Text | Game Pizza, author | Dante's Ark, edited | Jiaqi
You can know all about Three Volts.
Perhaps many players remember that there was a wave of "Chinese horror" fever last year, "Fireworks" is one of the representatives, this independent game has maintained a 98% praise rate on Steam so far, and will also be adapted into a film and television drama by Five Yuan Culture (the producer of "White Night Pursuit" and "Hidden and Great").
The popularity of the previous work has naturally transformed into an expectation for the new work, and the "Three Volts" of Shiying Studio has recently launched a free trial version, which has attracted much attention in the player community. The story stage of this work is set in the "mountain city" based on Chongqing, in the early 21st century, the country is still popular "qigong" and a variety of "special functions", one day, the TV screen jumped out of an old advertisement endorsed by "three-eyed child", rumored to be a three-eyed child resenter hijacking signal, the investigation team began to investigate.
"Three Volts" still adopts the 2D horizontal version style, the demo process lasts about 1 hour, and the gameplay basically inherits "Fireworks", players need to find items and explore puzzles in various scenes as the story progresses. However, "Three Volts" did not continue to focus on the critically acclaimed "Chinese horror" label, and producer Moonlight Cockroach defined the theme of the work as "Chinese suspense thriller crime".
We talked to Moonlight Cockroach about the development process, the production concept and his personal experience. At present, there is still only one moonlight cockroach in the studio, and the development specifications and finished product volume of "Three Volts" will not change much compared with "Fireworks", and only external cooperation has been added in terms of sound effects and soundtrack.
"Stress" is a high-frequency word in communication. The idea of "Three Volts" has appeared 1 month after the launch of "Fireworks", and the positive feedback from the market to "Fireworks" has not brought too much excitement, "Since the public LOGO, there have been many players looking forward to it, the theme has changed, and I will be afraid that everyone will no longer like it." Moonlight Cockroach said.
In his view, the two similar themes of "horror" and "suspense" are diametrically opposed in game design - horror games need to stimulate the player's fear through atmosphere, monsters and other means to prevent the player from moving forward, and suspense must stimulate the player's curiosity and attract the player to move forward by constantly laying problems and setting traps.
After "Fireworks", Moonlight Cockroach was called "the most capable producer of horror games in China" by some players, which is another source of pressure, he felt that "this kind of false name is very outrageous", "Three Volts" is only the third work of Moonlight Cockroach, the game still pursues "telling a good story".
In "Three Volts", a little cold sweat is shed
"Three Volts" is inspired by two social news in recent years, "quantum fluctuation speed reading" and "boiled egg rejuvenation", and now there are such anti-scientific and counterintuitive events that make the moonlight cockroach germinate creative interest. More than 20 years ago, there was indeed a "qigong fever" in China, and believers would wear stainless steel helmets as "brainwave amplifiers", and the "three-eyed child" in the game also had the same shape.
Entering the game, you will first be attracted by the style of painting, and the 2-dimensional scene with the greenish tone is eerie. Players can also find many elements with a sense of age in the game, such as the main scene "Mountain City Video Hall", the wall is pasted with posters of "rejuvenating the country through science and education" and "promoting science", there are posters of old movies such as "Farewell to the Overlord" and "Sweet Honey", after which it will automatically issue an "welcome" sound of electronic dolls, and there is also a "fortune teller" in the corner...
"Nostalgia" itself can also become "popular", this year there have been "Perfect Day", "Black Sheep", "Heroes in the World" and many other independent games set in the 90s of the last century, and the promotion will also emphasize letting players relive their childhood. However, Moonlight Cockroach believes that there is no essential difference between choosing nostalgia and choosing science fiction, and that there is a story inspiration before considering what style to use, and some stories can only take place in specific times.
Therefore, the nostalgic elements in "Three Volts" are more functional, and their existence serves the plot. For example, placing a machine that can be used to tell fortunes by entering a name under the poster of "Promoting Science" has a satirical effect, and the several times that the advertising poster of "Dafu Coke" appears is actually a hint, and Coke is an important prop in the follow-up process.
