Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 2 Auto Chess

Chu Chen did not stop to explain.

Instead, he stood directly in front of the whiteboard and began explaining the core gameplay.

“We don’t have much time, and the money from selling the house can’t support us for too long, so we need a quick way to monetize our assets and normalize the company’s operations.”

He did not deliberately avoid the company's issues.

What Chu Chen needs to do now is to get the people sitting here to believe in him and that he can complete a game in six months.

As he spoke, he drew a chessboard on the whiteboard.

"I call the core gameplay of this game 'Auto Chess'."

After speaking, Chu Chen glanced around the conference room and noticed that everyone was looking at him blankly, so he drew a few more circles on the chessboard.

"In our Final Front, don't we have many androids modeled after firearms? We can use different androids as chess pieces..."

The prototype of the auto chess gameplay can be traced back to the RPG map "Pokémon Defense Battle" in Warcraft III in 2013, and it has been continuously iterated through maps such as War of the Three Kingdoms and Touhou Dream Festival.

Finally, in November 2018, it became a hit with "Dota Auto Chess".

从18年11月发布到19年1月，两个月的时间《刀塔自走棋》的订阅用户已经达到了百万，最高同时在线更突破了10万。

The internet is full of people discussing this game, and many Dota 2 streamers have abandoned their "old profession" and switched to streaming "Dota Auto Chess". Douyu even created a search term specifically for it.

After the auto chess game became popular, a large number of manufacturers began to flock to this field.

League of Legends has also experienced a resurgence thanks to its auto-battler gameplay, with its "Teamfight Tactics" even spawning its own standalone title, "The Spatula Battle".

This series of successes demonstrates the excellence of the auto chess gameplay.

but.

Chu Chen's choice to use the auto chess gameplay was not entirely due to its later success.

Rather, it's because auto chess is actually a good fit for current StarCraft games.

Why do you say that?

This brings us back to the gameplay of Auto Chess.

Why is Auto Chess so fun?
The answer to this question is actually quite simple, because the core of Auto Chess is the most enduring "board game" in the world, namely Mahjong.

Take Teamfight Tactics as an example.

The core fun of auto chess lies in three things: star upgrades, synergies, and battles.

What corresponds to this is actually arranging the tiles, making the tiles, and winning the hand.

The first step is to arrange the tiles.

After entering the game, players will have their own pieces. They will also get pieces by killing monsters. After that, players can get gold coins in each game, which can be used to buy pieces.

There are many ways to obtain chess pieces, but in essence, it all comes down to drawing cards.

However, for strategic purposes, players can select multiple pieces from the shop when purchasing them with gold coins.

This is somewhat similar to playing mahjong, where you draw four tiles at once and then decide whether to keep them. The purpose of this method is to encourage players to "build their hand" in the second stage.

In other words, it is easier to assemble a lineup, thereby lowering the threshold and increasing the strategic depth of card-making.

However, it should be noted that the chess pieces that appear in the shop are also random.

If you're not satisfied, you'll have to spend gold coins to "replace" it.

So essentially, the biggest attribute of "drawing cards" is still luck. After the "drawing cards" phase, the auto chess game will enter the battle phase, which can be understood as the "arranging cards" phase.

The first step is to upgrade your star rating.

Three identical one-star pieces can be upgraded to two stars, and three identical two-star pieces can be upgraded to three stars. The higher the star rating, the higher the combat power. Some powerful characters can even dominate the battlefield when upgraded to three stars.

Therefore, star upgrades can bring extremely strong positive feedback.

The problem is, you can't just upgrade your star rating whenever you want; it also depends on luck and whether you can randomly get the character you want.

This is similar to the game of mahjong, where you want to draw the tile you want.

The difference is that in mahjong, you draw three tiles to form a "sequence" or "triplet", while in auto chess, you draw three identical tiles.

Another core enjoyment is the bonds.

Actually, it can also be described as "forming a team". Simply put, it means that characters from the same faction get a bonus when they are put together. What kind of buff do you get when you have two characters from the same faction on the field? What kind of buff do you get when you have four characters from the same faction on the field?

In MMORPGs, this core fun comes from equipment sets, while in Mahjong, it's about building your hand.

Do you want to go for a clean sweep, or do you want to achieve a peerless victory?
In fact, no matter what kind of auto chess game it is, the most enjoyable moment for players is when they create their ideal lineup and then dominate the battlefield.

Essentially, this feeling of satisfaction is the same as winning at mahjong by making a pure suit or other high-scoring hand.

Auto Chess is simply a game based on Mahjong, with added intuitive feedback; after all, you can't see the battles between Mahjong players.

Furthermore, there will be a battle before each round of "card stacking," which will continuously provide feedback to players.

So, after understanding the core logic of the entire Auto Chess game.

The framework of "Final Battlefront" described by Chu Chen is very suitable for the logic of auto chess, so it naturally comes to mind.

Because, in addition to the gameplay mentioned above, there is another core element to Auto Chess.

The core element is the chess piece.

Why did the original Auto Chess game eventually disappear in the market amidst the explosive popularity of a bunch of "knock-off" auto chess games like Teamfight Tactics, Hearthstone Auto Chess, and Onmyoji Auto Chess?

Why hasn't the auto chess gameplay spawned its own game?

Why is Teamfight Tactics the most successful auto-chess game, rather than any other auto-chess game?

The answer is actually the chess piece.

Taking Teamfight Tactics as an example, for League of Legends players, Teamfight Tactics is incredibly easy to pick up, as all the champions are familiar to them.

The team compositions in Teamfight Tactics are easy for players to accept.

It's easy to learn and fun to play.

However, while the barrier to entry for Teamfight Tactics is low for League of Legends players, it is just as high for those who don't play League of Legends.

This is why Tencent singled out Teamfight Tactics and promoted it as "The Spatula Battle".

Unfortunately, although "Golden Spatula Battle" has been made into a standalone game, the pieces in it are still unfamiliar to casual players.

Therefore, the largest user group of "Golden Spatula Battle" is still League of Legends players, followed by the users that Tencent has forced to acquire through traffic.

This also explains why only one auto chess game, "Golden Spatula Battle," became popular in the end.

After all, other manufacturers, apart from embedding similar gameplay into their own IPs, find it difficult to use traffic to lower the barrier to entry for their products.

(End of this chapter)