文 / 手游那点事 Sam
In less than a month, 2 masterpieces were exposed in a row.
In 2018, Lilith's "Awakening of the Kingdoms (ROK)" was officially launched in overseas markets, and after just 16 months, it handed over a gorgeous report card with a monthly turnover of 54 million US dollars (about 386 million yuan) and an annual income of 3.245 billion yuan. This performance not only allowed "Awakening of Kingdoms" to completely break the "ceiling" of the domestic SLG category, but also brought Chengdu Legou, the R&D team behind the game, to the stage.
Five years later, Lilith and Legou teamed up again to come up with the second SLG, Call of Dragons. Hou Ke, CEO of Legou, once mentioned to us in an interview that the investment in "Wanlong Awakening" is "about three times that of "ROK", and the general direction is still "category evolution", ready to fight a protracted war.
Although the launch time was a little later than expected, the huge success of "ROK" still made the similarly named "Awakening of the Dragon" get a lot of attention. According to third-party data, since the launch of the international server of "Wanlong Awakening", it has entered the top 10 of the iOS best-selling list in 87 countries and regions, which can be regarded as a good start.
After successfully winning the version number in January this year, the game officially opened the pre-registration page and the first test recruitment last week (April 21), which means that the launch of the national server has also been put on the agenda.
It seems that another "trump card" that Lilith has been brewing for a long time is about to return.
01
Aiming at SLG's "Category Evolution" Again
In the early test, "Wanlong Awakening" was jokingly called "the SLG planning of all China has learned from it here" because of a screenshot of the practitioners' "team building" on the world channel. Although there is obviously an exaggeration, it is not difficult to see that the industry has long put "Awakening of the Dragon" under the microscope to see if the game has once again achieved the "category evolution" of SLG.
Judging from the overseas version that was launched first, "Ten Thousand Dragons Awakening", which invested several times more than "ROK", has indeed made a significant breakthrough at the art level. Different from the multi-civilization setting adopted in the previous game, the game once again returns to the classic Western magic theme, and the world view background is set in the epic story of the three races of humans, orcs, and elves forming an alliance to fight against the evil dragon forces after the return of the dark god and the chaos of the entire continent again.
In order to highlight the difference between the racial camps, "Awakening of the Dragons" added a lot of exterior details to the interior of the main city. For example, the main city of the elven camp will be covered with dense vegetation and moss, blending in with nature, while the main city of the orcs is close to the primitive tribal style, with buildings sitting on barren sand and decorated with huge beast teeth to create a "battlefield fortress" atmosphere.
In addition, due to the large-scale 3D processing of the game, it can be seen that the character modeling is much more detailed than before, and the creation of the large world is also quite mature. Iconic areas such as the Firefly Giant Tree, Megalodon Mountain, and Mangrove Forest all have a "magical" flavor very well, while in special landforms such as canyons and mountains, there will be obvious elevation differences in the map. This also further led to the gameplay innovation of "Ten Thousand Dragons Awakening", that is, "map depth".
For example, using the distinction between melee and ranged units, players can first use archers to occupy favorable terrain when fighting in the field, and then strengthen the position through equipment such as horse rejection and barricades, making it difficult for enemy units within the attack range to get close;
In order to integrate this set of gameplay with the fantasy theme, "Ten Thousand Dragons Awakening" also added the settings of "treasures" and "magical creatures". The former is similar to the equipment system, where players can equip their heroes with treasures to allow their troops to gain different skills, such as teleportation, teleportation, stealth, etc., which can be used at the right time in battle to bring significant advantages.
As for the magical creatures, they are various ancient behemoths that appear in the large map. Players can rally alliance members to focus on their crusades, and once defeated, they can ambush these creatures and use them for their own use in battle. This kind of design close to the MMO team dungeon, in addition to being used as a way to socialize the game, can also gradually feed back the combat gameplay through the multi-unit design, adding more variables and freshness.
Overall, "Wanlong Awakening" still follows Legou's more stable iterative ideas. In addition to the theme, the game has not undergone drastic changes due to the pursuit of "differentiation", including the underlying gameplay and art style have inherited the original framework of "ROK", and at the same time, the quality has been upgraded through visual upgrades and micro-innovations in various details. "Standing on the shoulders of giants and looking into the distance", this is actually in line with the industry's consistent perception of "category upgrading".
