Text / Mobile game that little thing Sparrow
An exciting little to big.
Recently, a new face has appeared at the top of the best-selling list.
Of course, the emergence of new products is nothing new, and the interesting thing is that since the launch of this mobile game in January, the iOS best-selling ranking has been climbing steadily, and it took three months to break into the top 10 from the top 100 to the top 7, and it is still active in the best-selling high position today.
This game is the new product "Shoot at the Zombies" of Big Dream Longtu, a zombie-themed shooting roguelike game, with both App and mini game versions. According to third-party platform estimates, the monthly turnover of game iOS exceeded 70 million in April, and the estimated revenue of the whole platform is more than 150 million.
According to the latest data from Sensor Tower, "Gun at Zombies" achieved significant growth in the domestic market in April, entering the top 20 of the iOS mobile game revenue list, ranking 18th; In May, it also began to test the overseas market, which is expected to become another successful Chinese mobile game product to go overseas.
Coincidentally, the two small hits "Runaway Little Shrimp" and "Gandalf Wake Up" launched by Dameng Longtu in overseas regions have achieved a steady increase in performance on the mini game and App side. Looking at China, such double-ended "two flowering" products are rare. In terms of dual-end operations, the company may have found a "shortcut".
And this also seems to indicate that in the red sea of 3A and industrialization in the dark market, manufacturers not only have a way to burn money and make big works, but also have opportunities and are not small to make games small and beautiful.
01
Play
Grab a popular mode and upgrade the coolness
Regardless of at home and abroad, the market's acceptance of the "lawn-mowing" category is generally very high, and under the leadership of the head products, there have been many lawn mowing products based on small games have emerged and harvested. But under such fierce competition, "Gun at Zombies", which only entered the market in January this year, still broke a way.
In terms of general ideas, "Shoot at the Zombies" is basically the same as "Gandalf Wake Up" issued by the same company, combining meat pigeons, mowing grass and tower defense, simple operation and coolness are the most prominent features, giving people the impression that they can play with their hands and hang up.
During the game, monsters will come from the top of the screen, and the characters below will automatically attack. In addition to the initial bullets, players can rely on upgrades to obtain 4 active skills, and the subsequent options are all based on the enhancement and buff of existing skills, such as multi-ballistic shooting, or explosive effects such as fire bullets and lightning strikes, resulting in an almost qualitative increase in combat power.
Outside cultivation is also relatively simple, divided into two systems: equipment and skills. The former can increase the player's base stats, and can also be inlaid with gems with various additional effects; The latter is about accumulating experience a little bit per game, unlocking new enhancement options, such as area damage, damage interval, and more.
After the initial experience, you will find that "Shooting at Zombies" is not much different from "Gandalf Wake Up" from the core vertical screen shooting, to the in-game meat pigeon and the out-of-game development framework. But what is surprising is that it can achieve the results and rankings that the latter does not have, and in my opinion, the key may come from the game's double upgrade of texture and look and feel from multiple details, and capture the hearts of players with stronger refreshing feedback.
On the screen side, for example, there are significant differences between the two games. "Gandalf Wake Up" adopts a relatively "scribbled" graffiti style, with distinctive features but insufficient precision, and the presentation of black, white and red is difficult to highlight the coolness of the clear screen.
In contrast, "Gun at Zombies" uses an American cartoon style to make the game more appealing in terms of appearance. And because of the bright colors, you can intuitively feel the type, size and density of the monsters, such as fire and explosion and other skill effects also have a stronger impact, and the visual perception is three-dimensional and vivid, far better than the hand-drawn style.
Left: "Shooting at Zombies"; Right: "Gandalf Wake Up"
In addition, the game also has more diverse boss designs, such as some zombies with multi-skill attributes such as thunder and lightning, some are "terrier" images such as playing basketball in suspenders, and there are also animal-shaped monsters such as bats and crabs, which bring more fun to the game.
In terms of experience, although the logic of building the two builds is the same, "Gun at Zombies" sets a difficulty curve that continues to increase as the game progresses, that is, the player's initial damage and skill increase are lowered at the beginning, and the enemy's HP is slowly increased in the later stage.
This ensures that players get a game experience with ups and downs, rather than constant high or low difficulty; And due to the simple gameplay mechanism, even if the difficulty is slightly increased, it is still within the coolness range of "clear screen", players have more space to immerse themselves in building and build, and the playability has been enhanced.
In addition, the design related to the WeChat mini game social platform, there are also some elements of two-player teaming in the game, plus the leaderboard and the list of combat power PK, which can also play a role in encouraging users to be active.
However, from the current point of view, the size of the game is still relatively small, and although it has successfully reconciled multiple gameplay features such as tower defense, lawn mowing, and roguelike, it is difficult to hide the flaws of the lack of gameplay depth. The reason why it can maintain good performance at both ends at the same time is that its efforts at the level of buying volume are also worth mentioning.
02
Buy volume
Dual-end interconnection, synchronous operation
In the first month of 2024, we can already see the exploration of the road to breaking the game in the environment of traffic barriers. With the differentiated buying rhythm and the high degree of cooperation of double-end operation, the game quickly went from unknown to blockbuster, breaking the circle and reaching the whole network.
