The PlayStation China Star Project game "Long Dream of the Dark Night", because of its dark fairy tale style, has been hotly discussed by the player group after its release. The Shanghai Magic Studio that created this work is also an old friend of the WePlay Cultural Exhibition, and as early as 2018, it showed an early version of "Long Dreams in the Dark Night" on WePlay. After the release, WePlay had the honor to interview Yu Fan, producer of Shanghai Magic Fish Studio, to talk about some of the creative concepts of "Long Dream in the Dark Night".
As a dark fairy tale style adventure puzzle game, the protagonist Bill impressed the player. What is the reason for setting such a protagonist as a weak character who has been traumatized?
Yu Fan: At the beginning of the project, when we decided to create a story of self-healing from trauma, we thought about the age setting of the protagonist Bill, generally speaking, adults have strong stress ability and self-regulation ability, and children have no resistance ability in the face of trauma, and it is easier to form scars in the heart, but we also do not want to simply set Bill as a weak child, no one's weakness is born, and the childhood Bill is a very healthy and happy, empathetic child. His psychology is slowly becoming distorted and autistic in the midst of repeated traumas, and I hope that people will see the subtle effects and changes that this trauma brings to Bill.
(Bill character setting)
Adults have a wealth of emotional expressions, and children's inner feelings under the simple appearance are often ignored. And it is under this seemingly normal neglect that Bill has actually tried a lot of ways of effort, and eventually when all of Bill's behavior is not positive feedback, it will inevitably gradually move towards the dark side of his personality. And this is a long-term process, and if there is no timely intervention and guidance, it is too late for adults to find out. On the other hand, we want to express that young children also have unlimited possibilities, even if they have suffered a lot of difficulties, as long as they can learn to face the problem and no longer escape, they can eventually heal themselves from trauma.
Each dream scene in the game has an extremely strong style, giving people a sense of fantasy in a dream. In earlier versions, the game's art style was more terrifying. How was the current artistic style finally determined?
Yu Fan: When formulating an art style, we must first meet the main tone of the game's worldview and what kind of way to tell the story. In the midst of traumatic nightmares, Bill's greatest feelings are darkness and loneliness, and the dangers of hiding in the shadows. So most of the environment of the game is shady. We designed distorted monster images for the traumatic roots of each story, the embodiment of fear that combined with Bill's encounter and magnified by his own imagination. At the same time, we have given the dream elf lighting a dynamic shadow effect, which will make the shadows in some game scenes seem to become ethereal and distorted, more in line with the fickle atmosphere of children's nightmares.
In terms of scene shaping, the most important means we use is to use the environment to show Bill's psychological state. Every other part of the game, there will be real scenes in Bill's memory, these realistic scenes in the game form a staggered point, and the middle connection line is the strange scenery in the nightmare, the nightmare scene adopts a large number of realistic and imaginary interlaced styles, as well as upside down structure, the main purpose is to reproduce the evolution of Bill's psychology and personality distortion. The overall color style of the screen matches the theme of the game with the high contrast and high saturation of the American comics. We wanted to explore a way out of traditional Chinese horror that would be acceptable to players in more countries around the world. Personally, I think this is more in line with my idea of a nightmare world.
Regarding the artistic style, we can't help but mention the music and sound effects of this work, we need to design background music that is completely integrated with the environmental theme and excellent sound effects. The game's music not only needs to assume the perfect interpretation of the environment, but also needs to introduce the player's emotions into the state of mind of bill, the protagonist of the story. So we pay great attention to the "emotion" expressed by the game music, we hope that it can play a finishing role in the artistic style of the game, and in the process of production, I have communicated the connotation of the story with the composer many times.
So the overall art style is composed of concept design, environmental art and musical sound effects, and the needle and thread that runs through it is the narrative of the game.
A major feature of the game "Long Dream of the Night" is the addition of "Dream Elves", dream elves in the protagonist to help at the same time ability does not reduce the horror of the game too much, to do such a balance must be difficult, right?
Yu Fan: Joining the role of the dream elf Bikti is precisely to properly reduce the horror of the game, because "horror" is not the theme we want to pursue, we want to create a dark fairy tale with sad and depressing colors, since it is a "fairy tale", no matter what, it must also have a beautiful side, and the dream elf is such a finishing touch. When the dream elf emits a peaceful light, the player will rely heavily on the sense of security created within the light range of the dream elf, but at the same time, it will further deepen the uneasiness and trembling feeling of the monster-infested area, and the dream elf will strengthen this contrast. If the player is always immersed in the dark to explore, then it may fall into the extreme of "completely afraid to move forward" or "just get used to it", and we hope that the appearance of the dream elf will always keep the player at a safe and dangerous floating boundary. Some of the Dream Elves' own abilities will also drive the player to explore the game.
