Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 525 Game Workshop
Chris mumbled between bites of his breakfast bread, "Oh, Star, you mean the one who made 'The End of the World Survival Guide'?"

Bowen paused for a moment.

"You know this company?"

“Of course I know.” Chris swallowed the food in his mouth.

“I’ve been playing Final Frontier for almost a year now. Don’t you remember? Last summer I tried to get you into it, but you said you weren’t interested in anime-style auto battlers.”

Bowen's memories began to flash back rapidly.

It seems... it seems there really is such a thing.

Chris sent him a link in a mysterious way. When he clicked on it and saw that it featured Japanese-style characters, he instinctively closed it, saying, "Another one of those otaku games."

There is a very peculiar phenomenon in this world.

When you don't know something, it seems as if it doesn't exist in your world. But once you get to know it, you'll suddenly realize that it's actually everywhere and has already permeated every aspect of your life.

Bowen is in that situation now.

After discovering Star Games, he quickly realized that the company had a very high penetration rate in schools.

Not only did he fail to recommend it to his friends, but his friends also recommended a whole bunch of StarCraft single-player games to him, and then he discovered...

Good guy.

The single-player games from StarCraft offer outrageously high value for money.

On the American gaming forum Reddit, whenever a new user posts asking for recommendations for "good games on a limited budget," someone always mentions StarCraft.

"Go try StarCraft's games, man. They'll make you feel like other companies are ripping you off."

Similar comments can be found on many forums in Europe and America.

Especially after last year's Starry Night remake of the classic game, which gave away $1 million.

Starry Sky's reputation began to expand rapidly across multiple dimensions, including Starry Sky Tap, Starry Sky Game Platform, and Sony consoles.

The strategy of offering good value for money works all over the world. Pinduoduo is doing just as well in the US. Not to mention, Starry Night's games are not only cheap but also fun. Apart from being a bit short and not very filling, they are all good.

So when Final Squad was released, Bowen Roberts made a landmark decision for him personally: he bought the game.

Although he bought the game, he'll have to wait until the weekend to really enjoy playing it.

Thankfully, the wait these past few days was worthwhile.

Final Squad did indeed bring him a new surprise. Like Kenta Yamada, Bowen quickly became immersed in this pure grind game.

This kind of pure grinding game has almost no cultural barriers.

Let alone cultural barriers.

These kinds of grind games don't even have much requirement for art style.

As long as you can make people enjoy the grind, it doesn't matter if it's a AAA 3D ​​grinding game or a pixel-style grinding game.

The greatest charm of this kind of grind game lies in the first few days. It can keep you up at night, even if you have to turn off the game and go to bed after your mother nags you.

Bowen was still thinking about games, so wrapped in his blankets, he started scrolling through his phone again.

The Last Squad has been out for several days now, and the discussions on the forums have expanded beyond the game itself. The most popular post right now is titled: 【[Video] Guys, I think we might not be playing the same game (PC Workshop MOD demo)】

"Workshop?"

Bowen paused for a moment. He knew that PC games had mods, but as someone who had played console games for many years, he didn't really understand this thing.

Clicking into the trending post reveals a video. The video begins with the familiar snowfield and the classic diamond formation of Team A-017.

At first glance, nothing seemed to have changed, but Bowen was soon stunned.

Because what A-017 spewed from its muzzle was no longer an ordinary tongue of fire, but a blazing red energy beam that, with a "whoosh," instantly pierced through an entire row of six-legged robots in the distance.

Immediately afterwards, RPK-16, who was originally using a sniper rifle, was now holding a hammer that was crackling with lightning...

“What the F…” Bowen muttered to himself, while the comment section below the video was scrolling by rapidly.

Are these Iron Man and Thor?

[Wait, is that Thor's hammer that was thrown?! It definitely is!]

【So handsome! ! ! 】

The author uploaded a mod called 'Avengers Squad' to the workshop, which replaces the attack models and skills of all humanoid characters!

[My god, StarCraft actually granted this level of modification privileges? Aren't they afraid players will create an invincible mod and ruin the game?]

[To the person upstairs: The workshop map allows you to set the difficulty and monsters yourself, and using mods prevents you from entering official rankings and statistics, and the dropped equipment cannot be used in normal mode, so it's very fair.]

By this time, Bowen was already quite familiar with StarCraft, so he quickly opened StarCraft's official announcement section and found an announcement about the trial operation of StarCraft's PC platform workshop.

Chu Chen had always wanted to create something like a game platform loading workshop, because it was something that Steam had, but StarCraft didn't.

However, this seemingly insignificant system is actually quite troublesome to implement.

Of course, Bowen didn't actually know how StarCraft overcame the difficulties and finally launched the system in End Squad. He only saw that someone had made a Master Chief mod for Halo, replacing the enemies with elite Covenant monsters.

Someone recreated the map from Gears of War, allowing Squad A-017 to experience the brutality of the Orc Wars.

Someone even created a survival map of a zombie siege, with hundreds of zombies surging in from all directions, creating a very oppressive atmosphere.

The existence of the Workshop has extended the lifespan of "Final Squad" indefinitely, beyond the limited official playthrough of a few hours.

The players' enthusiasm and creativity became the most powerful supplement to the game content.

The game provides a fun framework, and players build their own bizarre and wonderful game worlds on top of that framework.

The problem is, he can't enjoy any of these things!

The announcement clearly states that the initial testing phase will be on PC, and later a selection of mods will be ported to mobile devices and released on the Android StarTap client.
Bowen doesn't have his own PC, and the phone he's currently using is an iPhone 6 that his dad handed over to him.

Although there is also a Star Tap app on Apple phones.

However, this Star Tap is a stripped-down version. Putting aside everything else, it's not hard to tell from the official announcement that only the Android version of Star Tap has been ported to mobile.

This feature will definitely not appear on Apple's Star Tap.

I need to figure out a way to get my dad to buy me a new phone.

(End of this chapter)