Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 466 Beginning

Su Xiaoli didn't look at the comments. She took a deep breath, adjusted her posture, and rolled up the sleeves of her dress to reveal a section of her fair and slender wrist.

This subtle tactic can be seen as a way for her to win over fans.

"Here it comes! Let me find it!"

At this point, a day had passed since the "variety show" aired, and the number of pre-registrations on the Starry Sky Games platform's demo page was simply outrageous.

This is the page for this topic.

Not only can you see the number of reservations for each demo, but you can also see the rating rules.

The rating system is divided into two parts: an impression rating, which anyone who has played the game can rate, and a depth rating, which requires completing the game to rate.

Ultimately, the official team will conduct a multi-dimensional evaluation of the game based on player ratings.

This rating looks like the rating for the DEMO competition, but in reality, this rating system is also an internal test conducted by Xingchen using this opportunity.

A rating system is very important for a platform because it is linked to a recommendation system.

How to recommend games that players might like to them is a major challenge.

This problem has two parts: one is how to judge the quality of a game, and the other is how to push it to a specific group of people.

The former mainly involves looking at the player rating system and data.

Initially, the Starry Sky platform used a primitive player rating system, which is used by many platforms. After purchasing a game, players would rate it from 1 to 10.

The reason this crude system works is because single-player games require payment before playing.

Therefore, as long as the refund rate remains stable, games can be promoted based on sales volume and player ratings.

However, there are also disadvantages to doing this.

That is, for small workshops, the data will be distorted.

Therefore, this year, Xingchen Games platform introduced promotion conversion rate, payment rate, and retention rate, which are relatively mainstream data in the online game era.

These cold, hard statistics may be unfamiliar to single-player game developers who are used to "making a game and then selling it," but they are the most authentic reflection of a game's "stickiness."

The results were indeed quite good.

In September, an indie game called "My Zombie Girlfriend" was released on the Starry Sky platform.

This is also a game that did not exist in the previous life. It is obviously something that was born from somewhere after Chu Chen, this butterfly, was blown by it.

The production team is a Chinese team, with only three people in the entire development team, and the marketing budget is basically zero.

The general gameplay revolves around a post-apocalyptic world where players find a nurse tied up in a hospital.

It is clear that the nurse was trapped before the mutation.

Through the protagonist's soliloquy, we learn that in the months following the zombie outbreak, he rarely saw these completely non-aggressive zombies.

In the early stages, the core selling point of this game was this zombie wearing white stockings and a nurse's skirt.

A zombie nurse dressed in white stockings is tied to a hospital bed, her eyes vacant, and a trace of clear drool hanging from the corner of her mouth. It's hard not to have the wrong idea from this scene.

Because of its novel and intriguing subject matter, and because of the intriguing packaging...

It's a classic, nurturing, and twisted love story. Many players are discussing in the comments how to achieve the perfect ending, and whether the nurse sister can ever turn back, since there are indeed items in the game such as virus serum.

This game is a typical example of a game with a certain level of creativity, which successfully brought the idea and gimmick to life, resulting in a game that scores 7 to 8 out of 10.

Based on past patterns, this game will most likely be lost in the sea of ​​games during its first week of release, then spread through word of mouth in a small circle, eventually selling a few hundred thousand copies.

Many well-received games on Steam follow a similar process: they first generate positive word-of-mouth among a small group of players, and then their popularity spreads on video websites such as YouTube and Bilibili.

However, on the Star Platform, this large amount of data will serve as a stepping stone for promotion.

Just like the push notifications on TikTok, it was continuously pushed to more and more people. The final result was "My Zombie Girlfriend," which only took one month to become a hit.

From an unknown nobody, it has become a dark horse of the year with sales exceeding one million.

It even sold over 20 copies in Japan.

Even Japanese animation companies approached them, wanting to adapt the game into an anime. Although it was later revealed that the animation company that approached them was a producer of hentai anime, this incident still proved that the game did indeed become a minor hit.

Hmm... we seem to have strayed a bit from the topic.

Returning to the Starry Sky Games Competition, among the eleven demos, "Adam's World" naturally had the highest number of pre-registrations.

A person's name, the shadow of a tree.

Moreover, the theme of the game "Adam's World" is indeed very fresh. After Su Xiaoli chatted with the audience for a few more minutes, the download and installation of the DEMO were all ready.

With "Start Game"

A deep, mysterious electronic melody began to play.

The logo of the StarCraft game engine flashed briefly on the screen, and then the screen entered the main game interface.

Since it's a 48-hour game, the main interface is extremely simple, consisting of a static image with an empty chair as the background. Opposite the chair is a row of monitors showing the daily life of a small island. The scene is somewhat dark, while the island town on the monitors is very bright.

Next to the chairs were some props used by television production crews, such as cameras.

This is clearly a reference to the theme of "parallel worlds." On the left side of the screen is the game title, "Adam's World," with only two options below: "Start Shift" and "Exit."

Today is your first day at work. Your task is to review all props, personnel, and events entering 'Adam's World.' Ensure the program runs smoothly and maintains high ratings. Your salary will be calculated based on your efficiency and accuracy. Have a great day!

After starting with a completely blank sheet of paper, the game begins its "tutorial."

The scene also changed, becoming a scene somewhat similar to an audition where a director is casting a role.

The perspective is a fixed first-person view; the lower third is a table, while the upper half is the audition room, which unfolds very quickly.

Soon, a document was handed over and appeared on her desktop with a "whoosh".

This is a "new actor's application".

Name: Hannah Smith

[Character: Adam's new neighbor, a passionate baker]

[Photo: A blonde, blue-eyed, smiling Caucasian woman]

Background check: No criminal record, outstanding graduate of drama school, willing to sign a confidentiality agreement.

(End of this chapter)