GameRes first noticed Core Keeper, which stemmed from developer Pugstorm's announcement that the game sold more than 100,000 copies in two days.
The second time was a week after the game's release, Pugstorm announced that the game had sold more than 250,000 copies.
The third time was today, coinciding with two weeks of the game's release, and Pugstorm announced that the game had more than 500,000 downloads.
Pugstorm plays a word game here, announcing downloads rather than actual sales, and may include some unconventional ways of obtaining them, such as activation codes. But overall, for an indie game that's still in early access, nearly 500,000 copies sold in two weeks has been quite successful.
It reminds GameRes of a dark horse in the gaming world last year, "Heroic Temple", although the absolute value of sales is very different, but they have a similar growth curve, after two weeks, the game still maintains considerable sales.
Also, in terms of team size, gameplay, etc., the two also have certain similarities, small teams, sandbox adventures, and multiplayer. Logically, there are no more sandbox adventure games on the market, and "Geocentric Nucleus Protector" has not shown too much innovation or uniqueness, why has it become popular?
First, the stitching monster?
Pugstorm's positioning of the game is a mining sandbox adventure game, it is undoubtedly a tribute to the "Minecraft" that has been popular in the game industry for more than ten years, but in terms of game style and direct performance, it is closer to another popular sandbox game - Terraria, some players even compare "Core Protector" to the upside-down "Terraria", the main venue of the game is concentrated in the underground world that cannot be seen, and the player freely explores the way forward by destroying the terrain, but "Terraria" Using a 2D flat perspective, "Geocentric Nucleus Protector" is a 45° overhead view.
In addition, similar to Terraria, the game loop of Guardian of the Earth is also to explore the battle, collecting enhanced characters for further exploration. However, in terms of base construction, "Geocentric Nucleus Guardian" borrows from another popular independent game - "Stardew Grain Language", which has a mature planting, fishing, and mining system.
In the design of the battle module and the overall tone of the game, "Core Protector" learns "Diablo", players can encounter monsters in the way from time to time when groping forward in the dark, the game is designed with multiple biomes and four main bosses, the large, lethal boss and the dark underground atmosphere effectively create a terrifying atmosphere.
In an interview with the head of Pugstorm Studio and the game's artists, they said that the game was developed with reference to many games such as Minecraft, Terraria, Stardew Grain, and Heroic Temple, and they did not add too many personal ideas to the game, but used the fastest time to test whether the content worked.
So, for such a game with a strong "stitching" nature, what is the difficulty in its production?
Developers say one of the difficulties is how to provide players with continuous surprises through procedural generation technology, rather than allowing players to grasp the game routine after several experiences, thus falling into aesthetic fatigue.
It means that games need to have enough game content, a reasonable growth curve, and an effective distribution of resources.
From the actual experience of the game, the current content of the game is not very abundant, the boss is only four, but the game experience is diverse enough, exploration, collection, combat, planting, fishing, cooking, processing, construction and other content, players in the first ten hours do not have to worry about nothing to do, or there is no new game content, and once a game can allow players to survive the first 2 hours without fatigue, it has achieved initial success.
On the other hand, the basic framework of the game has been initially formed, and the interaction between each game system and its own growth curve has a relatively clear plan, and the follow-up only needs to be continuously filled with content.
Finally, games are not entirely procedurally generated, including some manually created scenes and fixed script events, and when using procedural generation techniques, it must follow some principles - to provide continuous positive feedback to the player, which requires not only new content, but also that this new content can be immediately digested and used by the player. Therefore, developers need to ensure a balance between manual and procedurally generated content, so that they have a relaxed melody like music.
But this still does not answer a question: since Minecraft, there have been too many sandbox construction games on the market, why can "Geocentric Core Protector" still fire?
Second, is the focus on sandboxing or multiplayer?
In the previous article "Fragments of Independent Games in Recent Years" previously pushed by GameRes, the author Fontainebleau once mentioned that "the convergence sandbox is not only a possible explosive type of independent games in the next few years, but also a category that commercial games try to occupy." In simple terms, although the game is free, it is not free enough to significantly exceed the cost, and the developer will reduce the redundant sandbox scenes and drill around the main gameplay and systems, or the topical sandbox scenes. ”
The fire of "Geocentric Guardian" is actually quite in line with the concept of "convergent sandbox", one is that the cost is controllable, and the other is the difference in theme.
The meaning of controllable costs not only means that developers need to invest less time and resources, but also refers to the low threshold for players to play. The high degree of freedom and richness of the system of "Geocentric Nucleus Protector" is controllable, and its core is clear, not the east scales and west claws, the patchwork, the random stitching, and what to think. The positive reviews of stitching games on the market generally have two results, one is nonsense to the extreme, thus achieving absurd effects, but does not support long-tail sales and continuous operation. The other is to have a clear core, tailor-made, and gradually add other content on the main context to meet the needs of different players on the basis of not shaking the core experience. The Geocentric Guardian belongs to the latter, which establishes a clear core loop modeled on Terraria, with improvements in graphic quality, operation optimization, system simplification, and so on.
In Pugstorm's understanding, sandbox building games can always be popular because it "provides a building tool rather than a finished product", it needs to ensure that players have enough freedom and creativity, but this freedom must have a corresponding positive feedback from the game. In Geocentric Nucleus Protector, whether players are engaged in exploration or construction, they can accumulate corresponding experience points and gain enough sense of achievement, in short, in "Geocentric Nucleus Protector", players can be more clear about what they should do, and they can get positive feedback from what they do.
In terms of theme differences, "Geocentric Core Protector" is not completely out of the category of underground exploration of "Terraria", but the creation of the game atmosphere still makes it have some special features, and the excitement of accidentally smashing through the monster's room and then running all the way to the base makes players head up.
But the fire of Geocentric Guardian may be related to another attribute of it, multiplayer.
The game allows 8 people to be online, players can add their existing game characters to other people's game worlds, retain the existing characters' skills, equipment, items, etc., players can explore a certain area together, you can also divide the work, one group mainly attacks the base operation, vigorously develop agriculture and technology, and the other group is mainly responsible for frontline exploration and combat.
Multiplayer games bring two problems to Pugstorm, one is technology, operating costs, such as servers, and the other is game design, such as resource allocation, resource rebirth speed and so on.
The benefits of multiplayer games are also clearly visible, bringing excellent live streaming effects to streamers and further expanding the exposure of games. In the official announcement, Pugstorm said the game has been watched for more than 2 million hours on Twitch.
But "multiplayer" is also a pseudo-proposition, after all, Pugstorm's last game, Radical Rabbit Stew, was also a multiplayer co-op game, but the sales were mediocre.
Its more substantive question is: What triggered the social heat of these single-player games? And why it can be repeated over and over again, whether it's The Temple of Heroes or The Guardian of the Earth's Core.
This problem is like the meat pigeon game, but where the game can have enough difference and fun, it can always bloom, the difference is that some are the light of the grain of rice, some are the glow of the moon, so what constitutes the substantial difference between the two?