At the beginning of this year, a game called "Last War" opened a low-key test overseas, but it caused quite a stir in the domestic game circle, and was jokingly called "domestic SLG game planners have participated in the test", for no other reason, the developer behind this game has a lot of history.
Chengdu Legou, the developer of "Awakening of All Nations", said in an interview with the media that the company is making another game, and the investment is 3 times that of "Awakening of All Nations", and it has a fairly high degree of completion. According to the trademark registration information of Chengdu Legou, it seems that the developer of "Last War" pointed to Chengdu Legou.
Chengdu Le Dog's famous work "Awakening of All Nations" is represented by Lilith, since its release in the global market in 2018, the cumulative global flow is estimated to exceed 20 billion yuan, and the annual flow of 2021 is estimated to reach about 7 billion yuan, and it still maintains the status of the world's TOP3 SLG mobile game. With the "Awakening of All Nations" in front, under the expectation of the long life cycle and high income of SLG's top products, the new games of the domestic manufacturer SLG have quickly entered a new era of quality competition in the next era, and even a number of SLG games developed by Unreal Engine have emerged.
In addition, on December 22, 2021, Chengdu Legou Technology Co., Ltd. completed a round of shareholder changes, Shanghai Lilith Investment Management Co., Ltd. acquired 6.37% of the shares of Chengdu Legou held by Chengdu Creator Love Technology Co., Ltd. (Tap4fun), Tap4fun withdrew, Lilith's shareholding in Legou rose to 36.52%, and in terms of the revenue and profit scale of "Awakening of All Nations", Lilith acquired 6.37% of the shares of Chengdu Legou or cost hundreds of millions of yuan.
So, after the success of "Awakening of Nations", what kind of product is Le Dog's second SLG "Last War"? What are the characteristics?
Overseas players try it out
The art style is consistent, but it also has a certain degree of recognition
Last War was closed-tested in overseas markets in January with Oswald Games' publisher ID.
The reason why "Awakening of All Nations" can detonate the global market, its "appearance" and suction ability is one of the key factors, as the second SLG of Le Dog, "Last War" is in the same vein as "Awakening of All Nations" in the art style, both using a light and bright cartoon style. However, if you look closely, the two actually have a certain degree of recognition.
First of all, in terms of picture quality, "Last War" inherits the "Shen Yun" of "Awakening of All Nations", the characters and heroes of different camps in the game have been specialized, and the character image, personality and even positioning are very intuitive, but on the screen, "Last War" can be said to have been comprehensively upgraded, and the fineness of the character model has been greatly improved.
At the same time, the improvement of the picture is not only the characters, it can be clearly seen that the entire large map in the game has added "billion points" details. For example, players can see their own units working in the main city, and on the big map, you can also see grass and trees swaying with the wind, and many details are blessed to make the whole world more vivid.
In terms of world view background, "Last War" chooses a Western-style magic theme, and the return of the Dark God has thrown the tamaris continent into chaos again, so the three major races on the continent, humans, orcs, and elves, have formed alliances to resist evil and dominate the world in this land.
Three different camps and forces support the basic disk of the worldview architecture, and based on the game's worldview background setting and art style, it is not difficult to guess that "Last War" will be the same as "Awakening of All Nations", and will still be an SLG that takes the route of global distribution.
Of course, if you look at the theme alone, "Last War" may seem more traditional, but Le Dog still made some different designs in the construction of the worldview and the narrative of the plot, that is, it added a character dialogue option and favorability system similar to GalGame, and when the player has a dialogue with the NPC, there may be an option branch.
Judging from the current content, this system does not seem to have a particularly obvious effect on the improvement of combat effectiveness, and players can mainly be used to unlock the voice and background of the character, but in GameLook's view, "Last War" may have something special to do.
For a long time, the existence of the story in the SLG category is weak, some historical themes such as the Three Kingdoms theme of the SLG mostly have history, famous book endorsement, so the player has some basic cognition of the character background and personality characteristics, but like "Last War" such as no historical background as a support product, it is difficult to make the player have a strong sense of substitution.
