"It's no longer news that a mobile game company launches a new game, and it's rare for a mobile game company to make a single game for the next game to buy out the single player."
On September 15, Eagle Point Network announced its second mobile game - "From Stardust", which to everyone's surprise is a "buyout system no in-app" stand-alone game.
Players, including me, must have fantasized countless times about what "big medicine" Eagle Horn would bring to players by successfully promoting to a quasi-first-line mobile game company with Ark of Tomorrow, and how this newcomer would replicate his success in the next work.
However, the development of "From Stardust" was not the original team of "Ark of Tomorrow", but was developed by Nous Wave, another studio owned by Eagle Point Networks.
In Nous Wave Studio's not-so-detailed self-introduction to its first work, "From Stardust", a few key points were conveyed: there were only a few dozen people in the project team, which would not be a masterpiece in the traditional sense;
Turn-based system has become a minefield and now dare to step on it, it is not that the producers are more nostalgic, it should be that the accumulation of technology is weak, and the dynamic standing painting of "Ark of Tomorrow" has been delayed for 2 years before the eagle horn is really not capable of engaging in action games.
It will most likely be a game that earns money and is used by the project team to practice, which is what "From Stardust" wants to convey to players now.
Because from the visual experience, I think the "From Stardust" demo is very poor - Eagle Horn has not even rendered the game to take the demo to fool people, the screen is not a black or white miserable, many scenes can not distinguish whether it is a white mold or the style is so, in the cutscenes there are often unclear meaning of the shaking, rather than practicality, UI design pays more attention to the sense of fancy.
▲ A good virtual joystick, you have to add a circle of ripple effects to consume the function
In fact, the biggest black spot of this demonstration is also focused on the completion of the packaging, if most of the games will be more "hard" in the real machine demonstration, some big factories will even use the demonstration to pre-render the small means of the real machine shrinkage, then the real machine demonstration of "From Stardust" is too simple, there is a kind of half of the money can only take the ugly daughter-in-law to kneel to the VCS dad taste.
This time, it is the players who sit in front of the demonstration, everyone is not an "angel" investor, no matter who sees the chef in the restaurant with water and flour to make cakes for you, it is understandable that there will be complaints.
Of course, the real machine demo of "From Stardust" is not useless in my eyes, as a JRPG enthusiast, I firmly deny that the turn-based RPG is out of the trend of the times, the turn-based RPG can also do very wonderful, in the real machine demo part, from the turn-based combat system of "From Stardust", or let me see some highlights.
For example, after watching the battle demonstration, the first thing that came to my mind was the spin-off of Super Robot Wars, "Super Robot Wars OG Legends: Infinite Frontiers" and the "Cross-Field Project" that was later linked with Capcom and Sega, although the sales of this series are also based on the production of pile rounds as the core of the game's combat system, after adding ATB-style rounds, move series, floating/ground chases, defensive counterattacks and other mechanisms, the game's combat experience has completely lost the monotony of "you come and go" in the traditional turn-based system.
In the "Crossover Project" 2 game linked with Capcom, after the addition of the action game Evergreen trees of Dante, Long/Ken, Yuki Crystal, and Kazema Ren, the game experience has also moved closer to the fighting game.
From now on, the battle system of "From Stardust" is also somewhat similar, in the battle, the character does not need to move the position and other operations, the original virtual rocker position used by the moving character has also been replaced by the "defense" button, and the defense at the moment of the enemy attack hit can also trigger the precise defense effect;
Judging from the UI distribution that is obviously vacant in the lower right corner, a battle is more likely to be able to play 3 characters, each character will learn many skills in the process of cultivating and growing, each battle can bring 3 skills, and each character also has a position in the battle;
The skill effect is not only reflected in the numerical value, accompanied by the "chasing the enemy who is knocked out" and "releasing the enemy who is knocked out to shoot it to the ground", which can be seen that the combat system of "From Stardust" is not a static turn-based system, and the player's operation also has a certain impact in battle.
Overall, in terms of gameplay, this real-life demonstration of "From Stardust" can make people see sincerity.
Therefore, 2 days after this PV was released, the official account "From Stardust" has gained 260,000 fans on the B station, and nearly 200,000 reservations in the taptap and B station game reservation sections.
However, the hot name of Eagle Point Network in the past 2 years has also brought a lot of trouble to "From Stardust", as if... Moving to the cake of who, in the knowledge, the game only put a real demonstration, has received 65% of the rating of players "not recommended".
