The pigeon is a basket that can be filled with anything. I don't know when the "meat pigeon" gameplay has become a popular element in game design, and it has also become the "secret weapon" of teams in the game industry.
For example, the Up owner packaged the purchase advertisement as a sword meat pigeon, and "Arrow Arrow Sword" won "rave reviews"; The French indie game producer's "Potato Brothers" sold more than 10,000 people.
No, some time ago, another 2D horizontal plate meat pigeon on Steam, Castlevania "The Witch and the Bottle of Concept", attracted the attention of the teahouse. In a delicate retro pixel art style, the amnesiac witch shuttles between the grapefruit forest and the mysterious library with a broomstick, and even falls into the glowing green "data center". On the basis of the refreshing mowing feeling and standard card building gameplay, add an appropriate amount of meta elements. The inadvertent screen of the game screen conveys uneasiness and casts a veil of mystery over the game's story.
It is understood that "The Witch and the Bottle of Concept" is a new game launched by the "Internet Natives" team, which is produced by the program Marshmallow. After receiving rave reviews for the previous work he participated in, Marshmallow immediately began to plan a new tour. As a game developer who is halfway home, do you want to turn left to continue the job of "car manufacturing", or do you turn right and leave your job to work full-time in games. One day, in a dream, Marshmallow said to herself, "Do what you want."
So, turn right.
01
Refreshing mowing:
Use a broom to find out who is behind the scenes
Players who have played Internet Natives will feel familiar when they first see The Witch and the Bottle of Concept.
It's still the familiar Q Meng pixel villain.。 Only this time, the protagonist is a newcomer who was kicked out of the group in "Internet Natives" and becomes a witch who wakes up on the island of the wrong road. The witch has lost her magic and memory, and she has a broom by her side to go out into the world.
A witch who has lost her memory
Sprinting, landing and slashing, and jumping against walls, the awakened witch travels all the way up, taking the player to the "Land of Springs" surrounded by petals and cypresses and wooden houses. Tranquility and gentleness are the first impression of the teahouse on the "Land of Springs".
Izumi no Sato
However, the witch's eyes are obscured by dark shadows, and the occasional splash screen reminds the player that the world is not simple.
A witch whose eyes are blinded by a dark shadow
Reminded by scientist Anthony, in order to recover lost memories, the witch turns on the "loitering mode" with a broom. The gameplay is to break through the box garden level, and the clearance logic of each level is: hit the mobs to accumulate gold coins, exchange card rewards, and face the boss.
Heading southwest from the Land of Springs, the player is the first to come to the Gobi Rocky Beach, where the rocks are messy and the trees are towering.
The whole process is refreshing, and the gold coins after killing are automatically adsorbed after they bloom like fireworks, increasing the visual feedback like "violent aesthetics". The witch's initial attack is not complicated, mainly relying on basic attacks and smashing to break through the world, but it is necessary to see and dismantle for different enemies. The witch has to dodge the bats that will charge at the right time, and if she sees a steel helmet, she needs to meet it head-on, and the enemy with a shield will need to smash it down, and at the same time, the player needs to watch out for bullets from the enemy's range.
Dodge ranged monsters
At the end of the maze, players can build card rewards with gold. The Witch and the Vial of Concept has a very standard card build, increasing health, critical strike chance, and movement speed...... Players can choose their favorite genre to continue their adventure in order to face the final boss fight.
Card selection
And from the experience point of view, the difficulty of the boss battles in the game is decent. The story mode allows players to easily pass the level, and most of the time, as long as they are good at sprinting, the witch can get invincible dodge, and can quickly rush behind the enemy, take out the broomstick and sneak attack. Even if the first battle is lost, it doesn't matter, and the elves who join later will become right-hand men. The elves will follow the witch as she wields her broom while accumulating mana such as attacks, time stops, and healing, and as you build cards in the later stages, players will be able to experience the thrill of sweeping thousands of armies with a broomstick.
The accompanying elves appeared
Of course, as a Castlevania meat pigeon game with meta elements, the exploration and puzzle gameplay of "The Witch and the Bottle of Concept" is also unique, allowing players to have endless fun in addition to the battle -
When the treasure chest is close in front of you but out of reach, how to take a detour to get the treasure? Why is it that after winning the first boss battle, the player is killed by a sword falling from the sky? When the witch passed by the magic mirror of the spring village, who was the strange figure reflected in the mirror?
