Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 549 The big one is coming

The Spring Festival holiday has finally arrived as scheduled.

For most people, this is a rare time of year when they can completely put aside work and reunite with their families. But for game streamer Huang Wenfeng, this holiday was precisely compressed into two days.

On New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, and the second day of the Lunar New Year, after visiting the last of his relatives and politely declining his cousin's enthusiastic invitation to play mahjong (a card game), Huang Wenfeng practically fled back to his own little apartment.

The moment the door closed, the whole world became quiet.

The loud conversations of relatives in the living room, the crisp clinking of mahjong tiles, and the probing question, "Old Huang, how much does your son earn a month from live streaming?" were all kept in another dimension.

He let out a long sigh and slumped into his gaming chair, which groaned contentedly.

"Brothers, I'm back!"

On the afternoon of the third day of the Lunar New Year, Huang Wenfeng started his live broadcast on time.

The live stream title was simple and direct: "Old Huang is back! Let's go for the second anniversary of the final battle!"

This time coincides with the peak period when most players, having finished their initial family social interactions during the Spring Festival, are feeling bored and their gaming addiction begins to surface.

The live stream's popularity soared, and the barrage of comments was like a boiling pot.

"Here he comes! Happy New Year, Lao Huang!"

"Old Huang, what have you been up to these past few days? You didn't actually go on a blind date, did you?"

Huang Wenfeng grinned as he looked at the comments: "What blind date? I have plenty of wives, they're all in the game."

Besides casual conversation, many people in the live chat also talked about the movie.

This year, during the Spring Festival, Starry Sky Entertainment and "Operation Red Sea" also had a collaboration. This collaboration was partly due to Starry Sky Entertainment's name appearing in the credits of the film, which made many people realize that Starry Sky Entertainment had also invested in the film and acquired the game IP rights.

On the other hand, PUBG also collaborated with Operation Red Sea.

Some people also talked about the media's pessimistic outlook on the StarCraft platform in the new year, after all, Steam's entry into China and EPIC's confirmed entry are both quite explosive events.

At the end of the year, the headlines of major media outlets still proclaimed that Starry Sky is awesome and invincible.

After the Spring Festival, the style changed completely, and they changed their tune.

It looks like StarCraft is going to get completely crushed by these two overseas giants after Steam and Epic Games enter the market.

You can't really blame these media outlets for being opportunistic. In 18, the aura of large American companies still lingered, and many manufacturers were quick to compare themselves to Apple or Tesla.

Essentially, it's this halo effect that's at work.

Why did Xiaomi's decision to rename its flagship phone to the iPhone 17 in 25 cause such a huge uproar when it tried to compete with the iPhone 17?

The market has changed, and many Chinese users feel that this behavior is very low-class. It's 2025, and you're still comparing yourself to Apple?
However, in the present moment, in 18, Steam and EPIC do seem to be making a strong push.

Under the current circumstances.

Many people believe that Xingchen will face challenges in the new year.

Many media outlets believe that StarCraft's current success is solely due to Steam's lack of commitment.

While this argument is absurd upon closer analysis—for example, even though Google has been out of China for almost ten years, many people still believe that if Google hadn't left, it would have definitely been able to crush Baidu—it's absurd.
Of course, as a player of "Final Frontline", these are not what Huang Wenfeng cares about. What he is looking forward to is the Spring Festival event update for the second anniversary version of "Final Frontline".

"Finally, I can grind the event!!!"

Huang Wenfeng's tone became excited as he precisely clicked the familiar icon on the desktop.

The New Year's Eve event for *Final Frontline* is codenamed "Dawn." Starting with version 1.1 in May 2016, the game has now reached version 2.4.
At this point in the story, after several major updates, humanity has gone from being passively attacked to being able to fight back against the omnics.

Because it's a New Year's Eve event.

After entering the game, the oppressive feeling of the previous version, Nuka-Winter, was much less.

The entire background interface is a huge, brightly lit circular base under a dazzling starry sky, resembling a luminous dragon coiled on the earth.

