Taking advantage of the atmosphere of the Mid-Yuan Festival, we waited for the fourth work of "Paper Wedding Dress". Although it has jumped once, the popularity has not diminished in the slightest, and when it is still in the promotion period, it has been at the top of the TapTap reservation list for several months, usually only the head heavy game and the genre top match can have this popularity, and the "Paper Wedding" series should essentially be classified as IAA free casual games.
I have to say that a free horror game on the mobile phone has reached this point and can already be recorded in the annals of China's independent game history.
The first two works "Paper Wedding Dress" is still in the testing stage, by the time of the third part, it has been possible to see a large number of Chinese horror mobile games that imitate its style and theme on the market, there is no doubt that "Paper Wedding Dress" has dredged the market path of the Chinese horror mobile game type, which is almost a monument for a game.
Exquisite regret
In the front, "Paper Wedding Dress 4 Red Silk Entanglement" is indeed the most well-made one in history, whether it is art, dubbing, the smoothness of the performance is so, the exquisite atmosphere shaping, just the right jump scare is completely immersed in the horror and eerie atmosphere, especially its chapter opening performance is very impressive to me.
Each chapter of it will be cut from the perspective of the characters and the plot twist, after a dialogue or inner monologue, directly into the title in the game screen, the process is not transitioned, equivalent to an embedded title performance. At the same time, the title content is not a blunt display chapter name, but added the time of the time, as well as a sentence of "playing more language", such as the beginning of the first chapter is the beginning of the time of the change, the introduction is "the sky is dry, be careful of the fire candle", and in the fifth chapter of the fifth day, it is "the sun and the moon change, the ghost avoids", with ancient customs to paste the story of modern people, the atmosphere is full.
The details of "Paper Wedding Dress 4 Red Silk" are conveying thorough product thinking, but this sense of refinement is slightly tired, and many players have reported that it is not as good as the first three, including the story is not brought in enough, the mood of the final escape day is not enough, and even the music is a little out of place, and it is not impressive.
Players' feelings are not unreasonable, to the fourth part of the "paper wedding dress", has begun to show fatigue, the narrative has been unable to jump out of the "two protagonists - perspective switching - reunion against foreign enemies" structure, the final story reversal is also relatively flat, perhaps the last "paper wedding dress 3 Mandarin Duck Debt" will be the couple between life and death, the final story of paying for each other is too moving and deep, making the reunion of the new work seems a little hasty and flat.
In addition, the puzzle solving part of "Paper Wedding Dress 4 Red Silk Entanglement" also began to be inadequate, a large number of use of the text puzzle surface + mechanism arrangement of the puzzle design, and the continuation of this style did not bring a new experience on the basis of the previous part, especially when the male and female protagonists in the last chapter of the integration, and the previous male and female protagonists in the yin and yang cross-puzzle experience has been very repetitive, but it has become in the two puzzle rooms with the telephone to exchange clues with each other.
Of course, it is undeniable that this work is painstaking to design the puzzle narrative, although it is still the familiar logic puzzle flavor of "Paper Wedding Dress", but there is a lot less abrupt "water pipe", replaced by a reasonable puzzle background and setting logic.
For example, the seven fairy puzzles in the last chapter —
There are two puzzles, a text puzzle and a seven-fairy chessboard. Corresponding to the logic of the text, deduce the specific placement of the seven fairies on the chessboard.
This mystery is not made out of nothing, but is related to the record in the evil book "Six Turns of magic" circulated by the villain Zheng family, and is directly related to the main plot. The place where the male and female protagonists are trapped is the ancient residence of the Zheng family, which was once sacrificed to the "Taiyi Yin Pond" by living people, and worshiped the Tibetan and honored the immortal law. According to the "Dengxian Realm Ritual Law", worshiping the Tibetan ancestors to cultivate the Immortal Law will eventually be ranked in the Immortal Class, when there will be seven fairies to greet, but the seven fairies are jealous, not to be frustrated, but can be argued with musical instruments and their positions. So there is the puzzle of the seven fairies in the picture above.