"With the exception of a few Easter eggs, 80% of the elements are related to the plot or the special effects I want, and it is impossible to simply pile them up and spend time on the blade." Moonlight Cockroach said his work habit is to collect information in the morning and focus on development at night. A large number of visual materials are preserved by feeling, and they need to be restored and traded off when they are used in the game, and some old posters without provenance rely on imagination.
Creation has nothing to do with ease, Moonlight Cockroach felt "bland" and "painful" during the long development, and the game engine he has been using (i.e. development software) is RPG Maker, which does not require any code ability, all depends on the level of screenwriting and the level of art, which often need inspiration, but he "basically has no inspiration when it bursts".
How to create suspense is almost the biggest problem facing "Three Volts". Horror genres such as "Fireworks" can also use some general techniques, such as "hearing the sound - the camera is closer - empty - the camera is back to the position - and suddenly something more behind the back" is a deliberately frightening technique, but "Three Volts" can only rely on plot and details.
The opening of the game is a dialogue between Chengguan and Taoist Xu Qingyuan, half of the Chengguan will say "how I seem to have seen you", deliberately guiding players to think about "whether the protagonist has ever committed anything", and then Xu Qingyuan goes to the noodle restaurant, the boss will say "there is a Sven man with glasses looking for you", "Senior intellectuals looking for Help from Taoists" will also form a contrasting question, and then the scene where the two chat has two windows as a prospect, creating a feeling of "snooping on secrets" for players, and throwing out the main suspense of "how the three-eyed child advertisement hijacks the TV signal".
This is the 10-minute game content of the prologue of "Three Volts", which already contains 1 main suspense point and a number of deliberately designed small questions, "It sounds simple, in fact, it needs to control the rhythm, the whole demo may have 2-4 large suspense points, and then continue to intersperse in the middle, so that the player can go down with doubts." ”
The game has a dual protagonist design, and the heroine in demo needs to operate across the TV screen
The demo shows not much content, but this 1-hour demo version alone took half a year, Moonlight Cockroach revealed that the official version of the development progress is currently only 20%, if it goes well, the game will be launched early next year.
The demo ends with the crowd smashing open the wall and finding two twisted corpses inside the wall, and three pairs of hands posing as Buddha statues on the corpse's chest, which is impressive. This scene actually points out the theme of the story, "three volts" not only represents the festival, "volt" also has the meaning of "Voldemort", the previous plot has implied that the character is killing people in front of the Buddha statue, and finally the body of the evil person poses as a Buddha, there will be "a feeling that the gods are descending demons and exorcising demons".
Huge dramatic conflicts are also manifested in the characters and scenes, the preparatory stage moonlight cockroach went to Chongqing once, saw the Taoist monks with hairpins naturally walk between reinforced concrete, and can also see temples and Taoist temples on the side of the city road, "so that the traditional, religious, mystical things, and the modern have a sense of collision, it is really wonderful." ”
Tell a story with a game and tell a good story
After the launch of the demo, there were also a few players who questioned it, and there were comments in the Steam community that "Three Volts" had a poor feel and poor gameplay, believing that "2022, this 4399 mini game is not worth blowing." By extension, this actually reflects the long-term controversy over how important is play as an artistic carrier.
In the view of Moonlight Cockroach, the game can be "specialized" in a certain experience, some games such as action, shooting focus on operation, naturally some can focus on narrative, the choice is actually in the hands of the player. The feedback from the first two works, Hesse-machi Tan and Fireworks, has made him more and more convinced that there are a large number of players who can accept to experience a wonderful story through only simple interaction, specific to the plot puzzle game he developed, if the puzzle part is too difficult, it will destroy the narrative rhythm.
More importantly, "the core of gameplay is to obtain feedback through interaction", so Moonlight Cockroach believes that even if it is a text adventure game, the player "plays" only by clicking on the screen, but as they continue to make choices and receive feedback, they can have a good game experience. "[Different categories of games] are essentially the same, but in different ways."