According to the data of the DataEye-ADX platform, before and after the launch, the game App side adopts a "stable and good" buying rhythm: there is not much difference in the amount of delivery before and after the launch, and it enters the market in a relatively stable way, and the peak is staggered.
Entering April, the purchase volume of the App finally soared significantly, with the average daily volume exceeding 17,000 groups during the three days of the Qingming holiday, and further expanding during the next May Day holiday, with a peak of nearly 40,000 groups on May 5, and the material delivery exceeded many large DAU games, ranking first in the purchase list.
Almost at the same time period, the increase in the delivery of mini games also exploded.
In terms of creative materials, they are basically used on both sides. In terms of content, there are not only sub-gameplay methods such as "mowing the grass" and "passing through the wall" to attract casual players, but also in-game gameplay materials such as welfare oral broadcasts and special effects displays, most of which intuitively highlight the "sense of achievement", "coolness" and "addiction" to attract the attention of players.
On the one hand, this kind of "double-end interoperability and synchronous operation" can save the cost of material production and delivery; On the other hand, the way that the mini game side buys the volume and the app undertakes the natural volume also helps the game to further improve the user reach rate and divert more high-quality users.
Finally, the game also made full use of the latest policies on the ecology of mini games on WeChat and Douyin, and ate the first bite of cake and appeared on the hot list of dual-platform mini games.
Specifically, in the first quarter of this year, WeChat and Douyin platforms simultaneously launched the IAA Mini Game Track, and both mentioned the platform's empowerment of Mini Game developers, including assistance in the whole process from game project establishment, R&D to operation, and providing more traffic entrances.
Because of this, in April this year, there were many major changes in the TOP10 best-selling list of WeChat mini games. "Cannon at Zombies" successfully landed in a high position with the help of its concentrated bombardment; It is also on the Douyin hot list.
When other games focused on the fierce competition between the Spring Festival file and the online node, "Gun at the Zombie" boldly avoided the peak, and tried to operate simultaneously at the "small and small ends" to form a complementary effect, which can also be regarded as a classic example of winning with a "sword going sideways".
03
Hands are small double-ended
The big dream of "two flowers".
Although double-end operation is not common in the market, it has been the direction of longtu, the manufacturer behind it.
Founded in September 2014, this Shenzhen-based game company has independently developed a number of well-known mobile games such as "Beiliang Fierce Knife Xing", "Ink Hero" and "Gun God Duel", which has caused some splashes. However, the first thing that brought them into the market was a game called "Runaway".
The iOS version is called "Runaway"; The Android version is called "Invincible Little Arrow"
The game was initially released as a Q version of a martial arts card, with mediocre results. After September 2019, it was changed to a casual game, and the dual platform of in-app purchase and advertising monetization approached 60 million in the first month.
However, it is said to be a revision, in fact, it is not unrelated to the popular "Legend of the Bow and Arrow" at that time, from gameplay, art, sound effects, purchased materials to the commercialization model.
Left: "Legend of the Bow and Arrow" Right: "Runaway"
Through "Runaway", Dameng Longtu began to accumulate experience in this kind of product, and successively launched games such as "Gold Hunter" and "Wild Shot" overseas, and the highest has entered the TOP100 best-selling iOS list in Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
Left: "Dotted Monkey"; Right: "Wilderness Shooting"
It wasn't until "Vampire Survivors" became popular all over the world that their new product "Five Thousand Years of Heroes" once again followed the right direction. Although there is no innovation compared to the general "vampire like" as a whole, it has achieved differentiation through the national style theme and two-player online gameplay, and has successfully attracted players.
The game has been stable between 60-90 on the iOS best-selling list for nearly a year, and has fluctuated around 80 in the past month. Its Hong Kong and Taiwan server "Runaway Little Shrimp" also topped the free list for a time, and currently basically maintains about 90 on the iOS best-selling list in Taiwan, China.
In November last year, Dameng Longtu acted as an agent for the release of "Gandalf Wake Up" overseas; In December, "Hulu Baby Wars" was released on all channels, which are games that integrate the elements of "tower defense + RogueLike", supplemented by more distinctive theme packaging.
Among them, what is more noteworthy is that these products have their own versions of mini games, not to mention their own growth, and they all entered the TOP100 WeChat mini games in April together with this "Gun at Zombies".
In any case, it is indeed not easy to adapt the same game content to different platforms and make players pay, but Dameng Longtu has proved that it has the ability to take into account multiple platforms.
This is not only because they have identified the hot spot of the combination of meat pigeon and mowing grass, but also contains their thinking on how to open up new markets, from material creativity and delivery rhythm, to commercial design, platform tonality exploration, etc.
Perhaps in the future, this kind of amphibious project will become a mainstream form of small and medium-sized games. With the entry of more resourceful mid-waist manufacturers into the game one after another, the mini game track will become more and more volatile this year, but the market will not remain the same, opportunities and challenges coexist, not only the theme + gameplay + marketing are interlocking, but also to return to the essence, fight quality and insight into user needs.