As far as Grape Jun's personal experience is concerned, the test questionnaire of some new tours last month has just been filled, and more two-dimensional dynamics have followed this month, which is dizzying.
Among them, Kulo Games' open-world action game "Ming Tide" is probably one of the products I am most interested in recently.
The reason is simple, the open world is still the hottest track in the industry, and everyone wants to see how far "Ming Tide" can go.
This attention is intuitively reflected in the popularity of today's game - there are up to more than 400 anchors on station B alone to broadcast "Ming Tide", and the relevant PVs released by the official advance have also won millions of views. It is worth noting that "Ming Tide" has a lot of popularity overseas, and the number of views of game-related videos on YouTube has exceeded one million.
There are 5 of the top 8 mobile game live broadcast comprehensive list of station B "Ming Tide"
Second, since the end of the technical test of "Ming Tide" in July last year, Kulo has rarely announced the major dynamics of the game, until this round of testing, Kulo used the game production team account @稷廷研究员42号 released a large number of behind-the-scenes research and development content including new characters, gameplay, maps, etc., which tuned "Ming Tide" quite high and the pie was quite well drawn - even the game planner also emphasized "new content for everyone to savor" twice in a row in the interview video.
So, what exactly is this new content? How far has Kulo's open-world answer sheet been? After participating in the resonance test for a short time, Grape Jun wanted to talk to you about the changes in "Ming Tide" in the past six months, as well as Kulo's new thinking on the open world category.
01 New style
Did Kulo really find his own "apocalyptic aesthetics"?
This was the first thought that crossed my mind after I participated in the resonance test for a while. Today's "Ming Tide" has not abandoned the heavy post-apocalyptic tone depicted since its first exposure, the overall style of the game is still dominated by retro texture and low-saturation yellow-green tones, the scene construction is realistic, the natural ecology such as vegetation and rivers, and the human traces such as architectural ruins are intertwined with human traces - just looking at the wild area, it is easy to think of the pure and desolate wasteland reconstruction taste.
Although the overall art design of "Ming Tide" has not changed much, the team has put a lot of effort into the overall look and feel of the game and the details of the picture. To put it simply, the current game's graphics are more transparent, the light and shadow effects are more detailed and rich, which can retain the unique art texture and recognition while giving people a softer and more comfortable visual experience, and the dark and monotonous picture reported by players during the last technical test has also been greatly alleviated.
In-game live-action scenes
It seems to be to verify the compatibility of the current "Ming Tide" apocalyptic aesthetic. The map opened for this test of the game is larger, including the initial town of Amagi, the Lost Township, the Hukou Mountain Range, the Grumbling Bird Ze, and the Lightless Forest... On the day of the beta, I also unlocked a small part of the map, and I haven't had time to explore it yet.
At the same time, the game world also contains more natural ecology and landscape styles, such as a slightly realistic Jiangnan Hui style of national style towns, giant wooded forests, mossy remnants of high-rise buildings... Under the unified post-apocalyptic style, the production team has differentiated different ecology, making people feel absurd and reasonable at a glance, thinking that the remnants of the reconstructed post-apocalyptic wasteland world should be so.
Ecological game scenarios
And behind the pure art style, we can also feel Kulo's deeper understanding of apocalyptic aesthetics.
The first is the balance of the three content attributes of nature, modernity and light science fiction. These three can be said to be the "three primary colors" of wasteland art in my personal understanding, representing the "resistance" (erosion of natural ecology and disaster), "inheritance" (inheritance of pre-civilization culture) and "new birth" (new technologies born after the wasteland) of the current world process.
In the case of "Ming Tide", human activity is the core criterion that affects the distribution ratio of these three parts. For example, the "calculation center" used to detect and analyze disasters in the center of the game town may be the most advanced technological creation for human beings to fight disasters; With this as the center, the town is dominated by traditional architecture and modern products; Spreading into the wild, modern buildings are becoming fewer and fewer, and there are cases of building by mountains and chiseled walls... These design details show Kulo's understanding of the elements of the city, people and nature, which is both sophisticated and interesting.
The blue tower in the center of the town is the "Naruto Calculus Center"
But at the same time, there were also deviations from this matching rule in this test. For example, some players think that the form of the wild treasure chest is too high-tech, which is somewhat contrary to the surrounding natural ecology, and I don't know if the subsequent production team will optimize it.
