Top game producer

Wang Jian noticed the label "Soulslike". He had never heard of this genre before, so he curiously asked the system, "System, what is Soulslike?"

[This question involves a lot of content, including some unique game design concepts. 300 points]

Wang Jian readily paid the points.

Previously, asking the system about Sid Meier before Civilization VI, and why PT was an unfinished product, only cost 10 points. But asking about Soulslike games actually cost 300 points, indicating that this question was very valuable.

Immediately, he understood the relevant content.

The originator of the "Soulslike game" action RPG series branch is 《Demon's Souls》. Subsequent representative works of this type include 《Dark Souls》, 《Nioh》, 《Sekiro》, 《Salt and Sanctuary》, etc.

The biggest difference between 《Demon's Souls》 and other RPGs lies in the "fixed level design," which can be said to be the opposite of the mainstream approach at the time.

In 《Demon's Souls》, the levels are varied and of extremely high quality. The level of design maturity is astonishing. Multi-layered architectural castle series, pit series with fancy deceptive falls, repetitive similar scenes, tower series that deceive and confuse with high altitude drops, swamp series that are difficult to move, these are all styles and scenes that can often be seen in subsequent Soulslike games.

All these scenes hide various kinds of malice, hidden elements, and difficult-to-detect enemies, which constitute most of the difficulty of Soulslike games: players often have to use their lives to explore the hidden secrets in these levels, so as to appreciate the ingenuity of the level design.

《Dark Souls》 uses the basic guidelines of 《Demon's Souls》 in its level design skills, but adds two very important changes: first, all maps are connected and can be reached and traversed at will; second, shortcuts are added to all maps. After the player completes a certain progress, these shortcuts can be permanently opened to facilitate rapid travel between various "camps."

In addition to the biggest feature of "fixed level design", Soulslike games have some other features.

In terms of narrative techniques, other RPGs mainly use dialogue narration, that is, players talk to NPCs, and NPCs tell players what happened.

For example, if the player sees that the fields in the east of the village have been gnawed by pigs, the village chief will ask the player to kill the pigs. Then, after the protagonist submits the boar tusks, he will sigh that the recent wild boars are particularly manic, hoping that the player will investigate the cause of the wild boars' mania in the middle of the forest.

When the player goes to investigate, he finds that the seal of a cave has been opened, causing demonic energy to leak. If he asks the village chief again, the village chief will talk about how many years ago a demon king was born, and then was killed and sealed in the cave by a hero.

Roughly like this, the story of the game is understood through communication with NPCs.

Soulslike games are different. There is very little dialogue in the entire game. It will not directly tell players what this world is like, but requires players to discover and deduce the appearance of this world through battles with various enemies, stepping into familiar architectural styles of different maps, and even from the descriptions of dropped items.

This fragmented, largely blank narrative technique has its own advantages, which is to cover up the weakness and chaos of the script itself, and the process of piecing together the plot itself also brings the fun of exploration. But this also leads to a problem, that is, the plot of the game becomes ambiguous and difficult to interpret. Ordinary novice players may not know what the game is about after playing the entire game, and the soul scholars' research and analysis of the plot is also a lot of analysis, and finally there may still be great differences between each other.

Another feature of Soulslike games is difficulty.

In ordinary RPG games, players exist as heroes. At the beginning, small monsters such as slimes and goblins can be killed casually, and there is no need to worry about not being able to beat them. After all, novices have to go through a familiarization process when they first come into contact with the game.

In Soulslike games, even a basic soldier can kill the player with three slashes, which may make players who are new to the game confused.

What, I was killed by a soldier?

When the player finally masters the basic operations of the game and can kill soldiers, and is overjoyed, the BOSS that will be faced next is several levels higher in difficulty than the soldiers, and will be abused to the point of doubting life.

Like that joke: First assume you have a rabbit.

Suppose someone gives you another rabbit.

Now, count the number of rabbits you have, and the result you get is two, that is, one rabbit plus one rabbit equals two rabbits, that is, one plus one equals two, which is the method of arithmetic operation.

So, now that you have some understanding of the basic principles of arithmetic, let's look at this simple example and apply what we just learned to practice.

Try it! Example 1.7: logⅡ(N)=(N+1/2)logN…… (A whole page of complex formulas)

The feeling of a player who has just mastered the basic operations when facing the first BOSS is probably this.

And this is another feature of Soulslike games, growing in battle.

When you first encounter the BOSS, players will feel that the BOSS is so strong and they are simply a weak chicken.

In most other games, it is very simple to encounter monsters that cannot be defeated. Go to upgrade, go to brush a higher-level equipment, strengthen it, and rely on stacking attributes to pass. If it is a mobile game, you can also consider buying a gift pack, and the combat power will instantly increase by a section. The importance of operation cannot be said to be non-existent, but it is very small.

But Soulslike games are different. The player's improvement does not lie in the attributes of the characters in the game, but in their own operating level.

With each challenge, players gradually become familiar with the monster's attack patterns, knowing when to go up and slash twice and when to dodge. At this time, they will feel, hey, it doesn't seem that difficult!

It's not that the monster has become weaker, but that the player has become stronger.

This kind of growth through one's own operating skills to defeat strong enemies is the greatest charm of Soulslike games.

Of course, Soulslike games have some other features, but these are the most important.

Wang Jian stroked his chin and pondered slightly. As a game producer, he immediately felt the creativity contained in it.

"A very unique game type, indeed completely different from the mainstream in the market now! I just don't know, if the game difficulty is too high, will only a few players be able to accept this style?"

Buying is natural.

Wang Jian purchased 《Sekiro》. A huge stream of information immediately appeared in his mind. The content was more than ever before. This time, it took him almost an hour to absorb it.

With so much content pouring in at once, Wang Jian felt his head was dizzy and swollen. Pressing his temples, he couldn't help but sigh: "If only there was a game understanding fruit!"