Developing a game with the theme of "Dream Core", is there a problem in the end?
The dark blue semi-circular glass windows, the "PHS" store signboard on the street, the test screen of the TV station during maintenance, and the flickering "The King of Fighters 97" in the dimly lit arcade hall......
All of the above, for older players, may be a beautiful childhood memory, but if you add things like "fog, paranormal phenomena, weird faces, and noisy sound effects" to this foundation, these normalities and anomalies are superimposed, and another art style called "Dream Core" is born:
The above images are all from the Chinese horror game "Nobody", which was launched at the end of last year, and this game and the concepts it represents such as "nostalgia" and "dream core" have once again become one of the hottest topics on video and social media platforms in the first 25 years.
"Nobody" sold more than 10,000 in the first week
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The production team behind "Nobody" is a small group of only 3 people, and the producer Wulang who is responsible for the lead has a lot of labels, such as "post-95", "naked resignation from a big factory", "self-developed first game" and so on. Generally speaking, behind such labels, the reality of small and medium-sized indie teams such as "lack of experience, insufficient R&D and publicity funds, and too small a game" often leads to the fact that their games are not too well-known.
But on social and video sites, you will find that players have shown unprecedented interest in this game, not only did many big anchors on station B spontaneously record the trial of "Nobody", but the audience's evaluation in the barrage is mostly positive:
C bacteria, old tomato and other up masters spontaneously recorded a live video for this game
"Expectation", "taste", and "shareholding" are the most frequent words in the game trailer
In addition, in Xiaohongshu, another platform with a relatively weak game atmosphere, Wulang's promotional post "Because I miss my childhood too much, I made this game" has attracted tens of thousands of likes and favorites even before the game was released.
The explosion of the small-scale game "Nobody" can be said to be a concentrated explosion in the game field after concepts such as "dream core" and "old core" have gradually become popular in the past two years and have been recognized by the public.
You should remember the following style of video:
Millennial furniture and decoration styles, vintage toys and stickers, retro old TVs and long-discontinued children's programs, combined with low-fidelity filters with noise and blurry effects, make the whole video absurd and weird, but also reveal a touch of intimacy brought by childhood memories.
This kind of art style that makes people both familiar and strange, both nostalgic and fearful, is the "Chinese dream core" that the Chinese Internet has talked about before.
Some people say that the popularity of Chinese dream cores is "the collective grave of young people for the millennium" and "the regret that the good times are gone", which is true, but the problem is that for this new and niche foreign subculture, its expression has remained at the stage of more abstract concepts.
What exactly is a "dream core"? You will find that except for some "tricky" video clips and some abstract and weird pictures on the Internet, there are no more forms of expression that are recognized by the public, there are no systematic novels or film and television works, and naturally there are no more interactive content themes such as "games".
Of course, this has something to do with the nature of the "dream core" theme itself, which emphasizes a strange sense of indescribable and real illusion. If you really want to concretize this feeling and add a complete world view or plot logic, you may lose the essence of this style.
However, in view of the popularity and audience of Dream Core itself, at this time, if there is a game with acceptable quality, restoration in place, and at the same time can meet the nostalgia of Chinese players, it may also be able to get the greatest support from players.
And "Nobody" is such a restored "Chinese-style dream core" work, and the "restoration" here is far more than limited to superficial elements such as scenes.
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The process of "Nobody" is not too long, and the scene of the whole game is only the one in the trailer and promotional pictures, and the basic gameplay is also very simple, which can be understood as "everyone comes to find fault", but it is a 3D version.
An eerie street caught in a spatial loop
According to the game's setting, the player is trapped in a mysterious street in "Wuzhou City", and every time they open the iron gate at the end of the street, they will inexplicably return to the starting point - a "space loop" setting that is frequently used in games and film and television works.
To escape the loop, players need to use their old-fashioned camera to capture the strange things they find on the streets during each loop, sometimes a weird little yellow duck; Sometimes it's blood coming out of the tap; Sometimes it's the infinite corridor that suddenly appears in a barbershop; and sometimes weird costume store dummies......
An anomalous space that appears in a dimly lit barbershop
Dummies in weird poses
If the anomaly is successfully captured, it can accumulate progress to a certain extent, advance the plot, and then trigger the ultimate goal of "Escape from No State". If you can't find the anomaly within a certain number of times, your progress will be reset to zero and you will continue to be trapped in the stateless state. In short, the player is required to be vigilant for any anomalies in the streets.
This kind of photo + different gameplay may sound a bit monotonous, but the production team added a very interesting "positive feedback bonus" to this repetitive work - every time the player finds the anomaly, they will see an even more eerie video on the TV at the end of the street.
For example, after I photographed the anomalous phenomenon of "weightlessness of objects" in the street, the TV broadcast a quiz program "Joy Dictionary" that is very familiar to the post-90s:
If you can get this meme, you know that the production team is imitating a quiz show "Happy Dictionary" launched by CCTV in 2000, which should be a regular on TV for millennial children.
And the question in the show is also related to the anomaly of Wuzhou, which asks: What is the value of the gravitational coefficient g in the physical formula G=mg:
I thought it was a normal quiz, but the program suddenly switched, and the picture with white characters on a red background was reminiscent of a serious "government emergency notice", followed by a sudden disaster notice of "there is an abnormal gravity phenomenon in our city, please immediately grasp the fixed objects around you":
The whole video is accompanied by eerie facial mosaics, noisy sound effects, and distorted news images, which makes people feel an indescribable discomfort after watching it.