The second is the dismantling of the elements of hope and despair in the post-apocalyptic environment. In this resonance test, I found that "Ming Tide" has a very interesting mechanism in the map design: the game divides the big world into safe areas (towns) and non-safe areas (wild), and the safe area has complete infrastructure and a strong atmosphere of life, and the plot PV released by "Ming Tide" this time is a partial depiction of this area - people live in harmony, laugh and play, and are full of hope and fun in life.
But this PV has mood changes, as the footsteps of the character Blazing Xia come to the end of the video, the environmental perspective shifts from the town to the wild, and the characters' expressions gradually become solemn - after all, the wild of "Ming Tide" can be said to be a step-by-step crisis.
This aspect is reflected in the oppressive art style. Compared to towns, Ming Tide's wild scenes are more desolate and deadly, making players realize that this is abnormal and potentially threatening - such as white grass, cherry trees, black spikes everywhere, the sea reflected in the sky in the soundless zone, and so on.
The sky over the sea becomes in the silent zone
On the other hand, it is reflected in the monster mechanics. Based on the experience and player discussions in this test, I found that Sound Tide actively raised the threat level of monsters in the non-safe zone. For example, they lurk all over the wild, appear and attack as we get closer, and even attack and fight each other – and more interestingly, the longer the player fights the monster, the more powerful and threatening the monster becomes.
The game also identifies the danger level of the area based on the player's current level
In addition, "Ming Tide" has a larger number of elite monsters and bosses, and the boss territory "Silent Zone" will not deliberately avoid the human activity area, which can be seen from the fact that at the beginning of the main story, the protagonist mistakenly enters the Silent Zone and is attacked by the boss "Crownless".
The main story "The Crownless" appears
In short, Kulo seems to want to tell players in terms of overall cognition that "Ming Tide" is a survival game, the world is full of crises, and the contradictions between humans and monsters are quite sharp, but through the efforts and even sacrifices of ancestors, in exchange for some peace - hope in despair, which is the tone of the game that "Ming Tide" has implemented since its first exposure, and it is also Kulo's answer to the post-apocalypse theme after his deep understanding.
To be honest, it is quite rare for a game to bring players a unified content experience in terms of art, plot, monster mechanics, etc., so in my opinion, today's "Ming Tide" has a unique open world prototype, which can bring users a complete and differentiated experience.
02 New content
When it comes to differentiated experiences, we have to mention the brilliant gameplay and combat design of "Ming Tide" in the last round of testing.
At present, "Ming Tide" has not significantly changed the combat gameplay of the game, and still retains the output mechanism of the character's "multi-stage general attack + resonance skill + resonance liberation (special kill)" during technical testing, as well as the confrontation design of "dodge + parry (bullet knife)", complex action genres, and combo experience make people feel that this should be an ACT product.
Dodge + Parry (Bullet Knife)
While maintaining the upper limit of the combat experience, "Ming Tide" this time improves the systematic and differentiated characteristics of the game's combat experience in the horizontal dimension by introducing positive and negative feedback forms of new characters and new bosses.
Let's start by looking at the positive feedback on the combat design that the new character brings.
A total of 13 characters have been opened in this round of testing, of which 5 are newly exposed characters. This includes the national style character Jiyan, which is highly popular among players. In terms of image design, Ji Yan is dressed in a green robe, tied with a high ponytail, his face and body are tough, and the whole person has some Guan Yu's momentum;
In terms of combat design, the combination of knives and guns is used, the movements are tense and powerful, the moves are wide open and closed, and even the team has penetrated the concept of strength into the detailed performance of the character's weapon deformation - the outstanding image and wild combat style have made many players call "handsome", and some people said "is it a martial arts instructor resident in Kulo".
The character's big move "kicking the gun",
Source: IGN "Ming Tide" real machine demonstration
In addition to Jiyan, the characters available this time include Yinlin, Qiushui, Fuchitake, and Motefei. To be honest, I rarely see uncle-type character settings like Yuanwu in two-dimensional games that pursue beauty, because it will be limited by age, appearance and other conditions, and it is difficult to be as attractive as boys and girls, which requires the production team to have stronger character design skills - at least from the feedback of players so far, they are still quite eating the fresh experience of "Ming Tide".
5 new characters available this time
With the increase in the number of characters and the diversification of genres, players also have more solutions in the game's teaming strategy - whether it is the QTE trigger mechanism and skill effects of new characters, or the synergy triggered between different new attribute characters, it will complete the existing combat cycle of "Ming Tide" and bring players a more systematic operation experience.
Currently, the game opens up three character attributes and their synergies
The updates and additions to monsters and bosses in Ming Tide focus on "giving players a more challenging action experience in terms of combat feedback". At present, the game contains a variety of bosses with different attributes and forms, and all of them have rich attack methods, exclusive characteristics and multi-form performance.
