Hi everyone, I'm Dr. X.
In the current environment where domestic manufacturers generally advocate following the trend and learning, how valuable is a game company that dares to take risks to challenge a new field that no one has ever verified?
This is Paperstack, which takes "insistence on creation" as the fundamental manufacturer, which has been established for more than ten years and has proposed countless innovative upgrades in the two major IPs of dress-up and love, and has also led the expansion and trend of the entire category.
From 2D dress-ups to 3D dress-ups to warm open-world adventures, from 2D paper man love to next-generation 3D action love, and "A Hundred Faces and Thousands of Faces" that completely fights with hardcore soul action games, Paper's recent action and technical power are really amazing.
(Paperwork two major categories upgrade route)
2023 is also a very important year for Paperpaper, after four years of no new products online, Paperwork won the second game of the Love and Series "Love and Deep Space" and the niche but novel dive game "Backlight" at the beginning of the year, both games are open for reservation, it can be said that they are ready to go.
In particular, "Love and Deep Space", the orthodox second-generation work of the love and series, vividly shows Paperpaper's persistent pursuit of technological upgrading, and many people exclaim when they first come into contact: "What new work is PaperStacking doing"!
(IP replacement must be accompanied by technology upgrades)
However, in the first test just past, the heavy investment of technical power and the difference between the level of other gameplay experience has become the focus of heated discussions among players, and many die-hard users of PaperStacks have taken out an attitude of hating iron but not steel, and wrote a five-thousand-word "paper" table suggestion, hoping that PaperStacks must be well corrected during the test.
Next, Dr. X also talked about what is worthy of praise and reflection on this "Love and Deep Space" under the multiple eye-catching labels of "next-generation + 3D + action + love" based on his own experience in a few days.
Focus 1: The Great Leap Forward from Visual Novels to 3D Animation Performances, Paper People Race Real Lives
For many of the big masters on our site, otome games may be a less familiar category. In a word, the narrative otome games that have become popular in China in recent years that emphasize the immersion of love are basically in the form of "visual novels" of CG illustration + character standing drawing + text dialogue, which pay attention to high-quality art quality, intoxicating CV dubbing and copywriting to bring a sense of love.
Most of the otome women's presentation of the plot still stays at the level of 2D graphic art, at most the characters' expressions move during the dialogue to show their reaction, and some manufacturers with great technical power focus on the Live2D card face, giving the paper man a moment of stunning dynamic special effects.
"Love and Deep Space" is good, directly upgrading the visual novel that expresses the plot on the plane to a 3D animation performance rendered by the real machine, allowing players to experience the story themselves from a first-person perspective.
As the heroine, players can basically only see their own hand movements in the plot, just like playing a first-person shooter, observing the person in front of them through the eyes of the heroine, looking at the characters who speak and interact with themselves, reaching out to pick up some objects or looking at the holographic device on the wrist. The scene will also move silkily as the narrative progresses and the focus of the view.
Thanks to the first-person perspective, the sense of distance between people is also narrowed. In the process of plot progression, we can watch more delicate character demeanor changes, very real contact feedback from the vertical screen perspective of animation, and marvel at the level of modeling presented in the plot.
In particular, Otome inevitably has intimate contact with the male protagonist in the game, and the male protagonist suddenly approaches details such as the enlarged handsome face and eyelash pupils, which can easily make the player blush and heartbeat; The proximity of the other party within the line of sight and the slight shaking of the viewing angle, obviously the heroine is hiding from the other party's "touching the head to kill", these "heart distances" bring more real interactive experience, and are very well pinched by the stacked paper.
Even, the heroine's low perspective, the action of poking chopsticks in her hand, and the reaction of muttering can reflect the heroine's emotions and inner world at this moment.
And in order to be compatible with more diverse player user preferences and enhance the sense of substitution of various user types, this work not only provides the heroine's face pinching system, but also can pinch her own voice, in order to avoid the drama can even choose not to open the heroine's voice, greatly considering the various needs of players.
With a customized image, in the battle and dating links, players can use their pinched images to interact with the male protagonists, take couple photos, set chat avatars, etc., which are all plus points to strengthen the sense of substitution. (It's just that the current face pinch system is still relatively rudimentary, and maybe it can be introduced in the future to automatically generate face shapes based on photo AI)
The doll catching and meow card gameplay in the dating part can be said to be the most acclaimed part of the first test except for the 3D drama performance, and this unique sense of love daily life and atmosphere is the profound skill accumulated by Origami in the more than five years of operation of "Love and Producer".
Point 2: The debut after "plastic surgery" is still not perfect, and the next-generation 3D action love is difficult and long
However, as the blood of watching the plot on the first day subsided, many problems in "Love and Deep Space" at this stage gradually surfaced.
The first is the opposite of the heartbeat distance and high-quality plot performance, the sudden change in the style of the scene, the sudden increase in the visual distance of the thief's battle, especially just from the next door "A Hundred Faces and Thousands of Faces", and then look at the deep space combat system, there will be a big gap.