In another anomaly called "Watcher", I first found a surveillance camera that suddenly appeared on the street, and then I saw a very unusual scene on the news:
It's still a government announcement, but the copywriting has become "The duty of the Wuzhou Municipal Public Pollution Bureau is to connive at violations and crimes, harm the interests of the people, and disrupt public order......
In addition, the so-called monitors recruited in the announcement are required to "regularly smile at the camera and check in to prove that they are human" and "monitor the streets in real time and find ways to survive until the end of the day." These copies have the flavor of "rule weirdness", another subculture that was popular before.
In the entire game process, there are more than 20 of these weird little videos, and the style is basically similar to the above examples, continuing the characteristics of "retro", "dream core" and "weird". After experiencing it, enjoying these weird little videos, and seeing how many "flower jobs" the production team can play, it is indeed my biggest motivation to get through the game, and it is also the biggest highlight of "No Man" as a "Chinese dream core".
Closer to Science as a tribute to Closer to Science
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In addition to the excellent small videos, "Nobody" can attract so many players' attention and get praise, which is also the success of the new horror game at the "gameplay" level to a certain extent.
Producer Wulang once said in an interview; "Nobody" is a combination of Chinese dream cores and "8 Exits"."
The so-called "8 exits" refers to the low-cost horror game that exploded on Japanese social networks last year:
"8 Exits" is the first horror game to combine "loops", "visions" and "finding differences", abandoning the Jumpscare elements common in general horror games, and instead setting up inexplicable and extremely subtle anomalies in everyday scenes to arouse fear in people's hearts.
The whole game only has an underground passage
The original intention of this design is not to frighten, but to elicit the complex emotions of the audience to tremble after "thinking about it", and the beauty of it is that it takes advantage of the audience's mental state of mind when they are concentrating on "finding differences", and further amplifies the horror generated when they find an anomaly, thus making it a very successful "psychological horror" game.
It is worth mentioning that the author of "8 Exits" only took 3 months to complete the production, and the original intention of the creation was only an "experimental" work during the author's development of other games, and he was even prepared for a bad review from players.
However, "8 Exits" sold more than 30,000 copies on the day of its release, and last year it landed on the Switch and VR platforms respectively, both of which rushed to the top 10 of their respective app store sales lists, and this year will even launch a live-action version of the movie produced by Japan's Toho Films, which shows its great influence:
The official live-action movie poster
This example of "fighting big with small" is partly the reason why Wulang chose this theme, he initially wanted to make a horror action game with a complete plot, but due to the lack of experience and team manpower and ability (there are no members who are good at plot and copywriting), he finally gave up this idea.
As for the genre of "8 exits", the first thing it needs to awaken is the player's intimacy with the daily environment, and then break this perception through certain phenomena.
In order to achieve this effect, it is even more necessary for the game to have a realistic, high-quality scene model, and this is where the rendering power and physical model of the "Unreal Engine 5" engine are even more important, which is what Wulang, who has previously worked in game engines, is better at.
I believe this is one of the reasons why players generally react in the comment area that the details of the scenes of "Nobody" are very exquisite:
Since the explosion of "8 Exits" in Japan, similar "8 Likes" at home and abroad have emerged in an endless stream in a year, such as "13th Floor: Apartment Abnormal Administrator", "The Street 10", "Station 5" and other works on Steam, which have the idea of taking advantage of the low development cost and high popularity of this genre to take the opportunity to take a share of the market.
It's a pity that except for the "8 Exports" deity, most of the other works are unsatisfactory in terms of word-of-mouth and sales:
"10th Street" has mixed reviews and has fewer than 20 reviews
The domestic "8 likes" released in April last year are also mixed
Station 5, which is only available in English, has also sold poorly
There are many reasons for the failure of these later "8 likes", but in the final analysis, it is because "the volume is too small", "the theme is not clear", and there is even an obvious suspicion of "changing skins", and the success of "8 likes" cannot be replicated.
On the other hand, Wulang likened the essence of the gameplay of "8 Exits" to a "short video" - many "anomalies" in the game are randomly pushed to the player, so as to give the player continuous positive stimulation.
But he believes that this genre also has its own drawbacks - because it is random content, it is difficult to have a systematic linear plot.
The reason why "Nobody", as another new "8 likes", does not repeat the mistakes of imitators is precisely because the game uses carefully crafted "supernatural short videos" to further strengthen the positive feedback that players receive when they find anomalies, so that they always have a sense of "anticipation" for finding new anomalies.
As for the shortcomings of this genre: there is no systematic linear plot, and because the game chooses the theme of "Dream Core", which does not emphasize logic and linear narrative, it reasonably avoids the bad reviews caused by players due to the lack of plot or setting.
epilogue
When I first saw "8 Exits", I once made a "violent statement" with my friends: this kind of game doesn't need a story, doesn't need level design, doesn't need to worry about numerical balance, doesn't need music, and even has only one scene, but it can get so much popularity, which is really friendly to indie developers.
But the failure of the follow-up imitators obviously shows that even if it is a seemingly simple "8 like", if you can't figure out the reasons and advantages and disadvantages of the success of this theme, it is also unrealistic to try to win players by simply "changing skins".
Wulang saw the advantages and disadvantages of this genre clearly, so "Nobody" has achieved praise and sales that other "8 likes" have never had, and he once said that as his first work, the greater significance of developing "Nobody" is to "go through the process of making games".
Judging from the final result, the road of this independent small team is obviously a relatively smooth first step.