It is undeniable that this year is a big year for Eryou products. If the game wants to stand out, the gameplay, theme, publicity, and timing cannot be missed in every link.
In the face of competitors around him, today (April 20), the two-dimensional war chess mobile game "Timing Remnants" that opened the second test also showed off his muscles. Judging from player feedback alone, "Chronological Remnants" can be said to have come to the forefront of the team, and can be in the first echelon with "Honkai: Star Dome Railway".
At the same time, due to the huge increase in the volume of the game after the start of testing, the manufacturer behind Baiao Family Interactive (hereinafter referred to as: Baiao) also came to the center of the stage for a long time, allowing the industry to see another side of its full potential.
The South China factory of the treasure knife is not old
If you ask, what exactly is the highlight of the ACT part of the game? Then we need to start with the gameplay. To be honest, the author's expectations for the game "Temporal Reverberation" are very high.
On the one hand, the expectation comes from the game's visually impactful first exposure PV, which directly pokes the hearts of EVA fans. On the other hand, there are new strange themes and settings, which always make people want to explore in detail.
In fact, there are not a few players who feel the same way as this author. Before the start of the second test, the game reached a score of 8.4 on TapTap, and about 785,000 people made reservations.
As far as what I have experienced so far, compared to the first test last December, the changes are more in the appearance and numerical system of the characters. Perhaps due to the requirements of version number approval, the appearance of pyrotechnics, sextants and other characters has been adjusted to a large extent. At the same time, many character skill mechanics are also very different from those at the time of the first test.
As for the core gameplay of the game, not much has changed. "Chronological Remnants" basically follows the general framework of other wargame games on the market, with mutually restrained ternary attributes, classic tank output therapy career positioning, and level + weapon + star + skill cultivation family portrait, which are very mature design systems.
This can also be confirmed by the recruitment of positions from the company. For example, in the job requirements of "Level Planning", it is clearly stated that applicants need to be familiar with "Heaven and Earth Tribulation", "Fire Emblem" series, "Demon World Battle" and other similar types of products.
Of course, that's not to say that the gameplay isn't innovative and bright. In fact, the game is designed with a wide variety of novel attack types, and the design is quite relevant to the character's skills. This makes for significant differences in each character's strategy and choice in specific battles.
However, it should also be pointed out that as the first 3D mobile game of Baiao, there is still room for improvement in the modeling and optimization of the game. Many players said after the trial that under the interface such as battle settlement, the expressions and posture of the characters appeared a little dull and stiff.
In addition to the core gameplay, the biggest highlight of the game may be its world view setting.
According to the setting, every time it is midnight, the world in the game does not move on to the next day, but will generate 12 hours of extra time, which is the origin of 24/36 in the main view of the game. During these 12 hours, the real world is frozen, a monster called the Chamber of Secrets invades the reality, and the player, as the guardian of the secret, needs to investigate these anomalies and contain them.
Readers who are knowledgeable about the SCP Foundation will certainly be able to identify the elements at a glance. For readers who don't know much, here is also a little popular science.
The SCP Foundation here is a collection of online co-creation content with the theme of grotesque science fiction. The fantasy organization is dedicated to containing anomalies and protecting the world from the unknown. And the phenomena, events, individuals, etc. that are difficult to explain in reality are collectively called "containments" by it.
Canon, SCP-173
Containment, abnormality, silently guarding the world, these words are very similar to the setting of "Temporal Reverberation". In fact, many horror or bizarre games/movies and television works have drawn inspiration from SCP, such as the horror game "inside the Backrooms", which has been popular for a while. At present, young people's popular topics such as rules and turtle soup are also inextricably linked to it.
In addition, the "sanity value" design in the game is derived from the SAN value in Cthulhu literature. And the masks with different abilities have some shadows of the personality masks in "Persona".
Therefore, the author believes that "Temporal Remnants" chose to mix these subcultural and occult elements in order to attract more young players. At the same time, being able to accommodate so many elements with a self-consistent setting does not make it seem unusual, and also shows Baiao's proficiency and delicacy in content control.
But then again, Baiao started with children's games, and in theory should control a group of core users with high loyalty, as well as a large number of young player resources. Why bother to acquire new customers? This may have to start with the changes in Baiao's road.
There are twists and turns on the road to transformation
Among the many page game manufacturers in that year, Baiao can be said to be the lucky one. Its first product, Obi Island, was an unprecedented success.
Obi Island
From its establishment in 2009 to its listing in 2014, this stage can be said to be the most glorious period of Baiao. Explosive products have been launched one after another, the page game business has developed rapidly, and in the field of youth community games, Baiao once won 30-50% of the market share. Another product we know well, "The Legend of Odds", was also born at this stage.
However, with the rise of mobile games and the listing of companies, the pressure on the market and performance has also followed. In addition to maintaining stable performance, Baiao also needed to find a more imaginative business direction. However, after a few years of watching the mobile game market, Baiao has missed the golden period of entry.
As Zhuge Liang said in the "Table of Departures", he was "appointed by the defeated army and ordered between dangers". Although the description of the crisis at that time was a bit too heavy, after all, the stable page game product line still gave the company room to maneuver. It is quite interesting that after the core figure Zhou Jian parachuted into Baiao, there was indeed a bit of Zhuge Liang's divine weapon descending from the sky.
At the end of 2015, Zhou Jian, the former director of Feiyin Game Mortal Studio, joined Baiao with his team and served as the head of the optical core studio (i.e. Qiao Studio). Among the left and right arms who joined with him also included Su Fan, the director of "Food Language" later.
