"Retirement" is the highest dream of contemporary young people lying flat, compared with the previous struggle, today's young people with the growth of pressure in all aspects and changes in the social environment, many people have already calculated their own retirement life when they first entered the workplace life from the early 20s.
With their yearning and shouting for "retirement" life, on April 20, a game called "Retirement Simulator" was launched in steam EA version, under the strong appeal of the "retirement" gimmick, for a time many B station anchors are experiencing retirement life in the game, and many players also said that they want to "lie flat" in the game in advance and enjoy a leisurely retirement day.
I was no exception, on the day the game was launched, I beautifully laid out the game and prepared to lie down, but after starting the game, I found that the retirement life depicted in this game called "Retirement Simulator" may not be the same as most people imagine that the day of easy lying and free.
Uncle Fang's magical retirement journey
After experiencing the "Internet Celebrity" line of "Retirement Simulator" and the "Chuanwu Master" and "Traveler" line, I prefer to call this game "Uncle Fang's Magical Retirement Journey" because the retirement life it depicts is too magical.
The game unfolds from the perspective of Fang Aiju, a former state-owned enterprise employee who caught the last train of retirement, around the story of the retired Uncle Fang who realized his wish within two years at the request of the mysterious force, describing the neighborhood life of Uncle Fang's family and the residents of the surrounding community, mixed with some discussions on practical issues such as telecommunications fraud for the elderly and whether pension money should be taken out to buy a house for the children.
In the game, Uncle Fang's retirement life is not idle, in order to achieve his goals, Uncle Fang needs to become a master of time management, while working while studying, but also to take care of social relations to achieve his wishes.
On the whole, the gameplay of "Retirement Simulator" is biased towards the simulation of the schedule flow, which is similar to the previous "Beautiful Girl DreamWorks" or "Persona", players can arrange Uncle Fang's schedule, and improve Uncle Fang's life attributes and combat attributes through the schedule of various activities, in order to promote the progress of game events. Interspersed with DBG cards, music games and other game battles, with a large number of non-repetitive characters and scenes and cutscenes, from the gameplay and art, the completion of this EA game is quite high.
However, the story performance of the game is quite magical, and from the direction of the initial desire, you can see that the retirement life of this game is very unusual. The first is the wish goal of "martial arts master" and "Internet celebrity", which is relatively out of touch with reality, and then the choice of retiring to choose to be "rich (not yet installed)", but the choice of "traveler" is the most reliable existence.
I can understand retiring to do what I want to do, to realize my own game intentions, but after experiencing the wish line of "Retirement Simulator", my greater feeling is that "such retirement is also too magical".
In the story line of "Internet Celebrities", as a retired boss with no characteristics, he can quickly keep up with the trend of the Internet, and it is already very magical to increase the number of fans, tens of millions, and even hundreds of millions of fans on live broadcasting. At the same time, in the retirement life of the game, in order to realize the wish of "internet celebrities", Uncle Fang needs to go to the university for the elderly to learn various courses to increase his talents, needs to participate in various social activities and even chase network hotspots to create stems, maintain his own live broadcast popularity, and also need to learn to update his own live broadcast form and content, and manage his fans. In the middle, there will also be a variety of sudden family conflicts, neighborhood disputes, and Uncle Fang also needs to send gifts to people to build a good relationship and prevent key people from tripping you up.
After finally realizing my wish and becoming a highly influential "Internet celebrity", although the existence of life pressure was diluted in various ways in the game, I still couldn't help but be afraid of such a busy and magical retirement life - this is the rhythm of retirement and death?
Relatively realistic intention and fragmented game experience
In the narrative of the game producer "Castle", the inspiration for "Retirement Simulator" was obtained after carefully observing the life of his retired parents during a vacation, he hoped that the retirement life of his parents could be more interesting, rich and valuable, and the original intention of the game was also to "show the life of middle-aged and elderly people in a vivid and interesting form, pay attention to the mental health of middle-aged and elderly people, pay attention to their own mental health, pay attention to family and emotions, and rebuild the bond between themselves and their parents." ”
As a result, Fang Aiju, who has a busy and rich retirement life, appears in the game, and has a wish route that looks less practical. At the same time, the game also tells the reality that retirement is not without trouble: Uncle Fang has to work and save money when he retires in order to buy a school district house for his granddaughter to go to a better primary school; the old people around him are worried about their old-age life and medical insurance; in order to be successful in the community, they must continue to have good relations with community personnel, give gifts to deal with trivial matters; buy fake antiques, family disputes after being deceived by health care product pyramid schemes...
From the perspective of caring for the lives of the elderly, "Retirement Simulator" actually has a certain practical significance, and even the relatively magical game performance can be understood as breaking the limitations of the elderly life and allowing them to have a richer life.
But its biggest failure is the experience under this realistic intention - that is, the reality is not realistic enough, a large number of designs in the game are filled with too many popular network memes, but the characteristics of the elderly are very rigid, and the design of retirement life is not old and retired; the magic production team is not willing to completely fly, the wish route is full of jokes and magic plots, but the main line of the game is a serious and serious topic of buying a house or dispute, and the content feedback that often appears in the game is out of touch with the current situation of the game. Leads to a ten-fold experience.
Typical cases such as the game's favorability system, players can establish social relations with NPCs in the game by giving gifts and completing NPC tasks, etc. After the increase in favorability, players can chat privately with these NPCs, and in some games and game events, NPCs with high favorability will also be biased towards players.
But I don't know whether the production team did not deal with the sequence of events or the trigger order, the game often appears that the player has brushed the NPC to the best friend through gifts, but in the main plot, the player has not met with the NPC, and even in the plot, the NPC has just been difficult for the player, and the next second the player can chat intimately with the NPC in the private chat system.
In addition, there are also cases in the game such as the 8-year-old granddaughter's height of 163cm, and although it is called "Retirement Simulator", it is very restrictive to the daily walking and teasing birds that many players want. Players can't go around without triggering an event, and for many players who want to retire and walk flat, these restrictions of the game are really not friendly.
The last time I saw an 8-year-old 163cm girl was in the report of Yao Ming's daughter...
Overall, "Retirement Simulator" as a 6-person team to produce EA games, its game completion is actually quite high, especially in the rich gameplay design and events, in addition to the late value is too inflated flaws, brought me a good cultivation of gameplay experience, in the square dance part of the sound play method interpretation let me remember a lot.
At the same time, as a rare game that focuses on the problems of the elderly's lives, its intention is undoubtedly valuable, but there is still a lot of room for improvement in the depth of the problem and the form of game expression. Uncle Fang in "Retirement Simulator" is a cool old man who can keep up with the trend of the times, and Uncle Fang's retirement life is colorful and fulfilling, but such a life does not belong to most people's "retirement simulation" plan.