Most of the puzzles in "Paper Wedding Dress 4 Red Silk" are well-known, and fragmented to supplement the story, which is not unreasonable in the narrative logic, but compared to the first three, it is indeed a bit boiled water.
Although "Paper Wedding Dress 1" is the most "poor", the "hades" puzzle solving scene of the ghost hitting the wall and the four masters is still amazing. To "Paper Wedding Dress 2 Zangling Village", which is recognized as the peak of the series, from the performance to the narrative, all impressive, not only the redemption of the story itself and the theme of love are rendered extremely full, and the puzzle design reflects the character everywhere, the serial puzzles across time and space are amazing, and the song "Life and Death Are Not Separated" has become the peak of the series of music, as well as the memory point of the entire work. Although "Paper Wedding Dress 3 Mandarin Duck Debt" did not have a big breakthrough, the performance also brought great surprises, and finally the little couple was separated by yin and yang, and the climactic part of the life was paid, and the atmosphere was perfect.
"Paper Wedding Dress 4 Red Silk Entanglement" itself is not bad story, exquisite art and performance display can also make players feel the sincerity of the production team, but perhaps the first three films have explored the boundaries of the limitations of this type of game carrier, or this too perfect story, as well as the "double knot" setting of the male and female protagonists, in the current environment to give people a sense of aesthetic fatigue, so that the whole story for the series of old fans, but some are too conservative, it is difficult to activate the throbbing in the heart.
Myth: What is Chinese horror?
However, "Paper Wedding Dress 4 Red Silk" is not so tasteless in my heart, perhaps its narrative experience is indeed not as amazing as the first three, but its sense of order makes me think deeply about another problem.
What exactly is the charm of Chinese horror?
Is it the familiarity of folklore elements? Is it a sense of cultural identity? Or is it the strange feeling that comes from the distortion of childhood memories?
"Paper Wedding Dress 4 Red Silk" gave me a direction with its own understanding, perhaps not so complete, but a great direction - emotions are linked to the past, logic is linked to the modern.
The four stories of "Paper Wedding Dress" all revolve around love and courage, and are all led by the feudal bad habit of "meditative marriage", mixed with some folk elements that can be contacted in modern society, whether rural or urban families, such as burning paper money, burning incense to worship the Buddha, traditional dowry at weddings, etc., and all have a "feudal etiquette cannibalism" fuse.
These are symbols from the past, or intentional from the past, which seem out of place in the industrialized modern society, but they do activate people's memories and have a sense of weirdness.
However, the strange experience of emotionally close to the memory of the Chinese people is by no means enough to support the four words of "Chinese horror", and we hope to see the characters in the story linked to modern logic, rather than simply afraid of ghosts, being frightened by various kinds of scares and running, to meet the audience's curiosity.
There is a myth on the Internet in Chinese today that people like to use passages from classic works to have a dialogue about what is happening at the moment, so as to accurately describe the emotions of collective consciousness, such as Lu Xun's article, or "Let the Bullets Fly", which has been called for heritage.
Lu Xun is a ruthless satire of the collective control of ideas, "Let the Bullets Fly" is an inevitable historical repetitive and spicy attack, and the tireless plural of the two reflects the current undercurrent of thought to a certain extent.
In the "Paper Wedding Dress" series, especially "Paper Wedding Dress 4 Red Silk Entanglement", this collision of ideas is particularly intense. We don't want the protagonist to be afraid of ghosts and believe in the existence of ghosts and gods, because we firmly believe in changing our destiny with subjective initiative.
Zhang Chenrui, the male protagonist of the fourth part, came up to give the player a feeling of "stupid and bold", and the protagonist Ning Zifu has the same magic, the brain circuit is very strange, such as seeing the paper man in the window of the ancient house suddenly turning back, the first reaction in his mind is, "The same as the paper man on the bus, is it the same style?" "I saw that the coins were stuffed into the bus coin box and turned into infiltrating paper money, but I thought it was a pity and so on."