As an airborne executive, Zhou Jian has indeed achieved great achievements before. Feiyin's outstanding page game products "Mortal Immortal Dream" and "Song of Sword and Fire" are all from him. The former once exceeded 20 million in monthly flow, while the latter received 43.99 million level unique generation fees.
After coming to Baiao, Zhou Jian also made rapid achievements, leading Baiao's first mobile game "Law of Creation", and successively operated "Law of Creation 2: Pioneer Heroes", "Food Language" and other products. He is undoubtedly one of the key figures in Baiao's successful transformation from web games to mobile games.
Among the above games, "Food Talk", which was launched in 2019, is the most famous. This women's mobile game quickly became popular as soon as it was launched, and once rushed to the eighth best-selling list of iOS games in China. It has also become the main revenue pillar of Baiao. According to Baiao's 2019 financial report, the revenue of a new product "Food Language" alone reached about 210 million, accounting for 30.4% of the annual revenue.
With this product, Baiao has also gained a foothold in the women's vertical track, replicating the company's successful path in the page game era in the mobile game era.
According to convention, the prospect is also the time of the accident, and the reality is indeed as dramatic as this. The change in Baiao is in the elbow armpit close to the heart. In 2020, for some reason, Zhou Jian, who had been promoted to vice president, left Baiao to start his own business and founded Deep Blue Interactive.
After Zhou Jian left, Baiao also experienced a lot of setbacks. In a major update in November of the same year, "Food Language" opened a character grade called "Holy Product", but it was unexpectedly boycotted by a large number of players. Players have fiercely confronted the official on platforms such as Chaotalk, TapTap, and official website, and triggered a wave of retreats.
And "Food Language", a game that "as long as you don't die, you will definitely be able to catch fire" in the mouth of players, has also gone downhill since then. So far, the game has fallen outside the 400 spots on the iOS best-selling list, and it can only rush back to the top 50 when the event and the new card pool are turned on.
Such a drastic change in the ranking shows that the game still retains a group of high-value users with high spending power and loyalty. However, after learning about the game's past, it is even more embarrassing.
Break the eggshell inside
For Baiao, "Time Remnants" is not only the company's most explosive product after "Food Talk", but also the first 3D game of Baiao. More importantly, it is the first self-developed product of Baiao to step out of the user's comfort zone.
There are multiple labels on "Timing Remnants", which makes its online results significant, which also answers why the aforementioned game should dig out its mind to acquire new customers.
For a long time in the past, the young user pool was one of the advantages of Baiao, and both women's and children's products were shaded. Page resale products such as "Obi Island: Dream Country" and "Ola Star" mobile game all have IP-based user bases and are not completely cold starts.
In addition, starting from the page game, the Obi Island series has gained a large number of female players with its dress-up system, casual simulation management gameplay, and community communication atmosphere. These once young female players, with the growth and transformation of Baiao, have also grown into adult women with more influence and spending power.
"Food Talk" undertakes this part of the users, providing them with a game experience that deeply integrates multiple elements including plot, otome and simulation management. Baiao is inseparable from the contribution of this part of the user when women hit the track.
However, user-side advantages are not permanent. Since the Obi Island series and the Legend of Aoqi series are mainly aimed at young teenagers, at the moment when the uninsured measures continue to deepen, the core user training chain of Baiao has lost its development space at the beginning.
How to grab a piece of cake with bare hands has become an urgent problem to solve. Baiao is obviously aware of this, and when "Food Talk" was launched, it launched a new brand of Ladder Network, which was intended to cut with Baitian, a children's game brand.
This time, "Timing Remnants" is also released by Sky Ladder Network, trying to use better game quality to get out of the comfort zone of users and the track. Open up new growth space in the male-dominated traditional player base.
In this regard, Baiao COO Zhong Hong also said that if "Ola Star" mobile game and "Food Language" are qualified or medium-high products in Baiao's heart, then "Timing Remnants" is a product with more than 80 points, hoping to give users some surprises.
Interestingly, the test began at the same time as "Time Remnants", and Deep Blue Interactive's "Back to the Future: 1999". Both games have similar project testing cycles, both adopt new weird themes set in containment, and have a deep relationship between the teams, it is difficult not to think about it.
During last year's school recruitment, Deep Blue Interactive announced that there was another two-dimensional female game under development. In addition, Zhou Jian also co-founded Xingfan Interactive Entertainment with Zeng Wenjie, a former colleague of Baiao, and is rumored to be developing a two-dimensional mobile game "Codename: Duet". In terms of both products and tracks, Baiao and Deep Blue Interactive seem to be direct competitors with each other.
However, in terms of core gameplay, the wargame genre "Time Remnants" is obviously heavier than the strategy card gameplay "Back to the Future: 1999", and it is closer to the mainstream form of the current two-dimensional game. "Back to the Future: 1999" has some heavy plot light gameplay, and the plot interpretation accounts for a larger proportion of the game experience and the form is more avant-garde.
It is difficult to predict the future results of "Timing Remnants", but judging from the first day of testing, the game has been widely recognized by players, and the overall rating and word of mouth are relatively positive. This also makes the author continue to maintain high expectations for the finished game.
In the summer of fierce battles in this year's two-dimensional game, Baiao and "Timing Remnants", which have always been low-key and pragmatic, I don't know if they will become the biggest dark horses who laugh last.