Countless tiny sparks of light and celebratory fireworks rose into the sky above the base, weaving together a grand and heartwarming scene.

The background music on the login screen has also changed. It's no longer the somewhat depressing theme song "Guardian" from before, but a melodious and hopeful piano piece with a light and cheerful tune.

"There's something."

This is actually why he likes "Final Frontline". Many games' holiday events are just changing the UI skin and giving away some worthless items, which is just perfunctory.

However, with each update to Final Frontline, a certain "quality" is brought into the game, with an email unfolding on the screen.

To my dearest Commander: Happy New Year.

[The command center has decided to hold a grand New Year's Eve party to reward all the androids and staff who have worked tirelessly throughout the past year.]

You will be fully responsible for the preparations of the gala.

[Also, enclosed is a small "party fund".]

Your most loyal logistics officer

Below the email was a bunch of shiny resources and gacha tickets. After casually drawing a card, he opened the event page.

The event was called "Operation Dawn." The entire event was divided into two parts.

The first part is "Party Preparation," which looks like a simulation management game.

Players need to build various party facilities in the base, such as an "open-air stage", "barbecue area", "dessert station" and so on.

Building these facilities requires the use of an event token called "Celebration Chips," which are obtained by completing various daily tasks and PVP and PVE battles.

This part is considered a classic Terminal Front holiday event.

The second part is a battle mode called "Joint Defense".

The battle selection interface for this "Joint Defense" is similar to the online battle in the previous 1.8 version, but not exactly the same. The biggest difference is in the gameplay.

At the start screen of the game, players can choose one class and three talent branches.

Huang Wenfeng looked at the preparation interface for "Joint Defense" and stroked his chin.

It's clear that after "FGO Kill" became popular, other studios of Starry Sky, or rather many anime-style games, are trying to include some mini-games in major updates.

They are creative, and most of their games are original.

If you really have no ideas, just "borrow" from various excellent indie games.

As StarCraft's flagship product, Final Frontline naturally doesn't stoop to complete copying, but it does incorporate some gameplay elements. For example, the current Joint Defense mode borrows the framework from Call of Duty's classic Zombies mode.

However, it's not 3D, but a top-down perspective. It doesn't use the auto-chess style of "Final Front" but the shooting style of "Final Squad". To some extent, this is also a benefit brought by the uniformity of the Star Engine.

This time, the joint defense game used the classic four-person team format.

Before the match begins, everyone needs to choose one of three typical "warrior-mage-priest" classes: "Assault," "Heavy Armor," and "Engineering," to defend against wave after wave of enemies.

During the process, you can upgrade your weapons and obtain accessories of different rarities.

This kind of gameplay can get a bit boring if you keep playing it, because it doesn't have an out-of-game progression system like a grind-based game like Final Squad.

However, as an event mode, the gameplay benefits from the framework of the Final Squad, making it quite addictive.

"Brothers, today I'll show you what true strategic planning looks like!"

"Focus fire! Focus fire on its leg joints!"

The battle soon became intense.

This type of defensive game is quite exciting once you get into it, because this defensive mode has sunk costs, and it gets more and more exciting as you play.

In addition, the longer you live, the more rewards you receive for various activities.

So when the enemy came wave after wave, the sounds of explosions and gunfire were mixed together.

Fine beads of sweat appeared on Huang Wenfeng's forehead. This was his third time teaming up, and it was the most promising match yet.

So his eyes were glued to the screen, his fingers flying across the keyboard. Just as the final boss's health was about to run out and the dawn of victory was breaking, the tone of the live stream chat suddenly changed.

The chat, which was originally discussing tactics and marveling at his skills, was flooded by another wave of completely unrelated content.

"Official website! Go check out the official website!"

"Holy crap! Starry Sky has gone mad!"

"Stop hitting Lao Huang! Something terrible has happened!"

"The Final Zone! Playable demo is now available!!!"

(End of this chapter)