It can be said that the development team has put a lot of effort into the richness of the scene. There are 21 levels in the game, as players travel their way from the canopy of fireflies, streamer clouds, and the moon to the Magic Library and even the data center. Each scene gives the teahouse a sense of freshness, and you can also meet a wandering singer who sings jazz music and a clever dog "Bullet".
Firefly canopy
Magic Library
As the story progresses, the plot twists and turns, and players will learn unexpected truths, and this may be the charm of Meta elements in the plot.
Game map
02
From building cars to making games
Making a game that has not been done in the market is the original intention of Marshmallow. However, Marshmallow, who said such a bold ambition, was halfway through "making cars" to make indie games.
It seems that "the wind and the horses and cows are not related", but Marshmallow tells the teahouse that this is both intentional and serendipitous.
As early as when I was in college, marshmallows, a major in mechanization, began to brew a "game production plan" in my heart. Learn to draw, join a painting group, and teach yourself how to ...... computer Then, the idea of making a card game was born in his mind. At this time, he encountered "Compressed Text" in the game group, and was attracted by the pixel art style, so he joined "Internet Natives" as a program. After the game was released and he successfully "entered the industry", he began to intensively plan the new game "The Witch and the Bottle of Concept".
It sounds logical, but at that time, making games was more of an "interest" for marshmallow than a "living job". For a long time, he spent the day "building cars" in the workshop, and only stayed up late in front of the computer to "dream" when he got home at night. After a long period of hesitation and thinking for a long time, at the end of November last year, Marshmallow finally made up his mind to turn his "interest" into a "job" and decided to leave his job.
The Witch and the Bottle of Concept is a new challenge for marshmallows. To ensure that the game has a better jumping feel, Marshmallow said that the team mainly referred to "Hollow Knight" and "Dead Cells", and even "analyzed the height of the character's jump per second frame by frame".
Moon
But at the same time, he wanted players to complete the game as quickly as possible, so he ensured the player experience in terms of player performance and boss attack frequency - for example, the Amnesia Witch had a double jump at the beginning.
Meta's plot element is also a major selling point for Marshmallow's plan, "There are only a handful of Meta games on the market, and I want to make something unique that no one else has ever done. Marshmallow said.
But it's a pity that he and his two art partners wrote down more than 100 ideas, but "about 1/3 of them were actually adopted". One of the scraps is the implementation of a "randomly generated map" in Castlevania. Marshmallow revealed to the teahouse that it took him about two months to build the algorithm, and then found out through practice that "unfortunately, it doesn't work".
Random maps will destroy their orderliness, making map decryption interactions less interesting, and will also affect the delicacy and interest of map scenes. In the end, the team had no choice but to give up.
But the good news is that according to the feedback from players after the launch, Marshmallow's original intention has been achieved.
Of course, every producer also faces the post-launch "rush to repair" bug, and Marshmallow has not escaped. Marshmallow thought in hindsight and told the teahouse that the main reason was that "the test was not in place". The game was developed in January of this year and has since been revised primarily based on feedback from the team's internal testing. "Everyone has different playing habits and the game is large," Marshmallow said, "resulting in some problems going undetected." "Fortunately, after staying up late to repair online, the related bugs are being gradually repaired by Marshmallow.
From fledgling to independent, Marshmallow said that she is grateful to her friends for their help along the way with the sound effects script. And he also believes that the next game will be better.
epilogue
From building cars to making games, the teahouse was curious to ask Marshmallow, why didn't you plan to join a game company in the first place? Marshmallow said that at first, it was because "the salary of Wuhan game company is not high, so it still made a conservative choice." ”
"Then now you can only eat the old book?"
Marshmallow said that fortunately, her living expenses are not large, "self-cooking plus water and electricity expenses, 1,000 yuan a month is enough." After resigning, his increasingly thin complexion regained his vitality.
How to stay working at home, Marshmallow taught the teahouse his lesson, "When you are working, hang a TV series or anime you have watched next to it and make it white noise, which can make people feel like they are working." But he also emphasized, "It's not good to fight and be too hot-blooded, he failed to put the old version of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" before." ”
Launching a new starting point means a new starting point, and Marshmallow is still very persistent about the next game, and he is ready to continue to work full-time on card gameplay, "There is a lot of knowledge to learn, and I plan to continue to make games full-time."
Finally, here, the teahouse also wishes him the courage to snuggle and be lucky to be able to go further after the "right turn".