The combat in “Under the Alien Game” is certainly well done, but there are better parts than combat.
Last month, I participated in a trial of the 3D action game “Under the Alien”. The location was in a startup park in the suburbs far away from the city of Guangzhou. Apart from the game developers, the staff of Tencent Rubik’s Cube Studio and us media editors, there was almost no one else. It was very quiet – which also showed the low profile of Rubik’s Cube.
In contrast to this humble and low-key attitude, I was deeply impressed by the game. The entire trial activity was divided into three parts: the planners’ explanation of the gameplay and the experience of the story mode; the battle demonstration and free battle matching between the planners; and the Q&A session.
In each section, I saw some highlights.
The plot interpretation and action elements of “Under the Alien Game” have many highlights
Feel and fighting mechanism
When it comes to an action game, our first focus is always on the “feel”, that is, whether it can allow players to make the character perform continuous, smooth and logical actions through relatively simple operations.
Furthermore, if it is a fighting action game, players will pay special attention to the fighting mechanism – whether it is possible to strengthen the offensive and defensive game through action strikes, such as the well-known “defense counterattack”, or “restraint relationship”, that is, there is mutual restraint between actions, such as throwing techniques, heavy attacks, etc.
So, what are the “feel” and “fighting mechanism” like in the “Under the Alien Game”?
In terms of fighting mechanism, first of all, the core of “Under the Alien Game” can be said to be “breaking moves” – just like the PV with an interview with Bruce Lee as the background, the highest level of martial arts is “soft and agile like water, changing with the opponent’s moves.”
The core of the game is “breaking moves”
The offensive and defensive game of “Under the Alien Game” is composed of a basic triangular cycle restraint relationship.
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There are three main actions for players: normal attack, defense, and skills. When a skill is released, the character will emit light. Blue is called blue light skills, and red is red light skills.
There is an obvious restraint relationship between the three behaviors: skills can interrupt normal attacks, defense can block blue light skills and give a chance to launch a counterattack, and normal attacks contain multiple combos. Each move that hits an enemy in a defensive state will automatically be converted into a throwing skill to break the defense.
“Blue Light Skill” – When the skill is released, a blue light spot will appear on the character.
Red light skills can break ordinary attacks, blue light skills and defenses. They cannot be defended or interrupted, and can only be avoided by stepping and dodging. Attack, defense or injury will add energy bars, and the red light skills (special skills) can be activated when the energy bar is full.
In addition to the stepping step, there is also a forced cancel and forced escape action, which allows players to actively cancel or interrupt their own actions to launch some changes to create unexpected effects.
Similar to the energy bar, there is also a stamina point setting. The character will recover stamina points over time, up to a maximum of 5 points. Dodging and escaping will consume stamina points. When the last stamina point is consumed, there will be a clear red special effect prompt.
Finally, there is a system called “body outside the body”, where players can customize 1 to 3 skills to bring into the game. The skill selection is quite rich, you can bring blue light skills, you can also bring red light skills, and some skills do not cause direct damage, but provide bonuses.
When I was trying the game, I often had the feeling that the designers of “Under the Alien” knew very well how to design the attack and defense game, but their ambition was not only to design a set of smooth attack and defense interactive actions, but also to make it fun enough and to restore the characteristics of the original characters.
The so-called “fun” seems to be a very basic requirement, but in this era when even online game players know how to counter and combo, making players who are deeply immersed in popular action games feel fun is not an easy task. It requires passion for the game itself and innovation in mechanisms.
So when I saw the complex and diverse actions in “Under the Alien Game”, I could imagine how it was expanded little by little from the core triangle restraint: “Not enough, not enough,” such conversations must have echoed in the office, “Let us work overtime to design more moves, and encourage players to use these moves…”
The fighting mechanism of “Under the Alien Game” is rich in depth
If the fighting mechanism determines the lower limit, and “move disassembly” is the absolute core of the gameplay, then move design naturally determines the upper limit of the game.
The design of the moves just corresponds to the “feel”.
Every time a character performs a move in the game, the design corresponds to three modules: “player input”, “action judgment” and “animation playback”. The designers of “Under the Alien Game” attach great importance to each module.
In the “Player Input” section, the development team not only ensures timely feedback of the input, but also breaks down the detailed timeline and adds “tie” and “immortality” – in a fighting scene where “breaking moves” is the main experience, how to determine who makes the first move is very important. So what will be the result when two players perform the same move at the same time?
The answer is that the game has a special scene where two characters collide with each other, and a “evenly matched” prompt appears: the players will be hurt at the same time, and after the fight is over, the moves will be unlocked and the subsequent actions will be interrupted. If the special skill hits both sides in the same frame, it will also trigger an “evenly matched” fight, which means that the special skills can also be tied. In response to this, the development team added the “no lethality during the release of the special skill” setting to ensure that the special skill benefits are higher than other attacks, and to allow the winning side to perform the special skill completely when the special skill is in competition.
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In actual battles, I also saw such a scene: Wang Ye’s health was almost gone, Zhuge Qing threw a fireball, Wang Ye used his special move, the fireball hit Wang Ye, and Wang Ye only had “one drop of blood” left but did not die, and he still used his special move.
Strict judgment makes the battle full of reality
The game’s action judgment is also very strict, and the states of falling, standing up, and floating will affect the hit rate of skills. For example, most special skills cannot “sweep the ground” – if the enemy is still on the ground, there is a high probability that the hit will miss; on the other hand, some skills can specifically knock the fallen character into the air, and then perform a set of attacks.
