In the past, it is not uncommon to combine a Monopoly-style chessboard with rPG, such as "God of Gamblers" on the FC platform, "Floating Continent Adventure" and "Virtual Life" on the PC platform, etc., which are among the more representative works. And today we are going to talk about a mobile game called "Dragon Adventure Chess", of course, including the prototype of "Dragon Age Adventure Chess" - the flash game "Brave Chess".
Flash Game "Brave Chess"
Here we may wish to first sort out the relationship between "Dragon Adventure Chess" and "Brave Chess". Because from the perspective of product form, the two are too similar, so Dragon Tiger Leopard specially collected the information and provenance of the two products.
As a reference prototype, the flash game "Brave Chess" was first born in August 2014, which is an excellent work emerging from the 4399 Third Game Development Competition, and has been recognized by many players on platforms such as 4399, u77 and even 3dm. According to the information provided by the 4399 official, the developer of "Brave Chess" is a person surnamed C, and the developer id is slayu. In August this year, the developer of "Dragon Age Adventure Chess" newly launched in the appstore is Baddoggame, who has released two casual games in the Store, although the team has nothing to do with the author of "Brave Chess", Slayu, but baddoggamee also said that "Dragon Age Adventure Chess" is indeed learning from the plot, gameplay and system enrichment based on "Brave Chess".
Mobile game "Dragon Age Adventure Chess"
In view of the fact that the materials of "Dragon Chronicle Adventure Chess" are all original, and only borrow "Brave Chess" in the core gameplay, we will not explore too many intellectual property issues in this article, but only analyze its transformation based on the prototype of "Brave Chess" and the transplantation of mobile terminals.
Casual: The magic of the chessboard rpg
Strictly speaking, the concept of "chessboard rpg" does not exist in the traditional game classification, and in order to facilitate the expression here, we will temporarily make a general term for rpg games that integrate elements such as dice and Monopoly boards.
Usually, the plot, system and cultivation in the traditional RPG are the three more important points, but in the case of "God of Gamblers", "Floating Continent Adventure" and "Virtual Life" mentioned at the beginning of the article, the role of the plot in them is weakened, and the randomness caused by behaviors such as throwing dice, the unique casual characteristics of tab games, and the fun of cultivation are magnified. For example, the most important thing in "God of Gamblers" is the "Rolling Dice" system, in addition to determining the number of forward cells in the level, it also determines the outcome of each battle; games like "Floating Continent Adventure" that still mainly focus on the gameplay of pvp on the same screen are more like adding rpg cultivation elements on the basis of Monopoly-style casual gameplay; while "Virtual Life" is relatively richer, which requires players to understand the plot and related decision nodes in the repeated game many times. In turn, the game progression is consciously planned and controlled, while providing a special set of card cultivation and combat systems to increase the depth of the game.
Card system in Virtual Life
Despite their diversity, these products have one thing in common, which is to dilute the promotion of the game progress by the main plot threads in traditional RPGs, and then gradually evolve the entire process into random, changeable, and partially reversible. That is to say, there are more choice possibilities and cultivation space, making it easier for people to substitute for it, and to obtain a more relaxed and comfortable experience at the level of "leisure".
Born out of Flash's checkerboard RPG mobile transformation
Morphologically, "Brave Chess" is a semi-hanging game, the form of expression is that the protagonist walks on a board made of several grids (this board is also the world that the brave will adventure), each grid has a different effect according to its setting (such as forest, plain, dungeon, village, guild, etc.), the protagonist encounters events and behaviors in different grids will have an impact on their own attribute ability, as the player's ability increases, it will eventually defeat the Great Demon King. And in the subsequent weeks as a descendant of the protagonist continues the adventure.
Since this design has a common problem that the value will move closer to infinity with the increase of time and week, it is a very inhumane thing to require a person to sit in front of the PC and keep clicking, so during the value accumulation period, "Brave Chess" very intimately designed a semi-automatic hang-up function, that is, after opening the function, the system will automatically roll the dice for the protagonist and select when the time is encountered.
If you look at it from the perspective of usage scenarios, "Brave Chess" should be a secondary process that can be synchronized when going to work or using the PC for other activities, and it only requires some fragmented decisions and operations.
Perhaps considering the playability of the game itself and the depth of the content can be mined, baddoggame removed the hang-up function when developing the "Dragon Adventure Chess" based on the "Brave Chess" foundation, requiring players to always pay attention to the events that occur in the game for decision-making and operation. Compared with "Brave Chess", "Dragon Age Adventure Chess" has not changed its essence, but the use of the scene from the PC to a fragmented time period such as toilet, bus, waiting, etc., while "Dragon Age Adventure Chess" is still a secondary process that is synchronized with other things, but the main process at this time changes from office to travel or toilet.
Of course, in order to make the goal of the game clearer, compared to "Brave Chess", baddoggame also added elements such as the achievement system in "Dragon Age Adventure Chess".
What's left of the simplified checkerboard RPG
As mentioned above, the more core points in the chessboard RPG are randomness, system, cultivation and leisure, and so on. In fact, whether it is "Brave Chess" or "Dragon Adventure Chess", for the large-scale chessboard RPGs of the previous PC or home console platforms, they have been simplified quite a bit - they do not have the pvp of the same screen interaction, nor do they lack the diversity and strategy of cultivation, of course, there is no colorful system. Therefore, there are only two possible pursuits in these two, one is numerical growth, and the other is element collection.
Here we can simply deconstruct the quest for Dragon Adventure:
1. Numerical growth: including the upgrade of the protagonist, the forging of equipment, and the learning of stunts
2. Achievement of achievements: The accumulation of 24 achievements, village favorability, and reputation in the current version
3. Collecting elements: the discovery of mercenaries, the wives of different weeks
Although under these three pursuit lines, the space for the game to dig and grow is still not small, but the strategy has basically been eliminated, that is, the game provides a purer casual experience in a relatively brainless situation, and the direct sale of copies without designing in-app purchase mode makes the entire game process more relaxed and enjoyable, avoiding the fatigue of "part-time work".
At present, the only question that seems to be whether the borrowing of "Dragon Adventure Chess" from "Brave Chess" is reasonable and legal.
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