Chapter 330: Soul Games

　　Wang Jian noticed the "soul-like" on the label, which he had never heard of before, so he could not help asking the system curiously: "System, what is a soul-like?"

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

　　Wang Jian happily paid the points.

　　When I asked Sid Meier in front of System Civilization 6 and why PT was a semi-finished product, I only deducted 10 points, but asking about soul games actually required 300 points, which shows that this question is still very valuable.

　　Immediately, the relevant content was understood by him.

　　The ancestor of the action PRG series branch that created the "soul game" is "Devil's Soul", and the subsequent representative works of this type include "Dark Soul", "Nioh", "Sekiro", "Salt and Sanctuary" and so on.

　　The biggest difference between "Devil's Soul" and other RPGs is the "fixed level design", which can be said to be contrary to the mainstream practice at the time.

　　In Demon's Souls, the levels are varied, the quality is extremely high, and the level of sophistication in the design is astounding. The castle series with multi-level building levels, the tunnel series with fancy tricks and falling, repeating similar scenes, the tower series with high ground drop to lure the lost, the swamp series with difficult moving, these are the styles that can often be seen in the follow-up soul games and scene.

　　All these scenes hide a variety of malicious, hidden elements and hard-to-find enemies, which constitute the vast majority of the difficulty of soul games: players often use their lives to explore the hidden secrets in these levels, so as to experience to the subtleties of level design.

　　The level design techniques of "Dark Souls" follow the basic principles of "Devil's Souls", but add two very important changes: first, all maps are connected and can be reached and shuttled at will; second, all maps have Added shortcuts, which can be permanently opened after the player completes a certain progress, which is convenient for players to quickly travel between various "camps".

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

　　In terms of narrative techniques, other RPGs are mainly narrative narratives, which means that the player has a dialogue with the NPC, and the NPC tells the player what happened.

　　For example, if the player sees the field at the east end of the village being eaten by pigs, the village chief will ask the player to kill the pig. After the protagonist submits the wild boar teeth, he will sigh that the recent wild boar is very manic. He hopes that the player will go to the middle of the forest to investigate the wild boar mania. s reason.

　　When the player goes to investigate, it turns out that the seal of a cave was opened, causing the leakage of demonic energy. If you ask the village chief, the village chief will tell you how many years ago a demon king was born, and then he was beheaded and sealed by a brave man. in the cave.

　　This is roughly the case, through the communication with the NPC to understand the story of the game.

　　Soul games are different. There are very few dialogues in the whole game. It will not directly tell the player what the world is like. Instead, players need to fight with various enemies one after another, and set foot on maps and buildings familiar with different styles. Even found and deduced the face of the world from the description of the dropped items.

　　Such a fragmented and largely blank narrative technique has its own advantages, that is, it covers up the weakness and confusion of the script itself, and the process of piecing together the plot itself also brings the joy 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 they are talking about after playing the whole game, and the research and analysis of the plot by soul scientists also analyzes A lot, and in the end there may still be big differences between them.

　　Another feature of soul games is that they are difficult.

　　In ordinary RPG games, players are all heroes.At the beginning, mobs such as slimes and goblins were killed casually, and there was no need to worry about being beaten.

　　In soul games, even if it is a basic miscellaneous soldier, it can kill the player with three cuts, which may make the first-time player feel confused.

　　What, I was beaten to death by a mob?

　　When the player finally masters the basic operation of the game, can kill the miscellaneous soldiers, and cry with joy, the BOSS they will face next will be several levels higher than the miscellaneous soldiers, and they will be abused to the point of doubting their lives.

　　Like that joke: let's say you have a rabbit.

　　Suppose someone else gave you another rabbit.

　　Now, count the number of rabbits you have, and you will get two, which means one rabbit plus one rabbit equals two rabbits, which is one plus one equals two. This is how arithmetic works. .

　　So, now that you have some idea of ​​the basic principles of arithmetic, let's take a look at the following simple example to put what we just learned into practice.

　　Give it a try! Example 1.7: logⅡ(N)=(N+1/2)logN... (a whole page of complex formulas)

　　When a player who has just mastered the basic operation is facing the first BOSS, this is probably the feeling.

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

　　When first encountering a BOSS, players will feel that this BOSS is so strong, and that he is simply a weak chicken.

　　Most of the other games encounter monsters that can't be beaten. It's very simple. Go to upgrade, go to brush a high-level equipment, strengthen it, and rely on the pile of attributes. If it is a mobile game, you can also consider buying a gift pack to instantly improve your combat effectiveness. The importance of operation cannot be said to be absent, but it is very small.

　　However, soul games are different. The improvement of players does not depend on the attributes of the characters in the game, but on their own operation level.

　　With the challenge again and again, players gradually become familiar with the attack mode of monsters, know when they can go forward to cut two knives, and when they need to dodge.

　　It's not that the monsters are getting weaker, but that the players are getting stronger.

　　This kind of defeating powerful enemies through the growth of one's own operating skills is the greatest charm of soul games.

　　Of course, there are other features of Souls games, but these are the most important ones.

　　Wang Jian touched his chin and thought for a moment. As a game producer, he immediately felt the groundbreaking nature contained in it.

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

　　Buying is a natural purchase.

　　Wang Jian bought "Sekiro", and suddenly there was a huge stream of information in his mind, the content was unprecedented, and it took him almost an hour to absorb it this time.

　　With so much content pouring in at once, Wang Jian felt his head dizzy, pressed his temples, and couldn't help sighing: "If only there was a game to understand the fruit!"