However, outside of the main plot, players will also get more than one dream elf in the later stages, they have more convenient or stronger abilities, when the player gets these dream elves, the thrill of the game may really be reduced. But the purpose of these dream elves with special abilities is to allow players to experience the game in a different way.
During the game, it was found that the action scenes of the game, especially the chase scenes, were more than expected, how to set the ratio of puzzle solving and action elements?
Yu Fan: Probably because most of the game was exposed before the release of the puzzle part, so everyone will start to think that this is a quiet puzzle solving game, but we actually hope that the game is solved by two different modules of puzzle solving and stealth to jointly support the entire rhythm of the game, in order not to make the player prematurely immune to the nightmare world, we used a more old-school traditional progressive narrative rhythm, so in the early process, Bill is in the fog of the story, need to explore and understand the trauma world he is in, The suspense of the plot is also more, the proportion of the bias to solve the puzzle will be more, and as the story progresses, the trauma deepens, Bill gradually realizes the nature of trauma, must summon up the courage to face the fear, the number of encounters with monsters will become more and more, the monsters that appear in the early stage of the game, but also need to explain Bill's relationship with these monsters in the later stages of the plot.
All monsters are named after nightmares, and according to the story they have their own characteristics, such as the foggy nightmare that symbolizes the school bully, with the habit of group haunting and dense sights. Symbolizing the abuser's cruel nightmare, he will actively search for Bill in the nightmare, and release eyeliner to search. We wanted to make the player as different as possible in each chapter.
Regarding puzzle solving, the individual small puzzles in the game can be seen as a relaxation adjustment after a tense stealth chase, and a considerable part of the puzzle in the process is designed to overlap with the stealth chase. Players need to complete puzzles while circling monsters, and we use these methods alternately, hoping to allow players to experience a variety of interactions during the game.
Many players are physiologically repelled by horror games, and some players like to pursue horror thrills, how to grasp the horror of the game in the development process?
Yu Fan: People's sense of terror stems from the fear of the unknown, but the opposite is that people also have curiosity about the unknown, and a scale is formed between the two, and our design for the game is to increase the weight on both sides of the scale, and finally let the scale balance.
On one side is the pressure from fear: relying on a repressive atmosphere to give the player strong hints, increase the psychological burden, and constantly stimulate adrenaline. On the other hand, we borrow people's innate curiosity about the development of things, and constantly lay the groundwork, driving players to continue to go deeper, eager to understand the truth behind the mystery. While bearing the fear of the unknown and being driven by intense curiosity, the two forces are just balanced to bring the player the best survival experience. If the pressure of fear is too strong, it may make the player want to abandon the game, and if the story or narrative bait is not placed in the right place, it will not stimulate the player's curiosity, or even produce boredom. Of course, the balance point of this scale will still have different effects depending on the individual acceptance ability of different players.
How many people are there in Magic Fish Studios now? How many people were there when "Long Dreams of the Night" was first established?
(Group photo of early members)
Yu Fan: By the time the game was completed, we had more than a dozen people in our internal development team, but we had many excellent external collaborators who helped us complete the game together, and there were only 3 people when the project was first established. It's a bit incredible to think about it now, although it was originally only 3 people, but most of the game design concept and the prototype of the game up to 2 chapters were completed at that time. And many of the designs are retained until later in the game.
What's different about developing console games? How did you feel when you learned that you were selected for the PlayStation China Star program?
(Group photo of the members of the celebration after the production of "Long Dream of the Dark Night")
Yu Fan: First of all, I am happy that our game has been recognized by SIE, and at the same time, I feel that we have found a very suitable platform, the China Star program is a very targeted and very appropriate incubation plan for the start-up team, and it can also get a lot of advanced development experience and real help and support from SIE, which is very consistent with the goals of the development team. Taking a solid step forward in our understanding of console games is critical to the early growth of the project and the team. In short, I am full of gratitude for such a rare encounter.
Do Magic Fish Studios have any new plans for the future?
Yu Fan: First of all, we will continue to improve the subsequent version of "Long Dream in the Dark Night". We are also exploring the idea of new works. While the idea of the new title can't be revealed much at the moment, we believe that after a complete journey through the development of Long Dreams in the Dark Nights, our team will become more mature on the road to developing games in the future.
Finally, there is something to say to the player.
Yu Fan: Although "Long Dreams in the Dark Night" is our first time to develop a console game, we are exploring forward with a sense of awe, and we sincerely hope that this game can bring players a happy experience. We will continue to sum up the experience, hoping that there will be better works presented to players in the future.