Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 210 End-of-the-World Survival Guide
The stove light came on.

He then waved to the girl, though there was no voiceover.

However, the bubbles appearing above the characters' heads indicate that the boy is calling for the girl to come and help.

"This is a scene prototype that we quickly built using the Unity engine based on your 'Endgame Survival Guide' proposal. The focus is on showcasing the atmosphere and basic interactions."

He spoke while operating the character.

The boy walked to the girl's side, reached out his hand, and the girl closed her book, placed her hand on his, and he pulled her up. The whole process was smooth and seamless.

"We utilized Unity's mature asset library and workflow, and actually completed this demo in just one week."

"As it turns out, the version Mr. Ishii is currently using is not that different from our heavily modified version."

"Some lighting and shadow effects technologies are interoperable. In addition, we also worked with Mr. Ishii's team for a week to achieve 2D-HD physical interaction and a preliminary accurate presentation of collisions between characters and scenes. Although it has not been optimized yet, these functions are achievable."

"Most importantly, development efficiency. If the project is confirmed to use Unity, we are confident that we can produce a complete Unity-based 2H-HD engine development kit within two... no, one and a half months."

Xiong Rui's demonstration showcased the technology and highlighted the advantages of stability. As the demonstration ended, applause rang out in the conference room.

It is said that laymen watch the excitement while experts watch the details.

Those in the conference room are all engine developers, so they naturally know that the series of demos they just saw, while seemingly unremarkable, actually contained hidden secrets.
Building such a detailed scene in half a month is actually not a big deal.

However, the fact that it can be built using the Unity 5.0 engine shows that Xiong Rui is not only very familiar with Unity 5.0, but also with previous versions of Unity.

Even Fuller became a little more serious.

As the lead programmer of the Reality engine, he understood better than anyone else present that achieving such customized 2D-HD effects on the "finished" Unity engine, while also adding precise physical interactions, was indeed no easy feat.

Especially that physical interaction system.

2D-HD physical interaction is a huge pitfall because its visual presentation is 2D, but the underlying logic is 3D for lighting and shadow effects. The combination of the two can easily lead to all sorts of strange bugs.

Although Reality also used a special method to handle this problem, its approach was completely different from the other party's.

"sharp.."

Fuller gave him a thumbs up.

However, his praise did not bring smiles to Xiong Rui and others' faces. When your competitor gives you a thumbs up so calmly, it is either a bluff.

Either
~~~
Amidst the applause, all eyes fell on Chu Chen, but Chu Chen did not respond to his opinion immediately. Instead, he picked up the controller and personally controlled the demo.

The "Final Survival Guide" project was one that Chu Chen had been working on and thinking about for a long time.

This project was inspired by a very unique anime called "Girls' Last Tour".

This animation has no intense battles or complicated conspiracies; it simply tells the story of two girls driving a car, traveling through the ruins of civilization, exploring relics, and searching for the meaning of survival.

After its release 17 years ago, Bilibili has accumulated over 40 million views and nearly 80,000 ratings, yet it still maintains a high score of 9.8.

This rating is enough to prove that a large number of viewers are very receptive to this kind of thing.

In his previous life, Chu Chen watched this anime and found it very enjoyable. Furthermore, during that time, he was working on indie games for a company. Therefore, he specifically analyzed the anime from the creator's perspective. If you look at the anime from the creator's point of view, you'll discover its core message, or in a more easily understood way, like a web novel.

The "enjoyable" aspects of this animation are quite strange.

It lacks the thrilling elements of traditional popular animations, but the animation is still entertaining.

After studying it for a while, Chu Chen identified the core elements that would make this animation successful as two key settings.

One: The extinction of civilization

In the world of Girls' Last Tour, due to the actual extinction of humanity, the global population may be less than double digits, so civilization, and even life itself, is on the verge of extinction.

The two girls who are the main characters are actually unfamiliar with this world, aside from basic common sense.

Therefore, although they are "people from the future," the audience can easily immerse themselves in their perspective to view and explore this world. The first core element is the relationships between the characters.

Second: The sense of storytelling inherent in the world itself.

Also based on the end-of-the-world setting, when the two protagonists are acquiring things, creating things, and exploring spectacular human ruins, they seem to be aimlessly wandering, but in fact, there is a big hook from beginning to end.

"How exactly was this world destroyed?"

This big hook has countless smaller hooks underneath, and the satisfying aspect derived from these hooks is "discovery".

Find a book that's still readable, find a can of fish that hasn't expired, find a huge abandoned factory, find fragments of writing left behind by predecessors.

Each discovery is an exploration of this desolate world, bringing the audience a unique and complex mix of novelty, joy, and sorrow.

The pleasure of "scavenging in the wasteland" is essentially driven by a curiosity about the unknown.

The animation created this atmosphere to the extreme: the desolate, lifeless, magnificent yet tragic post-apocalyptic landscape itself is a silent protagonist.

Finally, there's the creation of the animated characters.

The characters Chito and Yuri are practically the entirety of the world.

One is rational, pessimistic, responsible for planning and driving; the other is emotional, optimistic, responsible for causing trouble and providing force.

The bond between them wasn't built on grand vows or melodramatic plots, but on countless small details—sharing a piece of military rations, playing in the snow, and silently accompanying each other in times of despair.

This interdependent relationship is amplified infinitely in the context of the apocalypse.

When the whole world is reduced to just the two of you, the other person becomes your entire world. This extreme loneliness and extreme dependence form the most solid emotional core.

These elements combined to create a pretty good animation. So, in his previous life, after watching this animation, Chu Chen wondered if he should make a game based on it.
After all, this core gameplay, when combined with survival and exploration elements, is perfect.

It should be a good fusion.

Moreover, compared to animation, players will obviously have a more immersive experience when they explore the world themselves. Based on these ideas, Chu Chen created this project.

(End of this chapter)