In terms of animation playback, each move in the game has special effects that do not overshadow the main move – the “guest” is the animation effect that matches the move, and the “main” is the judgment range and duration of the move.
In general, the feel and fighting mechanism of “Under the Alien Game” can show the designer’s intentions. In other words, it is the so-called “author’s nature”, not only wanting to do one thing well, but also wanting to create its own characteristics. The refreshing feeling brought by this characteristic is what attracts me most about “Under the Alien Game”.
Level Design and Viewability
The moves in “Under the Alien Game” are relatively complex and varied, and in the three story PvE levels given in the trial, these moves are unlocked little by little and then taught to the players.
In the first level, I could only use normal attacks, then blue light skills and dodge moves were added; in the second level, I was able to use defense and special skills; in the third level, all the moves were unlocked, and I had to fight a very challenging boss.
On the other hand, in the trial, the PvE levels of “Under the Alien” are divided into two types: Boss Challenge and Story Level. In addition to the system tutorial mentioned above, the story level can be said to dominate the most attractive aesthetic part of the entire game of “Under the Alien”.
Any game has a so-called “aesthetic” style, which is not only the art style, nor is it just the level design. It is independent of the gameplay, and exists in every corner of the game.
“The Game of Aliens” is a work with a unique aesthetic style
At the trial site, almost everyone felt the special temperament of “Under the Alien” to some extent, but few people found a direct way to ask questions to the developers. People continued to ask questions about “tone” and “intention”, and the answers they got were even more vague. In the end, we only know that “Under the Alien” has two core goals: one, to create a fun and beautiful core PvP gameplay; two, to create a rare immersive story experience that is also excellent on mobile terminals.
The story level part corresponds to the second goal. If I were to describe it, I would use “full of the atmosphere of Zen in the market” to summarize it.
This is not only due to the gradually mature technology of the production team from the “Naruto” series to “One Piece: Top Ambition”, but also includes an increasingly rich flow of art tools and an increasingly smooth pipeline process, and also comes from its literary planning and director team.
In just a few plot levels, the game not only uses a lot of film-like grain and light and shadow, but also simply outlines the character’s personality and behavior in a much shorter time than animation. This simplicity adds a touch of “white space” to the urban atmosphere of the original work. This is a visual experience that the IP does not have, unique to the game plot, but also extremely suitable for the IP.
After the trial, my colleagues all started reading the comics of “Under One Person”.
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As a 3D action game developed based on the comic “Under One Person”, “Under One Person Game” chose the idea of ”completely based on the original work, but using its own expression method and perspective to re-arrange the plot” in plot design.
You can see many scenes with great visual effects in the game
This is a great idea. On the one hand, as the director team said, through the transformation of perspective, “Under the Alien” was able to use film techniques to lay out information, provide necessary information, and reinterpret the original work in a dramatized way.
To this end, we can see that the “Under the Alien” game has specially launched a mini program, which organizes the original work in chronological order. Players can search for any character to view the year of his appearance and the events he participated in. As for the trial level, the one selected is the Beijing chapter of 2016, which is a great start.
On the other hand, outside of the performance, the story levels and PvP gameplay of “Under the Alien Game” are separated, and it includes many PvE gameplays. For example, in the levels unlocked by trial play, there is a way to completely change the attack mode by picking up props such as sledgehammers, and there are also PvE battles with larger bosses. These combat experiences are all carried out under the game’s unique fighting mechanism, allowing players to choose some moves.
For example, when Zhuge is clearing a level, he hardly needs to use blue light skills to break the enemy’s defense and normal attacks, because the enemies are all blue light skills and have no normal attacks at all. It is more like playing an ACT game based on QTE; in other Boss levels, the gameplay is transformed into “Soul Like”, and the battles are more centered around dodging.
This also indirectly shows that the overall system of “Under the Alien Game” is perfect, and it can provide a richer experience.
to be continued
Furthermore, the aesthetics of “Under the Alien” are more based on the classical atmosphere extended from Chinese martial arts culture. Although it looks very “modern” – the story takes place in modern times and the characters are all young people, they represent the secular martial arts spirit and classical traditional culture.
This can be seen from the eight unique skills of some characters and the moves of different schools. For them, the development team “started from the beginning of the design, tried to arrange reasonable martial arts style references for each alien in the real world”, and “in the subsequent production, invited professional motion capture actors and martial arts teachers to perform the movements and restore the real martial arts methods”. Finally, use animation storyboards and related performance techniques to enhance the impression of these skills and moves.
It’s easy for you to read the original book because of the game
In a sense, this is “paying for the desire to create”, because in every link of the animation, a large amount of motion capture is used to continuously supplement the material, and then it is corrected manually.
From design to complete action, from early concept design, intermediate keyframes to later animation adjustments, it can be said that each alien is the result of time, energy and financial costs. It is this kind of effort that makes the game independent of the original work and forms a nearly complementary relationship with the original work. One clip that impressed me deeply was that after the trial, the literary planner said that when they communicated with the original author, the author said more than once that “the main storyline of the Beijing chapter is what I thought the Beijing chapter should be like.”
What impressed me even more was that not only the main characters, but also the supporting characters had their own skills, and even these skills were very cool. From the illustrations of the “Under Aliens Game” applet, we can see that there are currently 51 aliens, including their different forms. It can be said that in the future, there will be many characters and plots that can be developed in the game. Therefore, I am not worried about the potential of “Under Aliens Game”. The only thing I am worried about is whether the production capacity of the development team can maintain the current fineness. However, I also believe that this experienced team can operate the game for a long time.
“The Game Under the Alien” has already had a very good start, and it remains to be seen whether it can maintain such excellence in the future.