There are still many appointments, and there are still many voices of opposition and low scores on taptap.
This is inseparable from the rhythm of Eagle Horn's only work,"Ark of Tomorrow", which has recently limited character bursts and low story/gameplay production capacity, which has triggered a backlash in player public opinion.
In the sound of singing "From Stardust", I also smelled a familiar taste.
I don't know if some players are too concerned about the entire Chinese game market, or with great malice in themselves, "From Stardust" has also been "copied", but this time it is a million Caligula players, a million embarrassing Emperor, a million interstellar hamsters, a million fishing bar brother...
Some people can't even pick up the score too late, just by listening to it, they link the PV piano from Stardust with the "sacrificial" login interface music of the main line of "Warframe", of course, he intercepted a melody with a total of 5 syllables.
Some people say that you, the heroine, still have a "cleverness" in her hand, there is also an "obelisk" in the demonstration, right, I remember the façade of Eagle Horn Sea Cat is still a destiny player, Eagle Horn is not trying to help the stick chicken do "Destiny 3" ah?
Some players want to team up the UI from the characters who do not have a strong sense of vision, both games can use guns (one side is a long gun and the other is a pistol) to pick up enemies, are not highly recognizable two-dimensional human design, compared to "Caligula", the argument is that "From Stardust" is indeed a "pure blood JRPG".
So why doesn't anyone say that the combat gameplay of "From Stardust" copied the "Crossover Project", perhaps this game series that has only been released on NDS and 3DS and has no official Chinese is too low in china.
What is more interesting is that this kind of "copying" is not uncommon in the circle of domestic gamers, and the more topical games can always see a lot of similar rhythms, and it has also become a source for many players to have a sense of superiority because of their qualifications.
▲ You guys don't confuse gameplay, some common elements with a certain game (make gestures)
However, compared to the game demo released poor real content and as always did not say human words (not even lines) of the PV, there are also many players will have doubts, Eagle Horn is obviously relying on the mobile game "Ark of Tomorrow" fire, has become a successful person in the "can lie where to stand" camp, why risk to do a buyout game without in-app purchase, and log on to the mobile phone platform?
▲ In the face of players' cross-examination, the official account seems to be full of survival
My personal opinion is that this is actually a prejudgment of the market wind direction, in this era, to do buyout system of domestic games need a lot of courage is not false, this sentence is actually said to those self-made teams, for Eagle Horn so to create a blockbuster in 2020 Shanghai service industry and commercial enterprises into the top 30 industry rising stars, want to take this step is not as difficult as everyone imagined,
In terms of the current quality of "From Stardust", there should be no hope of meeting with players within 2 years, and Eagle Horn feels that after 2 years, doing stand-alone mobile games can also make itself supporting itself, because not to talk about the domestic buyout game must rise such an empty slogan but did not step on the ground, the domestic stand-alone mobile game is also a market that can be expected in the future.
In the past two years, the mobile game store with roguelike, DBG and other small and refined gameplay, selling very close to the Steam independent game more and more mobile games, such games have also explored a 1 yuan purchase of play rights + a small amount of in-app purchase to reduce the liver business model, the store all the things wrapped up will probably not exceed 50 pieces of that kind.
Last year, there was a more topicality, the buyout system of the soul-like game "Pascal Contract", at the end of the year completed the goal of 1 million sales, along with the reverse porting of the PC side, login steam and small profits, the "Reborn Cells" mobile game version released in February this year, spent about 5 months sales have exceeded 2 million. After that, we can also see "Terraria", "Human Fall dream" and other PC independent games are brought to a small mobile phone screen, with the rise of domestic players' genuine awareness and mobile phone hardware performance, whether it is to move excellent games on the PC to mobile phones, or to lead the team to specialize in this field,
Compared with the "jian copy", for the mobile game with krypton gold to cheat money players, more and more players are willing to spend the price of a monthly card to enjoy a complete adventure, but also for this market to play a strong shot.
But for players, the evaluation of a game will always fall to the most real place - whether it is fun or not, aside from the brainless blowing because it is Eagle Horn and because it is made of Eagle Horn, it is infinitely derogatory, at least now the demo of "From Stardust", which has not even finished rendering, and the shortcomings can make me willingly click on the key elements of the buy button, or let the bullet fly for a while.