(Hundreds of faces)
(Love and Deep Space)
This sparked a heated discussion in the player community: "Are otome players, or female players, only worthy of playing such action games?" ”
On the one hand, Dr. X saw the attempt and effort of "Love and Deep Space" to break through the limitations of the category, that is, to get rid of the conventional gameplay of traditional otome games of light combat and heavy card values, giving the challenging level a rare operable character ACT battle, the female protagonist played by the player can face a strong enemy with one of the three male protagonists, the three male protagonists have different abilities, quite a taste of fighting side by side, it can be said that this design is a powerful means to strengthen emotional bonding.
(Oath with Great Move)
But Paperwork does not dare to design this combat system too hardcore, basically around the accumulation and consumption of resources to play the cycle, when the energy reaches a certain limit, you can release the common fighting move, which is very easy to understand. The skill system only has four buttons of dodge, general attack, skill and big move, and when attacking, it can automatically absorb the nearest monster, no rubbing moves, dodging and no bullet time, it can be said that some action game conventional rubbing buttons are omitted.
But the accumulation of this core resource is growing over time, not that you can slow down the accumulation of some resources by playing any critical hit, it can be said that to a certain extent is still card time, card value, rather than relying on technical means to shorten or cross the level, in the case of insufficient damage, the dependence on players to draw cards and raise cards is very high.
And interspersed with a large number of battle levels in the plot, the frequent switching of horizontal and vertical screens also challenges the patience of players, suddenly withdrawing from the real scene in the plot and opening up a void field to fight, which feels very strange to say.
Since the difficulty curve and threshold of the battle are not set high, why should FoldPaper insist on designing such an action combat system?
According to Dr. X, the original intention of "Love and Deep Space" is to make the battle also serve love, the main companion and fight side by side, and the male protagonist will send different condolences in different battle scenes. For example, when the player-controlled character stands within the enemy's attack range, the male protagonist of the partner will say "don't get close to it, it will hurt"; When the player uses the Shield Breaking skill to match the actions of the male protagonist of his partner, he will say "keep this rhythm".
When the player unlocks the first weight of the male protagonist's vow (similar to the original god's "life seat"), it can also unlock the "support skill", and when the player receives a strong attack, the male protagonist will teleport to the side to protect the counterattack.
But the actual experience, these voice, resonance skills, pledge skills, in the battle to give people a sense of care, side by side to fight encouragement, is still relatively limited, players often pay attention to the feel, blow, special effects and other very intuitive parts, and further "humanistic care" I think belongs to a deeper emotional experience, how to effectively convey to the player, is the next place where Paperwork needs to think further.
However, I privately think that the character modeling and combat system released by this test are much better than the double dance pose Pose battle when it was first exposed.
(Although the battle demo at the first exposure is "scrapped", it makes players remember it deeply)
In general, the action combat in "Love and Deep Space" is more like an addition, and the symbolism that currently exists is greater than the actual experience. But since "Love and Deep Space" wants to fight, it must combine emotional interaction and combat experience, and present a more exquisite and brain-opening companionship combat experience, in order to be worthy of the name of "the next generation of 3D action love games".
With the expansion of the audience of the game, the proportion of female players in various categories of games is also rising, and on the discussion of the controversial point of "female gamers are not unate", there is a player comment that speaks the hearts of many people, "I don't recommend any otome to enter the pit battle double, but please bother that the action battle of "Love and Deep Space" must be on par with the battle double." ”
The direction of optimization can be to reduce the height of the line of sight, optimize the rhythm of the battle, regain some of the operating elements that an action game should have, etc., everything depends on how the production team optimizes.
Of course, apart from the most controversial combat system and the admittedly excellent 3D story, the debut of "Love and Deep Space" is not perfect.
(Too close to real person modeling with some ancient lines, heartbeat or greasy is often only in a moment)
Around the overly realistic realistic style and modeling, the player's heated discussion can be said to be around the beam for three days without dispersing, some say that the male protagonist's modeling is more real than the real person, and still find the same in reality; Some people complained that the male protagonist's in-game appearance was seriously shrunk from the single-character PV released by the previous official, which is actually an inevitable gap between the broadcast and the limitations of game performance; There are also players who feel that there is too little sense of interaction in the main plot, but the experience of watching the film is too long, which is a big impact on the sense of substitution. And so on and so forth.
There are also some hard wounds in the logic of the plot and disagreements about the heroine's character of "Xueba Little White Flower", which Dr. X will not expand on one by one. In general, compared with the praise and praise of the technical power, I think that "Love and Deep Space" received more sober, rational and sincere suggestions in the first test. Especially the old fans of the Di family, many of them have come up with the energy to write papers to give their opinions, hoping that "Love and Deep Space" can fight for a bright future.
In this game, we do see a lot of new and exotic things and think that the foundation is good, but only if the paper stacks can perfect it.
After-class summary:
To be honest, the track of women's games has really been without new things for too long, and most of them are still lying in the comfort zone of "love visual novels + mini-game gameplay stacking", at most a roll of art card faces and copywriting. Some will also take the initiative to take off their women's product labels in order to better pass the review or move to a larger circle.
However, "Love and Deep Space" does the opposite, and recently re-hung its own products with the label of "Otome", which on the other hand reflects its insistence on this category.
(At a time when many products avoid talking about "female" and "otome", players will be happy to stick to this label of the game)
What is the next future for women, perhaps it is up to the old big brother and pioneer to fold paper to explore for himself. Dr. X also wishes the next test of "Love and Deep Space" better.