If you only talk about the style of the story, the impression of the second dimension is often "pure and beautiful". Even the popular "black and deep" worldview in recent years, put into the two-dimensional game, is generally manifested as the player and the "righteous partner" in the common battle to form a bond, and finally achieve "justice must win".
Although this narrative style is very much in line with the tastes of two-dimensional players, it undoubtedly limits the possibilities of the two-dimensional category itself. As a result, in the context of the intensification of the inner volume of the track, the gamebreakers who tried to do the opposite also came into being, such as the "dark" two-dimensional mobile game "Lost forever" previously reported by GameLook by the cutting-edge team Shanghai Burning From the Network, which is worth reminding that this two-dimensional game has obtained a version number in January 2021.
At the end of March, just after announcing that the number of reservations on the whole network exceeded 1 million, "Lost in Time" opened the first limited deletion billing test on April 15, the test can be described as a yard is difficult to find, and GameLook, who was fortunate enough to grab the test qualification, also tried to play for the first time, thus getting a glimpse of the dark world of this hardcore to the end.
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The adult world cloaked in the second dimension
The most distinctive cognitive label in "Lost in Time" before was "16+" or even "18+". But this is not due to the game itself has any extreme content presentation, but because of its unique story background.
Hands-on demonstration
Like most doomsday science fiction themes, "Lost in Time" is also set in an apocalyptic world that suffers from natural disasters, and human civilization is affected by the unknown "black ring" crisis, resulting in many human beings being seriously polluted and turning into monsters. But what is different is that the players who play the mbcc chief of the crisis management department do not have "righteous partners" who can fight side by side, but must capture and shelter the super-powered criminals "confinement" in the city, and use their ability to "counter violence with violence" and deal with various crises.
Matching this dark setting is the game's narrative language. From the first moment you enter the game, GameLook is like watching an adult-oriented film and television work rather than an anime. Whether it is the mature heat of the plot text itself, or the accurate grasp of the emotional release of the voice actors, the plot expression of "Lost in Time" does not have the common "second sense" of the second dimension, and it will not violate the sense of harmony by directly making the plot into a live-action movie.
The overall dark tone naturally also affects the art style of the game. In the early player discussions, Standing Painting has always been an unavoidable topic of this game, but unlike Kim Hyung-tae's greasy selling meat, "Lost in Time"'s interpretation of "adult sense" comes from a unique line treatment.
In order to strengthen the "cuteness" of the character, the traditional Japanese two-dimensional element often uses rounded lines, such as face shape, eye shape and even pupils, and at the same time, it will dilute the bridge of the nose as much as possible, which highlights the three-dimensional sense of facial features, and further weaken the sense of line of the character's shape through soft lighting.
Typical Japanese characters
On the contrary, in "Lost in The End", all the characters have very tough lines, especially the characters of The Royal Sister Xiang, and they focus on the lines of the tip of the nose, cheekbones and other parts. Coupled with the low-saturation color selection and the aesthetic sense of the thick painting method itself, the game characters have a very adult visual presentation.
The characters are sharp and angular
What makes Japanese two-dimensional players "sad" is that such an art style also complements the character personality, even If Hela, who will spoil the player and claim to be the "cutest" in the game, actually does not want to form a bond with the player, she is just forced to be subject to the "forbidden" sent by the player, and under the innocent and cute appearance hides an ambition to kill the player and regain freedom.
Overall, from the plot setting, narrative language to art style, "Lost in Time" wants to create an adult world cloaked in two dimensions, and what players have to do is to become the final winner in this environment of survival of the fittest. And under such a hardcore content setting, the gameplay will naturally be hardcore to the end.
A hard-core tower defense that can "point" to "go"
"Lost in Time" adopts a tower defense gameplay that is currently relatively accepted among two-dimensional players, and each character has its own exclusive kills in addition to general attack. In the past two-dimensional tower defense games, in order to reduce the operating threshold, it often uses a combination of fixed position + fixed skill casting range, that is, after the player lays out the position of a certain character, the character will be fixed in that position until the end of the battle, and the skill also has a fixed release range, and the player does not need additional operations.
