Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 470 Soaring Data

The Starry Sky Games 48-Hour Game Creation Contest, although the name looks the same as other 48-hour game creation contests.

In reality, what Xingchen did this time was a completely new attempt.

In the past, those so-called extreme game development challenges were more like a carnival party for independent game developers and enthusiasts.

Most of the participants are students, amateur enthusiasts, or newcomers who have just entered the field. They gather in groups of three to five, or even go it alone.

Driven by passion and a few immature ideas, they cobbled together a "prototype" within 48 hours, using a rudimentary engine and rough art.

This is not to say that it's bad; in fact, many people are particularly fond of this kind of demo.

These individual works are indeed very "personal," but these game demos are also obviously very "rough."

Characters can get stuck in walls while walking, attack hitboxes are unpredictable, and crashes halfway through the game are commonplace.

Everyone tacitly agrees that the criteria for judgment are often "ideas" and "creativity," rather than the degree of completion.

After all, being able to create a working program from scratch in 48 hours is already worthy of applause.

But the Starry Sky Game Development Competition is different.

Chu Chen never intended to turn it into a social gathering for amateur enthusiasts.

The threshold he set and the team he invited all had only one standard of professionalism.

The participants here are no longer students with dreams, but a veteran team of professionals who have been through countless battles in the gaming industry.

The five-person team configuration allows for the reuse of the team's accumulated engine and core resource library. These two rules directly elevate the nature of the competition from "creation" to "integration and optimization".

Just like the recently concluded "Adam's World," Chu Chen's team seemed to have built a complex world in 48 hours, but a large number of the basic scenes, objects, and character animations actually came from mature 2D scene resource packages.

What they need to do is to combine these readily available materials into a story that can immerse players through ingenious narrative and gameplay design.

Even if the story is a bit short and the details are not polished enough.

However, the level of completion of this demo is quite high.

It's not just StarCraft; other game development teams have also produced highly polished products, such as Team Cherry (Hollow Knight) and Bluehole (PUBG).

The domestic developers of games like *Gu Jian* (古剑) and *ICEY* (ICEY) – the difference between what they created in 48 hours and what an ordinary person would create.

Let's put aside the question of how creative it is.

The completion rate will definitely be much higher.

This is no longer a simple game development competition; it's more like a "culinary showdown" that brings together the world's top chefs. The competition isn't about who can make a loaf of bread from wheat, but about who can use the best available ingredients to cook a stunning dish.

Among this group of exceptional individuals, MT Studio, a team from France, stands out particularly.

Because their participation in this competition was primarily for the purpose of promoting Dead Cells, the game's core directly used some of the Dead Cells engine assets.

The core gameplay is also very simple.

In addition to the traditional side-scrolling gameplay, the screen also displays an extra prompt: "Press the 'Shift' key to enter the 'Table World'."

Su Xiaoli pressed the Shift key.

"Om-"

A slight spatial distortion sound effect instantly transformed the entire game screen.

The once dark, damp, and monster-infested dungeon was transformed in an instant into an ancient temple covered in vines and sunlight. The hideous zombies became worshippers in prayer, and the poison-dripping traps became fountains gushing forth clear water. And her role changed from a warrior wielding a sword to a priestess holding a staff.

Many viewers hadn't even seen the game's combat system yet, but as soon as this switch appeared, they were all like "Holy crap!"

Wow! This transition is so smooth!

[Awesome! This is what "parallel worlds" truly are! One is an inner world, the other is the outer world!]

Su Xiaoli controlled her character to move forward in the dungeon, or rather, the temple.

She quickly discovered the brilliance of the game's design.

Some platforms are broken and impassable in the Otherworld, but when switched to the Surface World, the broken platforms become complete stone bridges.

Some enemies are ghosts that are immune to physical attacks in the Otherworld. You must switch to the surface world and use the holy light of your staff to damage them.

These designs are very simple.

Furthermore, due to the 48-hour time limit, the entire demo only has two maps: one normal map and one BOSS map.

However, the material accumulated from Dead Cells still gave this demo a very high level of completion, and this level of completion somewhat compensated for the lack of creativity.

The gameplay, art style, and overall feedback exceeded the level of creativity.

Therefore, its rating closely follows that of "Adam's World".

~~~
Meanwhile, Bennett, who had returned to France, along with his two partners, Adam, the lead programmer, and Thomas, who had also participated in the competition, were staring intently at a computer screen in their office.

The screen displayed none other than the backend data page for "Echoes of Parallel Worlds" on the Starry Sky Games platform, with the largest number being the number of downloads.

Less than three hours after the game demo officially started loading, "Echoes of Parallel Worlds" had already surpassed one million downloads.

Moreover, this number is skyrocketing at a terrifying rate.

"One million seven hundred thousand, one million eight hundred thousand, that's outrageous!"

Thomas, the main programmer, spoke with a slight tremor in his voice.

"Comments section...Bena, look at the comments section!"

Benna leaned closer and looked at the rapidly scrolling Chinese comments.

Although he couldn't understand it, the "likes" and various positive emoticons next to the comments were a universal language.

"Quick, quick, click and translate..."

Thomas activated the built-in translation function of the Starry Night gaming platform.

This feature is relatively exclusive to the Starry Sky Games platform. On other gaming platforms, comments are often filtered and released based on player voice messages.

For example, if the player is using Chinese, then the comment section will have more Chinese comments; if the player is using English, then the comment section will have English comments.

However, the Starry Sky Games platform is different.

The reviews on the Starry Sky Games platform are also filtered, but in reverse; the Starry Sky Games platform will put two or three popular reviews for each language at the top.

Then, the results are arranged in chronological order.

(End of this chapter)