Source: Game Think Tank
Recently, a game called "Star Engine Party" has caused a small discussion in the domestic secondary game circle, and with the passage of time, the number of discussions has increased significantly.
As early as June 2023, an account named "Star Engine _StarEngine" on station B released an announcement, saying that Star Engine Star Engine is a comprehensive project, and various interesting content will be produced around the original world view of the community in the future, I hope you can support it more!
In the same month, "Star Engine _StarEngine" released its first video "[Star Engine] Project Kanban oc - Love Koi", the video is only a short 11 seconds, and the content is just a flat display of Kanban Niang's "Love Koi", and its playback volume is less than 5 figures.
But according to the speeches of players in the comment area, it can be seen that many people who claim to be "old fans" have been blown up, and they have also contributed a lot to the birth of "Star Engine Party" a few months later.
The first Monopoly for young people?
"Star Engine Party" was first exposed in September last year, and the official said that it is an online party game, and the core fun is "friendship and program effect". At the same time, in the second half of last year, the work also participated in the Chengdu CD Comic Con and WePlay Cultural Exhibition, and had close contact with many players.
The first promotional PV for "Star Engine Party" was released on January 8, 2024, and countless players who were eagerly awaited finally got to see the true face of the game. It is not difficult to see from the PV demo that the core gameplay of "Star Engine Party" is similar to Monopoly, and the map design is more like flying chess, the 4 players on the field need to roll the dice to determine the number of moves, and achieve different effects in different plots, so as to achieve positive benefits of obtaining gold coins or attacking the enemy, in the designated place, players can upgrade the star rating through the gold coins in their hands, and the player who gets 3 stars first will become the final winner.
In order to improve the playability of the game, the game also chooses to enrich its core through a lot of content, in addition to personal fate, random events such as natural disasters, lottery and other traditional Monopoly gameplay composition, "Star Engine Party" also adds their own active skills and passive skills for the characters, players will also get a variety of hands to help themselves win, and even some hands can also be combined with skills to react.
When two players meet, the game's duel mechanic is activated, and both sides will decide the winner by rolling the dice. And when the game progresses to a certain extent, neutral creatures will appear in the game to affect the battle situation, unleashing more possibilities and further accelerating the game progress.
Star Engine's distinctive style of art has become another magic weapon that many players love it, and in the promotional PV, many characters have been exposed, some are cute, some are tempting, and some "can't be nervous", plus the slogan of "Let's open the star party together~", which is in line with the consistent publicity method of the second game.
However, the gameplay of "Star Engine Party" is not uncommon, such as the desktop game "100% Fresh Orange Juice" launched in 2014, which is also a product of this type, and many players also mentioned this game in the comment area promoting PV.
However, compared with its predecessors, many of the designs of "Star Engine Party" are more exaggerated and random, so the effect presented is more "crazy" and more suitable for the game needs of current players, and "100% Fresh Orange Juice" is a work 10 years ago, which is the main reason why many people call "Star Engine Party" "the first monopoly for young people".
Like many indie games, Star Engine Party was created by a small team with a lack of funds, but it was fortunate that it was born with a group of die-hard fans and, more importantly, a large percentage of players who were looking forward to it and wanted to support it with real money.
Digging deeper, I found that the luck of "Star Engine Party" actually came from a failure.
Love comes from "Symphony Starlight"
On September 1, 2022, "Symphony Starlight" released the first exposure PV, with a distinctive art style, smooth side-scrolling action gameplay, and whimsical combat methods, which made players who were a little tired of the old routine domestic second game feel quite eye-catching at that time. And the official also showed the idea of innovation, PV for the style design, animation camera movement and storyboarding, and combat performance have sufficient inner expression, at that time the game think tank also had high hopes for it, thinking that it can indeed bring a trace of "difference" to the domestic second game market with serious involution and rigid gameplay at that time.
But it's a pity that "Symphony Starlight" was finally stillborn, and the official account has been cancelled at present.
At 7 p.m. on January 24th, the Modian crowdfunding for "Star Engine Party" was officially launched, and players can choose any one of the 6 stalls of 28, 68, 138, 388, 688, and 2588 to support, and different stalls correspond to different rewards. Only one minute after the crowdfunding was opened, the target amount of 30,000 yuan had been reached, and the highest level of limited edition of only 10 copies was also sold out at the speed of light.
In the crowdfunding target amount column, the official design reaches 50,000, 80,000, etc., and adds additional follow-up updates, and if the raised amount reaches the highest 66666666, "Symphony Starlight" can be resurrected and implemented in about 2027.
The official also explained the general process of the failure of "Symphony Starlight" to players through the crowdfunding interface. In short, the funding chain of the "Symphony Starlight" project was interrupted, the team announced its dissolution at the end of 2022, and the remaining team members established the "Star Engine" club to jointly make a game that can bring laughter to themselves and players, and "Star Engine Party" was born.
This "Love House and Wu" can explain why although Star Engine Party has limited attention, players are extremely enthusiastic. Of course, setting the amount of 60 million, on the one hand, is to make a little joke between the production team and everyone, and on the other hand, it is also to give an explanation to the players who are looking forward to "Symphony Starlight".
The launch time of "Star Engine Party" is set for February 29, and it adopts the form of free play on the main game and some in-app purchases. Due to its outstanding "program effect", perhaps the work will be further out of the circle due to the anchor's play, we might as well look forward to what kind of answer "Star Engine Party" will deliver.