Although RPG Maker does not support designing complex operations, Three Volts has improved in terms of interaction, such as an exploration session that finds clues by "tearing ads", without any puzzle component, but requires the player to make multiple clicks. A similar link in "Fireworks" will only appear as "press the OK button and watch the plot".
This improvement will not bring any qualitative improvement to the gameplay, but only "add a little interactivity and make the player more engaged", and the ultimate goal is to make the core experience of "Three Volts", that is, "narrative", better.
The desire to "tell stories" was reflected in the university years of Moonlight Cockroach, who was obsessed with Writers such as Keigo Higashino and Yi Yi, and wrote a 30,000-word novel "Burning Coffin", which described a fire at a funeral, which was later used in "Fireworks". Around 2013, a horror puzzle game made with RPG Maker became a small-scale hit, and he "struggled for more than a month" with great interest to make the game "Black Forest", which was later the prototype of "Hesse Town".
Moonlight Cockroach University is an editing and publishing major, visual design and screenwriting theory all rely on self-study, after graduating in 2016, he first worked in an Internet factory for two months, could not stand the boring feeling like a screw, turned to the film self-media to do art work, every day with the film let him re-move his own creative mind, resigned to become an independent game producer.
"Hesse-cho Akitan"
During the development of Hesse-cho Akitan, Moonlight Cockroach considered itself a "two-dimensional house", and the game was set in the tokyo subway gas incident of the last century, with a Japanese fantasy style. The works were well received in small circles, but some people questioned: "You are a Chinese why do you want to develop works with Japanese themes?" ”
At the same time as it was angry and funny, the moonlight cockroach remembered "Burning Coffin", "I myself like the folk elements, and the players do have a demand for local themes, and the market has decided that my next game will take this road." "Fireworks" puts the story in the remote villages of China in the early 21st century, and funeral supplies such as paper people, wreaths, coins, coffins and other funeral items make a large number of players feel cold on their backs, and for the first time, they also appreciate the charm of "Chinese horror". This fear is based on thousands of years of shared cultural background, and no matter how many Resident Evil and Silent Hill films are, they are difficult to replace.
"Fireworks"
According to the statistics of the "National Tour Sales List", "Fireworks" will sell 270,000 copies in 2021, which is the 12th place in the buyout game, and the market performance has been quite good, but the direct change brought by this to the Moonlight Cockroach is only "changing an iPad", he has no plan to expand the studio for the time being, ""Three Volts" can be completed by itself, then it is still maintaining the status quo, and the more people involved, the more difficult it is to control." I'm conservative, and my planning for the studio is to make this kind of short and pithy game. ”
Without the idea of doing a bigger project, Moonlight Cockroach also refused some investment intentions: "Originally I was the boss, and if I took the investment of others, I became the boss of others." I quit my job so I wouldn't work for anyone else. ”
Compared with commercial achievements and financing, some specific player feedback makes Moonlight Cockroach "moving". The horror level of the second half of "Fireworks" has been reduced, but there is no lack of warmth and human beauty, some bipolar patients sent him private messages on Weibo, saying that he saw the hope of life again after playing the game, and there were also criminal police officers who died in the mission, specifically looking for him to share their feelings.
"It's really an honor to make a game without thinking about influencing others." Moonlight Cockroach said. Players are often touched because of the appeal of the story itself, for independent games, the author's own desire to express is a double-edged sword, a sense of preaching once it is overheated, and the moonlight cockroach is used to hiding behind the work, trying not to output any views or truths through the game. Even if the popularity of the work is sometimes given more meaning, he himself has never thought of the big concepts of "promoting traditional Chinese culture" and "the rise of domestic independent games", and "telling stories one after another" and "telling every story well" are the concepts he mentions the most in exchanges.
"Developers are like chefs, players are diners, they pay for the dish when they think it's delicious, and they scold them if they don't feel good." I'm just an ordinary little producer, just create honestly. ”