"Magic Tower", as a domestic two-dimensional style open world mobile game, and a product promoted during the transformation of Perfect World, has been attracting much attention.
Since its launch in December last year, "Magic Tower" has shown its potential to the market, entering the top 10 positions of the best-seller list several times in 3 months, and relying on the linkage with the national comic IP - "Spirit Cage" to achieve an excellent circle-breaking publicity.
The sparse product positioning coupled with the good results obtained at the beginning of the launch makes people more look forward to what the next time "Magic Tower" breaks the circle.
At the end of April, a batch of test suit videos of the 2.0 version of "Magic Tower" were posted online by players, and the main content of these videos was the real-life screen of Jingdu, the main cyberpunk city that "Magic Tower" will launch. The mirrors in the video are made up of several modern megastructures, and countless electronic billboards and neon lights illuminate every corner of the city, making the main city superficially conform to most people's cyberpunk fantasies.
Thanks to the outstanding artistic performance of the mirror, more and more players have paid attention to the 2.0 version of "Magic Tower" and decided to enter "Magic Tower" to explore the end of this cyberpunk main city.
On April 25, version 2.0 of The Magic Tower was released. The dreamlike cyberpunk main city has finally arrived in front of the player's eyes, and pulled the best-selling list of "Magic Tower" directly to 11th place.
01
It is the city of dreams built by Unreal Engine, and the perseverance to unremittingly adjust product content and positioning
There is no doubt that the market performance of the new version of "Magic Tower" naturally has most of the credit for the new main city, and it is precisely the excellent Mirror Art that can attract a considerable number of players to carry out tap water publicity for the 2.0 version.
However, in the author's opinion, the take-off of the 2.0 version of "Magic Tower" is also closely related to another factor, that is, the perseverance of the "Magic Tower" team to unremittingly adjust the product content and positioning.
If you simply watched the previous mirror real-life video, you may only think that this is a map of the main city with good visual effects.
But in reality, Jingdu is still a three-dimensional open world map filled with many interactive details. Can collect city resident dialogue, digital theme challenge game, hidden in the corner of the city treasure chest, independent operation of the aboveground iron are players can freely explore the game content in the mirror map, their existence not only makes the open map of the mirror city have the fun of attracting players to explore, but also supports the external sense of technology in the mirror, making the mirror really like a city with a scientific and technological life.
(Currently open, only part of the mirror, but the content that can be explored is close to 200)
This is quite different from the previous open map design style of "Magic Tower". In previous versions of "Magic Tower", the production team mostly used the field terrain with gaps and industrial ruins to build development maps, and used honeycombs, mushrooms, grease layers and other landscapes with natural attributes to build interactive puzzles.
Although such an open map is quite successful in terms of both aesthetic beauty and fun to explore, it is difficult to give players a very unique game memory.
In "Phantom Tower" 2.0, the production team made a major adjustment to the past open map design ideas on the Jingdu big map, not clinging to the map design of the wilderness visual sense, nor doing interactive gameplay with natural attributes, but seizing the highly developed design of Jingdu technology in the 2.0 version of "Phantom Tower", using modern architecture and neon lights as the foundation, and using the content of urban life and science and technology as the top pillar to make the current unique cyberpunk urban style and three-dimensional open map in the field of mobile terminals in China.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Mirror Map is currently the most competitive open map of The Phantom Tower, because it is only suitable for a high-tech worldview like the Phantom Tower, and it is difficult to appear in other "medieval, sword and magic" worldviews.
Therefore, in essence, the mirror map is also the first time that the product "Magic Tower" has played its own advantages in the design of open maps and made game content that is difficult to make by competitors.
Another benefit of revolutionizing map design is that it thoroughly unleashes the features of the Unreal Engine used by the Tower of Illusions team.
In cyberpunk-themed maps, lighting has always been the most dominant visual element. As we all know, the realism of the light has always been a good ball belt for Unreal Engine, which is why the mirror can bring players such a big visual impact. In the past, the constituent elements of the large map of "Magic Tower" 1.0 were relatively ecological, natural, and lacked light sources, which made Unreal Engine's graphics performance ability not yet be fully utilized.
(Reflective details of the ground)
I believe that after reading the above content, you should be able to understand that what makes the 2.0 version of "Magic Tower" take off is not just because of a beautiful game map, but also because of a series of designs that have been supported and the research and development concept that the R & D team has been adhering to - boldly trying, boldly saying goodbye to the past.
