of the characteristics are that the image of the god of death is cute in this work, narrowing the proportion difference between the upper and lower bodies of the character, so that the character as a whole has a cute feeling of underage in the visual, and more dramatic (child labor warning). Other NPCs are also designed with such a unified art design guideline, so it is more pleasing. In terms of monster design, there is a sense of uncertainty, the image is very vague, it is difficult to accurately say what they look like. But what is more interesting is that most of the monsters in this game have added some elements of modern company employees, such as suits and ties, stand-up collar polo shirts and shoes, which are very specific commercial elements, so that people can know their identity background at a glance. Therefore, although there are some flaws in the screen performance of this work, it is the best part of the whole game, and it well expresses the mood and atmosphere of the game.
On the other hand, although the background music of this work has a little taste, the amount is too small and the sense of existence is weak. And the quality of the game's sound effects and its general, even without a passing level, giving people the feeling of just finding a sound effect to make a living. The sound quality of weapon strike sound effects, dodge, and smashing are very unrealistic, and it can be said that the cost control is very strict.
The answer is the consequence of copying the wrong line and playing it haphazardly
Looking at the realization effect of each system of this work as a whole, the author always has a feeling that the crane tail exam answers are copied wrong lines and the answers are not answered first. The game process of experiencing this game is always in a kind of entanglement that just finds the highlights and immediately sees the corresponding problems, so that the author once suspected that this game is actually a new intern training project of Magic Design Studios or a project that is casually played after work. All in all, the current level of the game is really unsatisfactory, because they will always make some very common novice problems, which makes people have to doubt their professionalism. For example, the following questions:
1. The RPG upgrade system is not perfect. As we all know, Rogue games need to be enhanced by accumulating resources in the process of continuous death cycle to obtain upgrades or improve some abilities, which can make subsequent level raiders easier. To sum up, it is to become stronger through continuous death and then pass the level. However, in this work, the lack of RPG growth system outside the game leads to a serious lack of game growth for the important core system of Rogue games, especially some functions involving weapon upgrades, attribute transformation, character growth and so on are placed directly in the level to appear randomly, which causes the player's actual numerical level to always remain at the initial value, unable to get growth, and the player can only get the promotion to unlock the poor 24 skills, the game experience is quite bad. It seems that there is also a character level system, but the author has searched through all the menus and NPCs and has not seen the corresponding function descriptions.
2. The head will be convulsed before the growth system will be put into the card. In all the Rogue games I have played, the character growth system is placed in the player's stronghold, and after unlocking through resources, it can bring the player permanent attribute enhancement, so that the player can get substantial growth after repeated deaths. But this game is not, store upgrades to unlock new goods, upgrade equipment is actually a one-time upgrade in this round of in-game, rather than a regular out-of-game permanent upgrade. The point is that the fake strip of the upgrade material is difficult to burst, and only in a specific room has the opportunity to burst. After the player obtains the material, he must also go to the corresponding upgrade room. Not only will this waste the player's valuable room opportunity, but there is no guarantee that the corresponding room will appear in the subsequent process. Often sometimes there are no room upgrades when you get resources, and sometimes there are upgrade rooms but no resources. Therefore, the actual availability is not high.
3. Like The Riddle Man series like Hades, this game is the same as Hades, and the door signs and skill effect introductions in different rooms will not be serious. The name of the room door is very similar, such as the difference between the fake strip department and the fake strip storage room, the author has not yet figured out too clearly. The skill description always gives some inexplicable sentences, and then does not write the skill effect, which makes me feel very helpless. For example, the description of the skill "Electric Leicester" is "about magic and destructive performances!" The ghost knew what effect it was.
Is this quality what I mean by the future?
Just in terms of the quality of the game shown in the current version of this game, the ordinary game experience, the superficial game design, and the glue monster gameplay that is learned everywhere really disappoints the author who has been waiting for this game for a long time, and it really does not reach the level that the author intended. But if you want to say that this work has no merit, it is indeed biased. In the first few hours of the game experience is still very good, the black humor of the satirical plot, the old-fashioned black and white effect of the picture performance, smooth and comfortable combat experience also did leave some good impressions on the author. In addition, if you don't pursue the details, this game can also be regarded as a qualified Rogue game, but note that it is not excellent, and even does not have enough bright performance to play. In addition, considering that this game is still in the EA stage, and will provide updates and improvements after that, the author is still willing to believe them and hope that there will be good results. I really hope they can look forward to the future!
In addition, only in terms of the current version, the author does not recommend entering the pit, like the player can pay attention to the subsequent version of the update, wait for the problem to be solved almost before it is too late to start. For new players who want to contact Rogue, you can consider starting this game as appropriate, and the relatively shallow game mechanics plus the general Rogue gameplay set are indeed suitable for new players to understand the characteristics of this game type. Of course, the premise is that good previous games such as "Dead Cell" and "Hades" have been played.
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Source: Game console fans