Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 49 The Spectacular of Miniatures is Simply a Miniature of the Macrocosm
For a game, or more specifically, for a simulation game.

A clear objective and a clear numerical system are fundamental to whether gameplay can exist and whether a game is fun.

For example, in 14, there was a simulation management game called "Exiled". It became a huge hit because, as an independent simulation building game, it sold millions of copies.

The reason why it was able to create the "Exile-like" simulation game subgenre is because Exile strengthened the goal of "survival" in simulation management and linked survival with the in-game resource chain.

If you don't plan well, the residents will starve to death, and the game will be lost.

This is a typical example of enhancing a specific objective in a simulation game and using that enhancement to develop gameplay.

However, Micro Era obviously cannot make survival its core objective.

After all, the establishment of the Micro Era is based on high technology, and the core of the establishment of the Micro Era is that resources are almost unlimited after humans shrink.

In this context, it is clearly inappropriate to force survival as the goal.

However, a game cannot be without a goal. Without a goal, it becomes just a landscape simulator, and players will get bored after playing for a while.

Therefore, the data on "population" became the core of "Micro Era".

Corresponding to and linked to this are the two core gameplay elements: "internal" and "external".

Internally, players need to ensure the comfort of the people and improve their mood.

Otherwise, "negative news" will emerge, such as residents committing suicide due to depression, or refusing to cooperate with publicity efforts, and there may even be public protests and riots.

Externally, players need to establish a "publicity department" to carefully plan each presentation to the Hongren world in order to gain the support of the Hongren government and attract more Hongren to join the Micro Era.

In this system, there will also be a gameplay element that allows players to edit their own "promotional videos".

At this point, no tutorial is needed.

In order to acquire more population, gain the trust of the macro people, and attract them to the micro era, players will naturally block out all negative information about the micro era.

For example, expeditions are actually quite vulnerable to death in the outside world. Also, because nanotechnology is not yet fully mature, personal electronic devices are not plentiful in the micro-era, apart from basic electricity.

For example, although technically shrinking macro-humans does not affect their intelligence and memory, in reality, some micro-humans will experience subtle physiological decline, becoming weak and sickly.

Such negative information would naturally not appear in the advertising.

Instead, it's about taking a bath in red wine, skiing on sugar mountains, and holding a terrace concert on flowers.

A buffet restaurant that can accommodate tens of thousands of people to enjoy food 24 hours a day, a super cinema made entirely of screens, a roller coaster several kilometers long, and personal balloons that can take people flying freely.

These are the elements that will appear in the promotional video.

Players must showcase the beauty of the micro-era, because if there is a failed promotion, the player's micro-era will stagnate.

This will have a very subtle effect at the very end of the story.

That is when the players encounter the last macroman in the final stage of the Micro Era.

Players can also choose what to say.

So, should we speak kindly to the last person, or tell the truth?
This is where players need to make their own decisions, but when making these decisions, players should be able to recall their decisions throughout the game.

I read Chu Chen's copy in one go.

Song Yueying was momentarily at a loss for how to react.

Chu Chen's "Micro Era" game proposal is quite different from "Final Frontline". If you only read the text, it's not that impressive.

Chu Chen seemed to know this as well, so he even drew some drafts for this project, even though these drafts were actually just some line drawings. But Song Yueying was an artist herself, so she was naturally very familiar with these things.

Rather, it is precisely because these documents were drafts that Song Yueying was able to fill in the gaps in her imagination and feel the shock from them.

For example, in the laboratory, the experimental equipment is as huge as a mountain. When the residents of the Micro Era look up, they can occasionally see the huge pupils of the "Macro-Man" researchers that sweep across the sky.

For example, one of the micro-era cities in the game is built directly on a tree.

Players can "cut down timber" to transform trees, and the entire city is cleverly suspended and embedded among the trunk and branches of this "Tree of Life".

The wide main road winds its way up the thickest branches.

For example, during heavy rain, raindrops strike the protective shield like meteorites, creating slow-motion "liquid water splashes" as water sprays.

These scenes, which are commonplace in daily life, are filled with unparalleled visual tension on a microscopic scale.

From "City of Laboratories" to "City of Forests," and then to "City in the Sky"—a floating platform powered by solar energy—"City Underground" is a refuge deep underground, and there's even a "Microscopic City" that has entered a world one billionth the size of the earth.

Each scene has completely different art style and can create its own unique spectacle.

Not to mention, in addition to natural wonders, Chu Chen also set up construction tasks for man-made wonders for each level in the game.

Players need to build these wonders to gain a lot of "happiness" and enough "promotion points" to attract macro people to the world of the micro era.

For example, in the first level, this spectacle is a giant buffet restaurant.

Satisfying appetite is the easiest thing for micro-humans still in the laboratory to demonstrate, and it's also the easiest thing for macro-humans to empathize with.

Even though Chu Chen only drew a very rough sketch of a restaurant that can accommodate tens of thousands of diners at the same time, she could still imagine what the complete sketches would look like just by looking at the picture.

There are many more images like this.

They are almost impossible to exist in regular construction simulation games. After all, if you really put such a thing in the game, even if it is spectacular, players will feel that it is not realistic.

But it fits perfectly in the context of "Micro Era".

Miniature wonders are simply miniaturized versions of macroscopic wonders, and based on this premise, it is indeed possible to create all sorts of things.

Song Yueying closed Chu Chen's notebook.

"Chu Chen..."

"Ok?"

"Your game? Can we make it?"

With such a worldview, such rich layers of detail, and such differences in scale, it would be difficult for 2D to perfectly capture the immersive feeling and the sense of oppression from the macroscopic world.

This definitely needs to be done in 3D.

Moreover, there is a great deal of potential for development here.

Each level is a separate scene, which is certainly very player-friendly, but not necessarily for developers. At this point, Starry Night Games does not seem to have this capability.

Faced with this question, Chu Chen glanced at Song Yueying with considerable surprise, as if wondering what kind of person could ask such a clear question.

"I didn't say I'd do it now. As long as Liu thinks I can make it, that's fine. Let's get the copyright first."

Song Yueying: "..."

(End of this chapter)