The reason why such a concept is what the "Tower of Illusion" team has always insisted on is because it is not the first time that the matter of tearing down all the design methods in the past has appeared in this work.
As early as the internal beta version, the "Magic Tower" team had been accused of not modeling their two-dimensional characters for not being "two-dimensional".
In the face of the player's feedback, the "Magic Tower" team took actual action, directly overturned the original model that met the standard, remodeled, rendered, and adjusted 3 times in a row until their model was "two-dimensional".
In fact, such qualities exist in many teams, and their works are constantly bursting with vitality and unknown possibilities because of such research and development concepts, and end every trend that makes works die.
02
Plot experience, the next stop of the self-revolution of "Magic Tower"
With better open map development ideas and better character model technology, can Magic Tower stand at the top of the best-seller list with these?
It may or may not work, but if you want to reduce the possibility of not doing it, the story experience will be the next game content to be prioritized in Tower of Illusions.
I think some people may have questions: as an MMORPG, why is the story experience the next priority to be improved in "Magic Tower"?
The reason is that the story experience will have a greater impact on the payment of Magic Tower and the retention of new players.
Although "Magic Tower" is known as an MMORPG in the public perception, in fact, its core paid content is not much different from other secondary products, which are paid to draw the character's weapons from the prize pool (after obtaining the character's weapons, the player can use the character's appearance and voice), and the will to be able to add a set of bonus values (which can be understood as equipment).
This kind of paid design is doomed to "Magic Tower" needs to put more effort into the character's art and character plot, in order to make this paid design gain the favor of players.
In terms of new player retention, the game's story experience will also play an important role.
Because whether in fact or in the promotion of the "Tower of Illusion" team itself, "Tower of Illusion" relies on the stand-alone experience with open-world gameplay to distinguish itself from other games of the same type. This means that most of the players who are new to the Tower of Illusions, as well as those who return to the game because of the Mirror Map, will look at the Tower of Illusions with the standards of relatively single-player games. The importance of the plot experience to the stand-alone experience is self-evident.
Obviously, the Magic Tower team also has a good understanding of this and has upgraded the story experience of version 2.0. For example, let the prize pool characters show more faces in the main story, release more interactive cutscenes with different experiences in the main story, and use NPC dialogue to show the other side of the game's main city. Since the plot development of Jingdu is still in the stage of laying the groundwork, the plot has not yet developed to a wonderful stage, but I believe that the "Magic Tower" team will definitely be able to deliver a satisfactory answer to the plot of the 2.0 version.
As the game content of "Magic Tower" gradually becomes unique, and the game experience gradually upgrades, its influence in the two-dimensional player group will be expanding day by day, and it will have a more stable two-dimensional player base.
In the future, we can clearly see how much the two-dimensional open-world game with MMO gameplay as a player's daily life and the game's long-term content bottom will have an impact on the ecology of two-dimensional players.
03
epilogue
Regardless of whether the market positions "Magic Tower" as an MMORPG, all new and old players who enter because of the new game map and character model are most interested in its stand-alone experience, which is caused by the game's own publicity and the impact of competitors on the player community.
Therefore, in terms of perfecting the game experience, "Magic Tower" still has a considerable way to go.
Fortunately, the appearance of the Mirror Map let us know that the "Magic Tower" team does have the determination and perseverance to take this road.
At the same time, the excellent flow performance in the first 3 months of the launch also made "Magic Tower" affirmed by Perfect World as a whole. In the just released Perfect World Q1 financial report, the excellent market performance of "Magic Tower" has been repeatedly mentioned, and I think that in the future, "Magic Tower" will inevitably get more resource tilt, and the speed of this game in the next run may be unexpected.
At the same time, our eyes cannot remain at home. Overseas, the distribution rights to "Magic Tower" have also been entrusted to Level Infinite, a subsidiary of Tencent. At present, the overseas operation team of "Magic Tower" is preparing for the launch of the work, and has tested and promoted "Magic Tower" in some overseas regions.
(In Japan, The Magic Tower's face-pinching system has been loved and caused a topic among a large number of players.) ）
Launching overseas is a new beginning, the project team can grasp the opportunity of overseas launch, and "Magic Tower" may be able to bear different fruits overseas.