In essence, Cui Wanying and Zhang Chenrui, the pair of bitter Mandarin ducks, are an extension of modern people's admiration for rationality and anti-authority, Zhang Chenrui's rationality - two years ago, did not quit, because of the encounter with unexplainable strange events, but also suspected of threatening the life of his girlfriend Cui Wanying, so he went around alone to investigate, and even by trying to join the Shaolin Temple, Taoist Temple, studying for a master's degree in folklore and other serious ways to "scientific exorcism", even if it was finally found that the female ghost's life was not explained by science, he still tried to use logical reasoning to find a way to break the situation. Cui Wanying, on the other hand, faced the provocation of the female ghost, and after the initial panic, she quickly re-sided with her boyfriend through rational analysis and worked together to escape.
There is no vulgar coincidence bridge, no sentimental grief, and the narrative focus of "Paper Wedding Dress 4 Red Silk" is the two-way rush of the two, and the calm breaking process.
The cryptic highlight: a meticulous Chinese horror narrative
Another important reason why I am particularly impressed by the exploration of Chinese horror in this game is the logical rigor of the story itself.
Although the experience of each protagonist of "Paper Wedding Dress" is someone behind the scenes, but this time the female ghost seems to be particularly "logical and self-consistent", the heroine Cui Wanying is the villain female ghost in order to get rid of the confinement and find a substitute ghost, but this substitute ghost is not randomly looking for, but there are many restrictions, and in order to find this "person with a relationship", the female ghost has begun to make a round for the two from two years ago, step by step, cui Wanying "made" into a qualified substitute ghost.
First of all, this ghost for the dead must have a name, eight characters, and personality that matches the female ghost, and then she needs to be a "lonely person", so at the beginning of the story, Cui Wanying will receive a horror invitation, and the game also uses a "die without forwarding" bridge section to lure Cui Wanying into the game.
And this seemingly bad forwarding stem, in fact, is because "if there is no forwarding, it means that you are a lonely person", it just so happens that Cui Wanying's boyfriend did not quit two years ago, met the conditions, and Zhang Chenrui was originally a female ghost designed to make it quit and otherwise.
Then Cui Wanying was led to the zheng family's ancient house where the female ghost was born, and under the design of the female ghost, she gradually repeated the key experience of the female ghost's life, including being good to her body, haunting her dreams, and all her thoughts were gray - that is, the experience of the whole game Cui Wanying. In this way, she became the "perfect substitute ghost".
Of course, the most amazing thing about the interpretation of Chinese horror in the "Paper Wedding Dress" series is that it does not deliberately avoid the existence of "ghost gods", and does not forcibly interpret it as a crappy conspiracy in a man-made way, on the contrary, the ghost god has become the finishing touch of narrative sublimation, the second generation Zhu Xiaohong reincarnated as Tao Mengyan, across time and space and the lover reunion, three generations of Wang Jiaotong into a yang soul, separated from Shen Moqing's yin and yang, four instead of dead ghosts, the existence of ghost gods, more to leave a deep emotional experience for players.
Finally, the "Paper Wedding Dress" series is full of deep feelings for traditional stories, each generation of the series, based on ancient words or legends, the first corresponding to "Nie Xiaoqian", the second corresponding to "Liang Zhu", the third corresponding to "Jiaohong Ji", and now the fourth corresponding to "Xi Xiang Ji", but Cui Yingying and Zhang Sheng are no longer the grievances of the feudal family and the poor students who have no ambition, but the story of an independent woman who breaks through the shackles for love, and a strong, gentle and reliable mature man.
Breaking through the shackles and winning the future on your own, this new era spirit has been running through the "Paper Wedding Dress" series, and perhaps exploring the theme of the era itself is the most romantic expression of Chinese horror games.