Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 158 Transformation
If Chu Chen had followed the development approach of "Final Frontline"—that is, first build a framework and then gradually add content—he might have been able to NTR Square Enix.

Next year, 17, we'll be the first to release a "next-generation 2D game" with a star-themed version.

The more Chu Chen thought about it, the more plausible it seemed.
The more I think about it, the more excited I get.
Just like seeing a beautiful woman wave and immediately thinking about how many children she should have, Chu Chen had already figured out where this engine could be deployed and used.

This engine can be used for everything from martial arts and anime to Touhou Project fantasies.

Let's start with martial arts anime.

Wuxia (martial arts) and anime/manga may sound strange, but if you consider anime/manga as a style rather than a genre...

These two things are actually very closely related.

Although many people feel that martial arts games are no longer popular, and even feel tired of the martial arts genre, they feel like vomiting at the mere sight of martial arts or fantasy games.

However, the fact that players feel nauseous at the sight of martial arts or fantasy games actually illustrates the popularity of these genres in China.

Just as everyone feels tired of the "Three Kingdoms" story, the very fact that they're tired of it represents a fundamental issue. Similarly, the huge success of "Black Myth" is inseparable from players' weariness of "Sun Wukong."
It's a prediction that in the future, anyone who can reinterpret the Three Kingdoms like "Black Myth" will surely achieve great success.

Besides.

Chu Chen's other motivation for wanting to create anime-style martial arts films came from female characters in martial arts fiction.

According to incomplete statistics, the female protagonists of various classic martial arts novels are incredibly popular in China.

Chu Chen had a friend who once downloaded a "Huang Rong Novel Collection." Note that it was a collection of Huang Rong novels. It was a collection of fan fiction novels featuring only one character, and the collection was a whopping 1 GB in size!

Although people say they're tired of martial arts fiction, it's still a "dominant" section on some websites, deserving its own dedicated page.

Therefore, Chu Chen always felt that the genre of martial arts romance was greatly underestimated. He asked, "Which Chinese person wouldn't want to have a passionate romance with Xiaolongnu, Wang Yuyan, or Zhao Min?"

So why hasn't any domestic manufacturer worked on this kind of subject matter for so long?
The answer is actually quite simple: if you simply make a martial arts romance game, not many people will play it; most people want a martial arts romance game.

There's a martial arts world first, and then there's romance.

Players expect to experience many stories with these girls in a realistic martial arts world.

Only then will you feel it.

Creating female characters is easy, but building a game world with a martial arts feel is difficult.

Especially in pay-to-win MMORPGs where numbers reign supreme, this is almost impossible.

Therefore, Chu Chen also understood that if he really wanted to make a two-dimensional martial arts game, he would have to make a martial arts game with long-term operation as the goal and characters as the selling point for in-game purchases.

The first problem to solve is to create a world full of "jianghu" (江湖, a term referring to the world of martial arts and chivalry).

Doing this is no easy task.

However, this was less difficult for Chu Chen, because in his previous life, a game had actually achieved this, but only half of it was completed.

This game is "The Scroll of Taiwu". A martial arts world, or a world, must first be big enough, but big means empty. In this big world, you need to give players enough things to do.

The EA version of The Scroll of Taiwu does this really well.

The EA version of The Scroll of Taiwu is a gameplay-driven version; the storyline has not yet been implemented, and the player takes on the role of a character named Taiwu.

The EA version of The Scroll of Taiwu doesn't have many fancy features.

The game starts by asking players to choose a martial art they want to learn.

This actually aligns with one of the biggest appeals of martial arts games for players: the desire to learn those cool martial arts manuals. By allowing players to choose the sect they want to learn from, the game provides them with a basic manual for that sect.

The game then gives players a simple and easy-to-understand goal: to join their chosen sect, learn martial arts, and then have them catch crickets, showing them that this martial arts world has many novel things besides fighting and killing.

Thus, although this beginning was simple, the effect was excellent.

Let's take a brief look back.

From the moment you enter the game until the end of the first cricket-catching activity.

What do players experience?
It's a character creation system with a rich feature set; it's learning the basic skills of a sect you like; it's confirming your early goals in the game, going to a sect, becoming an apprentice, and learning about the many interesting gameplay features in the game.

From joining a sect to the training system and interacting with various NPC characters, "The Scroll of Taiwu" has already laid out the framework for a "jianghu" (martial arts world) experience.
However, after the Early Access success of "The Scroll of Taiwu," the game development team lost their way and encountered various problems, resulting in the final product becoming increasingly "boring" and ultimately "fading into obscurity."

However, in any case, The Scroll of Taiwu provided Chu Chen with a framework, and Chu Chen knew very well how to start if he really wanted to make a two-dimensional martial arts game.

With the framework in place and an HD-2D engine capable of creating an "open world," Chu Chen's puzzle for his martial arts anime game is now complete, with only the "romance" element remaining.

Chu Chen was incredibly experienced in this area.
He even has a "reference" character, namely Jin Xi from the novel *Ming Chao*.
Although Mingchao is not a martial arts game.

However, many of the characters in Imashu actually have a bit of a "wuxia" feel to them.

One typical example is why Jinxi is so popular.

Besides the plot and cutscene presentation, the character design is definitely a huge plus, as Jinxi incorporates some elements of the "Little Dragon Girl" image.

Cool and aloof, elegant, and with angular features...
Since Mingchao can be adapted, could Chu Chen create a character based on the image of Xiaolongnu? Would that be popular?
Of course, when the final project proposal is made, the character's name doesn't necessarily have to be Jinxi, and the plot doesn't necessarily have to be like that; it's just a hypothetical scenario.

For example, the character Xiaolongnu (Jin Xi) is set as the daughter of the Cangming Sword Sect's leader.

At the time of his birth, a dragon roared in the sky. As he grew up, he was recognized as a martial arts prodigy and was regarded by the sect as the person with the best chance of mastering the "Azure Sea Dragon Transformation".

In the story, the player is a mysterious young man who resides in the Cangming Sword Sect.

She is a little older than Jinxi, so Jinxi is the player's junior sister.

Jin Xi's character arc can be linked to the sect's "misfortune." Chu Chen can lay some groundwork here, such as the player being a guest in the sect leader's house.

(End of this chapter)