And "Last War" cleverly transforms the player's perspective in this way, so that it can further familiarize itself with the story behind the characters, so as to gradually perceive the whole world in a small way, and the fragmented narrative method not only strengthens the player's sense of substitution, but also fits the characteristics of the SLG category very well, and will not feel too abrupt.
In fact, the strengthening of the world view, the plot has become the current trend of SLG, many products without historical endorsement will focus on the creation of the worldview, in the narrative to strengthen, such as FunPlus's "State of Survival" is so, which inserted a large number of cutscenes, and Lilith's series of SLG new products have also increased the proportion of narrative, such as the World War II theme of "Order of War" Although it has historical endorsement, it still adds a lot of plot narrative elements. The new agent's futuristic sci-fi style SLG "Age Of KITA" is a live-action voiceover for every line of the character.
In front of the pearl jade, continue to deepen the fusion of RTS elements
Just a few days after the beta of "Last War", there was a very interesting vignette in the game, and many peers came to watch and learn in the in-game world chat channel.
With the pearl jade of "Awakening of All Nations" in the front, the second SLG of Le Dog naturally attracted the attention of many peers, and Le Dog, who focused on SLG to deepen the evolution of the category, did make some attempts in this new work, if it is simply summarized, it is: continue to deepen the integration of SLG and RTS elements.
In fact, Le Dog's first SLG "Awakening of Nations" is to integrate RTS elements on top of THE COK gameplay, such as the seamless large map in the game, free marching and so on. Last War, on the other hand, went one step further, continuing to integrate and deepen RTS elements, such as the above features that have been retained in the game, but on this basis, a unique skill system has been added to the game.
When the player enters the battle, a skill icon will be displayed in the upper right corner of the screen, and when the CD cools down, the player can tap to release the corresponding skill in the battle.
It should be pointed out that unlike the logic and direction of conventional game design, the skills in Last War are not related to the character, but to the equipment, and when the player wears different equipment, they will get different skills, some are damage-type skills, and some are functional skills.
To some extent, the skill system in Last War seems to be similar to the skill point of "hero units" in War3, and the different ways of adding points by players can play a completely different effect, even if it is a faction, due to the different BD routes, it can form different genres.
However, compared with the traditional RTS, from the current form presented in "Last War", the operation in the game is much simpler, and it is more focused on the choice of pre-combat equipment. But from a mobile game perspective, Last War's design model seems to cater to the lightweight operation of mobile games and the need for SLG players for strategic depth.
On the one hand, the game cuts the threshold brought by complex operations such as hero unit positioning and micro-manipulation in RTS games, on the other hand, binding skills to the equipment system means that there is more than one BD content in the game, and players can match different gameplay according to equipment, which strengthens the strategy of the game at the same time, but also makes the gameplay more diverse, although the presentation method is different, but the core fun points are similar.
In addition, the gameplay shown by "Last War" is generally the same as other SLG products on the market, such as the talent tree, technology, resource acquisition and collection methods in "Awakening of All Nations", etc. are retained in "Last War", it can be said that the game not only inherits many advantages and gameplay characteristics of "Awakening of All Nations", but also adheres to the concept of Le Dog focusing on category evolution.
It is worth mentioning that Le Dog also enhanced the battle scene in the game, for example, in addition to a variety of land classes, the game also added sky flying units, which not only enhanced the visual effects, but also further strengthened the strategy of the game.
epilogue
In recent years, although the industry often regards SLG as a Red Sea track, there is no other reason, the successful "predecessors" have made the SLG track too crowded, and the soaring cost of purchase and the rapid improvement of quality have filled the entire SLG market with minefields.
But at the same time, there are a number of game companies through the theme innovation, gameplay innovation hard to break out of the sky, last year Sensor Tower November Chinese mobile game publisher revenue TOP30, almost one-third of the main attack on SLG manufacturers, the same period App Annie released the latest data show that in 2021 in the global strategic category, 4X SLG category game revenue increased by 32%.
The coexistence of challenges and opportunities is the current market situation, and the final performance of "Last War" needs to be decided by players and the market, but GameLook believes that the good quality of the game can attract many players.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
Global vision / depth is material