Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 19 Silence
It's not 24 years now.

But Chu Chen's expectations for himself were even higher than they were back then.

After all, if he can create a high-standard game at this time, he can naturally crush his competitors. Others will either be crushed along with him or be eliminated.
In this process, those who can lead the industry standards will naturally reap the greatest rewards.

all in all.

For Chu Chen, the stories of anime-style games are very important.

And for a story to be engaging, it naturally needs a good backdrop.

Take "Final Front" as an example. The game's setting is a very ordinary "post-apocalyptic" world.

The reason I say "ordinary" is because, whether now or in the future, apocalyptic scenarios are incredibly common in any anime/manga game.

In ship girl games, the abyss and sirens are what destroy the world; in Honkai Impact 3rd, the "Honkai" and "Herrscher" are what destroy the world; and in Naruto Shippuden: The Tide of Resonance, it's the Naruto-style and the "Afterimage Tide."

In Arknights, it's Originium and natural disasters; in Punishing: Gray Raven, it's the Punishing Virus.

But regardless of the enemy, in the storyline, many game "bosses" actually lack a sense of oppression.

What is a feeling of oppression?
Simply put, the sense of oppression exerted by the Trisolarans in the Three-Body Problem novel is significantly greater than that of the "villains" in a large number of games.

of course
Comparing it to The Three-Body Problem is really a bit too much.

But the principles are the same.

One point that many anime-style games overlook is that enemies and villains also need to be developed.

These kinds of games often start with "In XXX year, humanity encountered XXX," and then... nothing more.

These are enemies capable of "destroying the world".

Often, they are just simple backgrounds, lacking depth and a sense of urgency, resulting in insufficient tension in the story.

It might even leave players wondering what the protagonist is "busy" with or what they are fighting.

With no origin, no purpose, no organizational structure, and even a vague appearance, how could such an enemy possibly evoke a real sense of crisis in the player?
Without a sense of crisis, how can killing these enemies bring any sense of satisfaction?

Let's start explaining from the beginning.

In the conference room, Chu Chen picked up his pen and began to explain his thoughts on the whiteboard.

"In the world of 'Final Front,' the enemy is actually quite clear: a military AI called 'Tenri' has developed its own will and betrayed us."

"In the game's setting, after Tenri's betrayal, humanity lost control of most of the military AI, and the remaining military equipment was forced to have all the AI ​​devices removed."

"However, to fight against androids, humans alone are not enough. It was soon discovered that a large number of civilian robots were not under Tianli's control because commercial companies had left backdoors."

"These girls armed with civilian androids are called tactical androids."

“These settings are very detailed. Everyone has made a lot of documents and written a lot of settings pages for this.”

At this point, Chu Chen slammed his fist on the whiteboard.

"But I hope everyone can realize that."

"This kind of background setting that we created is very hollow."

"We need a lot of detail to fill in this setting, not the other way around, using the setting to drive the plot. I hope everyone understands this."

This is a very simple principle, but understanding it is not easy. Copywriting that starts with long passages of technical terms generally has this problem: their copywriting places too much emphasis on the rationality of the premise.

Fearing that players would find fault, they would patch the settings, and then, after patching, they would patch the patches again.

What ultimately appears is a bunch of things where each individual character is understandable, but when put together, it's completely incomprehensible.

But in reality, the truly good stories aren't like that; no one would dwell on whether Thanos's gauntlet could actually wipe out half the universe with a snap of his fingers.

What people are imagining is the oppression, pressure, and ideological conflict that comes with the very idea that a snap of the fingers could wipe out half the population.

As Chu Chen spoke, he pulled up a brand new slide. It contained no images of monsters, only a series of modern items marked with red crosses.

Cell phones, radar, engines, radios
"Omnics are a physical enemy, but their existence can easily turn them into zombies in a zombie movie."

"Therefore, we need to give players a clearer understanding and let them feel the pressure of the omnics."

"So in the early stages of the story, in addition to showing the monsters themselves, we also need to show how their appearance makes the ordinary extraordinary."

This is also the origin of the "silence" setting.

"As AI-controlled mechanical life forms, intelligent machines are inherently very sensitive to steel and electronic equipment."

"Their sense of smell for electronic devices, and even for electricity itself, and the resulting interference, can also be incorporated into the gameplay."

As Chu Chen spoke, he brought up another prototype of the game interface.

"In the upper right corner of the player base's main interface, there is an 'electromagnetic noise index.' The higher this value is, the greater the probability of an attack by omnics."

"This value will increase as the player builds a power facility, researches a technology, or recruits more humanoids in the base."

He showed several screenshots of the game.

In the dimly lit base, workers used handcarts to transport supplies, commanders used paper maps instead of GPS to plan routes, and only candles were used in the dormitory area at night.

Even energy sources like electric lights can attract intelligent machines.

"Players may not have experienced the Omnic Crisis, but as long as they are not too young, they have all experienced power outages."

"They understand the inconvenience caused by the power outage."

"And what causes these inconveniences is the AI, which allows players to easily empathize with the characters in the game."

"In the copy, you can even write that after a humanoid kills an omnic, it steps on its foot and says, 'It's all because of you guys that I can only charge my phone by sunbathing!'"

"These are also depictions of the villains."

"When players clear out the surrounding omnics, the upper limit of the electromagnetic noise index can be increased. For example, if the noise level was originally 100 before enemies would spawn, it can now be 200. The principle is that when there are no omnics around, low-power electrical facilities can be used, allowing more facilities to be built and more humanoids to be recruited."

"We can also create some stories within this setting, allowing players to personally experience the inconveniences of being deprived of modern technology."

"Of course, this setting can also make the game feel more premium."

Whether a world is real or not often depends on the details.

"Okay, let me give you an example, and you'll understand..."

(End of this chapter)