In contrast, the way "Lost" operates is undoubtedly much hardercore.
If you're a MOBA player, you'll be familiar with "directing skills" and "non-directing skills." A "directing skill" is one that the player needs to specify to cast a skill, and if there is no castable object within the cast range, the skill will not be cast. Therefore, this is a very challenging class of skills for players to move and operate.
Lost in Time introduces this concept into the tower defense gameplay. In battle, there are some forbidden people's must kill skills are not for a fixed range of casting, but need to specify the casting object, such skills often have a strong single-point sniper ability, and will cause continuous negative effects such as breaking the enemy, which is conducive to the subsequent operations of other forbidden people, so it is also very challenging to the player's casting timing and overall grasp of the battle situation.
At the same time, "Lost in Time" also supports "positioning" in battle, and players can re-adjust their position on the field for those who have been deployed on the battlefield, so that players can redistribute troops according to changes in the direction of the enemy's source. Judging from the current difficulty of level design, whether it is "pointing" or "moving" is not optional, in order to achieve a perfect level, these strategic operations require players to use flexibly.
Equally varied and player-conscious is the terrain on the battlefield. Some of the near-shattered plots can be turned into traps to directly destroy enemies located on the plots, while others will deal damage after a certain number of enemies are located on them, so players also need to use the characteristics of these plots to compensate for the lack of damage in their lineup.
In addition, "Lost in Time" also provides a variety of dungeon gameplay including roguelike and boss challenges, fully tapping into the possibilities of real-time tower defense gameplay. It can also be seen from the fancy playthrough strategies shared by test players on major platforms that the blessing of hardcore tower defense ensures the gameplay of "Lost in Time".
40,000 prediction qualification seconds, hardcore two-dimensional is promising
Obviously, from the content to the gameplay, "Lost in Time" is a rather "non-mainstream" hardcore two-dimensional product. This also makes people wonder, are the two-dimensional players who are accustomed to small freshness pay for it?
Compared with the official announcement at the end of March that the number of reservations on the whole network exceeded 1 million, the personal experience of GameLook may be more convincing.
After the official launch at 11 o'clock, the game had a brief explosion, although the official quickly solved the problem, but including GameLook, all the testers who failed to enter the game at the first time were worried about the same question: whether they would miss the test because they did not create the character in time.
This small storm also reflects the players' expectations for the game, although it is undeniable that most of them should still be attracted to the unique art style of "Lost in Life", but after experiencing it for themselves, their focus has long been more than art.
For example, a player who gave a four-star evaluation said that from krypton, liver degree to art, gameplay has a good performance, the reason why one star is deducted is because the difficulty is too high to cause Katu.
But then, when he realized that he didn't understand the character's characteristics enough, he quickly changed it to five stars and praised the game's strategic nature again.
Another player who was amazed by The Standing Painting gave his own praise in terms of plot performance and character development, and obviously, like GameLook, he also enjoyed the emotional release of the character dubbing just right.
The five-star praise of players is not surprising in the eyes of GameLook. On the one hand, in last year's report, for the dark horse of the Shanghai two-dimensional track, GameLook has given an evaluation of "not inferior to the old two-dimensional manufacturers", in the research and development, operation, promotion level, the registered capital of up to 100 million yuan of the network has shown a good strength and sophisticated operation.
On the other hand, after the actual experience, the game's unique gameplay style and high degree of completion have left a deep impression on GameLook. When "boutique" becomes the main theme of the two-dimensional track, the player's requirements for "boutique" will obviously not only stay in the inner volume of the art or the improvement of the gameplay. Under the premise of doing enough homework in all aspects, we can break through the subject matter restrictions of the second dimension itself and realize the category innovation in the true sense, so as to meet or even exceed the increasing appetite of players. "Lost in The End" that has done this naturally has the basis for success.
Although the success of the data surface still needs to be verified after the public beta, the performance of "Lost in The End" so far has shown that the two-dimensional element is not only soft and cute, but also has great potential in the context of the increasingly crowded track.
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