02
In 2024, Lilith is going to make a "big move"?
In fact, after entering 2024, Lilith also has a lot of new trends. In addition to "The Awakening of Ten Thousand Dragons", they first came up with "Party of the Gods" in the domestic market, and then exposed another key product in the past two years, "Sword and Expedition: Departure", which was officially launched in overseas regions some time ago (March 27), facing the test of the market.
Among them, the performance of the former seems to be a bit "high and low". After the launch of the national server in January, "Party of the Gods" won the top 15 positions on the domestic iOS best-selling list, but it has not succeeded in maintaining the momentum since then. After a rebound in March, the game has entered a more obvious downward cycle, and has now dropped to close to the top 200 on the list.
According to the estimation of the third-party platform, the total turnover of the iOS channel of the national server of "Party of the Gods" in the three months after its launch was about 90 million yuan. Although there is a certain gap with overseas results, considering that the national service has not carried out large-scale marketing before, and has maintained a relatively "low-key" operation route as a whole, such a performance may also be expected by Lilith, and there may not be no chance of "turning over" in the future.
As for the more popular Sword & Expedition: Departure (hereinafter referred to as "Departure"), we have already introduced this product through articles. As a new work that inherits the IP aura of "Sword and Expedition", it took four years for the game to be launched from project initiation. In order to show the team's determination to break through and get rid of fixed thinking, Lilith even deleted the original name prefix "Sword and Crusade 2" to highlight that "Departure" is not a sequel, but a complete "innovation".
This is also reflected in the content of the game. For example, instead of directly following the hugely successful 2D glass painting art style of Sword and Crusade, Departure plays with 3D art and picture book style to match the aesthetic preferences of young players, and more surprisingly, the game also adds a "big world" to the cards that allow players to explore the magical wilderness freely. This distinct RPG-style experience is undoubtedly unprecedented in similar products.
In addition, in order to make the placement of cards more playable in terms of combat and get rid of the simple "numerical collision", "Departure" is to try the gameplay fusion of "placement + auto-chess", and at the same time add factors such as wall barriers and interactive mechanisms to the battlefield, so that the battle result no longer depends entirely on the numerical training, as well as the player's strategic thinking in each level.
It is not difficult to see that after years of polishing, today's "Departure" has indeed become a "subversive" level of idle card products. In terms of results, less than a month after its launch, it has won the market performance of the top 10 best-selling iOS products in 40 regions, as well as a large number of praise from overseas players, which is enough to reflect the good revenue potential of "Departure" in the future.
Last week, the national server of "Departure" just opened the second test for players. Coupled with "The Awakening of Ten Thousand Dragons", which also "sharpened a sword for many years", Lilith's two long-awaited new products have the opportunity to be officially unveiled within this year. It seems that Lilith in 2024 seems to be about to start making some "big moves".
03
epilogue
In the past two or three years, Lilith seems to be much more "low-key" than before. In the early years, they once touched the threshold of "mass production explosions", and they also seemed to have fallen into a creative bottleneck, and they failed to come up with global hits with "nuclear bomb" performance like AFK and ROK back then. Although these old products are still active in the front line of the category, the next fist product that can take over the banner of the predecessors is still undecided. In this case, this old manufacturer will inevitably be questioned by the market, and it will naturally be under a lot of pressure during this time.
However, so far, these twists and turns have not had much impact on their judgment and pace. With the advancement of the two key projects of "Awakening of Ten Thousand Dragons" and "Departure", it should only be a matter of time before Lilith returns to the spotlight.
It is worth mentioning that, according to the estimation of third-party platforms, the revenue of "Departure" in overseas markets has been twice that of AFK in the same period. Perhaps this was Lilith's powerful response to the doubts of the past few years: they were now ready to come back.
In an interview last year, Zhang Zilong, the head of Lilith Publishing, mentioned that the company has shifted from a period of "category evolution" to a period of "exceeding expectations". As for whether Lilith can once again exceed the expectations of players and the market after entering the new decade, let's wait and see.