Some bosses and monsters in the real PV
For example, the first boss in the game, the Crownless, Kulo recreated the three-stage (tempting, rising, and rage) combat form for him, and its corresponding combat style also changed from cautious to wild to air combat form, and the difficulty and challenge pressure gradually increased.
Three-stage headless battle form
Although I have not yet come into contact with more boss battle content, only from the number and popularity of boss strategy videos uploaded by site B users during the test, I can vaguely see that "Ming Tide" has invested a lot of energy in the corresponding design, and has received positive feedback from players.
Just a few hours after the start of testing, station B had hundreds of BOSS strategy videos
At the same time, the unique sound skeleton system of "Ming Tide" has also ushered in a large iteration. Most monsters, including bosses, can be captured by defeat and derived into character skills to participate in the battle cycle, and the monsters and corresponding skills that can be captured in the game are more diverse, including recovery, buffs, output, transformation, etc., which can effectively help players in combat or big world exploration.
Through the sound skeleton system, transform into a monster and smash obstacles, source of IGN "Sound Tide" real machine demonstration
Although so much has been introduced above, in my opinion, the core experience of "Ming Tide" is still refreshing. Taking the overall feeling of this test, even if the game combat and the open world experience are still slightly separated, Kulo has already drawn a fairly high starting point in these two aspects. For example, in order to implement the ultimate action experience, the production team also designed a special move with different trigger mechanisms and effects for each character;
Sanhua's special move: You need to master the timing of the charge to unleash it
In order to speed up the player's exploration progress and enrich the open world experience, not only does the character run without consuming physical strength, but can "fly off the wall" (this requires physical strength), but also has a variety of exploration skills and props to help run the map and decrypt.
Running, hooking, gliding and "jumping goats"
Ji Yan was revived by netizens because of the action of "jumping goat" in the real machine, and the source network
Perhaps for Kulo, the open world should not limit players with complex mechanisms, but should be extreme in some directions, so that the open world can truly release the charm of this category, so that players can fully experience the experience dimension upgrade it brings.
03 New challenges
Talking about this, it is only a personal subjective experience of the content of the first few hours of the game's beta, although I have not yet seen the full picture, but at least I have felt the changes and progress of "Ming Tide" in the past half a year, and the fact that the quality and volume of the game behind it have entered a new stage - it is not appropriate to say that the current "Ming Tide" and "Ming Tide" at the time of technical testing are already like two games.
Further, at present, Kuluo can be said to have used the high-quality content of "Ming Tide" to clarify the "high starting point" and "catalyst" of its own development. The former refers to the game's highly recognizable post-apocalypse style, ultimate action experience, free open-world gameplay, etc.; The latter is the rapid increase in team capacity after the expansion of the personnel scale, which we can see from the difference in the amount of content in the two rounds of testing, and the fact that both PVs were produced by internal teams.
But at the same time, in this resonance test, the game also exposed some experience optimization problems. For example, in the open world experience, some areas still have the problem of monotonous and dark colors, and the changeable terrain also makes characters and monsters often wear molds and get stuck in strange places, and at the same time, problems such as overheating, stuttering, and locking frames encountered in the last round of testing still exist;
In terms of action experience, this test has added a logo to the character's "bulleting knife" action, and the audio and video feedback of attack and confrontation is not as strong as before, although it lowers the threshold of player experience, it also loses most of the sense of operational achievement and action pleasure;
The current "bullet knife" demonstration, source B station @STEFID
And where players complain a lot is that "Ming Tide" "uses too much force" to shape the post-apocalyptic plot and characters, such as plot twists and character attitude changes blunt, narrative rhythm jerky, etc... All this shows that "Ming Tide" still has a lot of room for improvement from a truly mature open world.
Jumping out of the product, as the game industry recovers and the two-dimensional products break out intensively, at this time, Kulo's ambition to eat the open world will also face a more direct and cruel collision between competitors. This is not sensational, at least under the video related to the actual demonstration of "Ming Tide", many players sighed: "The game is really good, if you can play it a few years earlier, but now it is difficult to have energy."
For Kulo now, despite the increasing external competition, they are already ahead of many manufacturers just by having the determination to participate in open world competition and continue to invest and hone their good technical capabilities. With the continuous improvement of the market's product requirements, it is bound to require deeper accumulation to stand out in the future, and I hope that "Ming Tide" can support Kulo's pursuit of the open world and show stronger hard power in the future.