Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Your next "Soul of Darkness" does not have to be an old man ring.

At the beginning of this year, the release of "Elden Ring" completely put an end to the discussion about whether "Soul Series" is a niche game.

If you want to ask what new types of games have been born in the past decade, Soul Like must be on the list. From the birth of the "Devil's Soul" to the popular "Elden Ring", Miyazaki created a new category of games on his own. Soul Like has appeared frequently in all kinds of games like "meat pigeon", "card" and other labels.

With the increasing number of imitators, the debate on what exactly is "soul flavor" has naturally evolved into a resident activity of various forums. "Dark Soul 2" was routinely expelled from "Soul"; "Demon Soul remake" was too high-definition and affected the tone of the original version; "Elden Ring" 's vast open world diluted the charm of the black soul.

In the strict sense, "soul smell" seems to have become a mocking word. Even if Miyazaki Yingao is invited over, he probably can't tell what the soul smell is.

Since there is an indelible estrangement between fundamentalists and the new generation of players, it would be better to return to the original starting point, restore the form of "dark soul" one-to-one, and thoroughly resolve the debate about the existence of "soul flavor".

Last week, Soul Like released a new work, "the Last Hero of Sikutajaya" (The Last Hero of Nostalgaia), a pixel reproduction of "Soul of Darkness"--

The pixel level in the real sense.

1 "the Last Hero of Sikutagaya" is a mouthful translation, considering that "Sigutagaya" is translated as "nostalgic Land" in the game, let's just call this game nostalgic Hero.

Over The Moon, the developer of nostalgic heroes, is not a fledgling team, having previously completed two plot-driven games with strong narrative. Out of their love for Dark Soul, they plan to build on their previous game development to create a "fun from the heart" game, which is the prototype of nostalgic heroes.

As mentioned earlier, this is a pixel-level reproduction of "the Soul of Darkness". Open the game, the player will enter the soul series of the traditional face pinch link, but we control the protagonist is a thin match man, or a few sketches, but in any case, the player can only play with this posture, whether it is to adjust the skin color or body shape, will not have even the slightest impact on the protagonist, the game humorous temperament from this moment began to shape.

The very explicit (literal) character design will not be able to realize first-hand that the line between salutation and plagiarism is so blurred until it really enters the game.

From the inside to the outside, this work almost completely copies the core experience of the Dark Soul series, from the map design of the box level to the remonstrance of players who appear from time to time on the ground. It is no exaggeration to say that this work is completely a "soul of darkness" in pixel style.

Soul series "But Hole" apart from the construction of the underlying structure of the game, the process of nostalgic heroes is full of classic elements that can make the old players of soul series understand. Looking up at the bright moon of Irusier and the ancient city of Thain, you can find the corresponding scenes in this work. At the same time, nostalgic heroes' restoration of the black soul is not superficial, such as the teaching level of the game will specially place an Archer who takes the initiative to run back, and the AI design of this kind of monster is hard not to recall the dark and narrow northern undead courtyard.

And when players finish a short teaching session, they will come to a scene called "Hero Church". In the middle, a "heart lamp" for rest and arrangement, a conspicuous and deliberate door on the left and right sides, and chairs placed at random in the scene all imply that this is the most acclaimed map of the "Pure body Little Church" in Dark Soul 3.

The statue design in the middle also has the feeling of spreading fire for the senior players in the soul series, the cordial sense of vision in the nostalgic heroes runs through, and there is a smell of "salute" from beginning to end.

In the original "Soul of Darkness", there was a BUG called "999 wooden Arrow brushing Soul", which simply took advantage of loopholes to convert cheap wooden arrows into valuable souls so as to earn a high price difference. Among nostalgic heroes, similar BUG has also been preserved, which is probably not the programmer's mistake, but the deliberate work of the production team.

Of course, if you just copy it mechanically and rudely, the sale of nostalgic heroes can only be regarded as a botched imitation at best, and what really makes players praise this game based on playing stalks is largely due to the countless kinds of colored eggs hidden in the game.

Of course, the colored eggs here do not just refer to the soul series. To borrow a message from the Steam comment area, this work is actually a "number one player" in a sense. The well-known masterpieces produced by the development of the game industry over the past few decades can be found in the game.

Hide the Diablo classic "Cow pass" in the description of the equipment; the inconspicuous mural hanging on the wall is actually the prototype of Link, the protagonist of the Legend of Zelda; the abrupt ballroom scene clearly shows the bee pavilion of final Fantasy 7. If you are a veteran player with a lot of experience in the game, the process of finding eggs may be more fun than the game itself.

Nostalgic hero is such a work with lawyers' letters all over, but "salute" is not all of it. First use gimmicks to focus everyone's attention on this, and then use hard power to make players convincingly play high praise, nostalgic heroes may be the most "soul" soul Like game on the market.

In the Steam comment area of nostalgic heroes, the word "map design" is mentioned many times.

Standing above today's time node, looking back at the "Soul of Darkness" 11 years ago, its shortcomings are already quite obvious. The battle is simple and rough, the difficulty is too high to set the hard core, and the original "Soul of Darkness" has too many deductions. However, all the players who can independently clear the customs will be impressed by the map. Rather, the map is the reason why the "Soul of Darkness" has become a classic.

The most important feature of the "Soul of Darkness" map lies in its three-dimensional design. The early process of the game does not provide transmission function, players can only use their own feet to measure every corner of the world, using a variety of shortcuts to integrate and collude difficult levels, which is the amazing subtlety of map design.

"Soul of Darkness" 3D map model in the follow-up series of works, the original "3D Galactic Devil City" map design is no longer common. Although the single level of "Elden Ring" still retains extremely high design skills, in the context of the open world, each super-large box court has failed to form a connection, losing the romance pursued by many fundamentalists.

However, nostalgic heroes with a high degree of imitation and reference can obviously bear the backbone of the spiritual sequel of the Soul of Darkness.

Like the original "Soul of Darkness", nostalgic heroes have no convenient transmission function, so the pros and cons of map design become the core of the game experience.

In the various scenes of nostalgic heroes, there is always more than one route for players to choose, which can be several paths that lead to different directions, or several open doors.

Nostalgic heroes use a large number of entrance and exit designs to properly extend the game time at the same time, a good grasp of the "RPG players want to go through all the forks" psychology, will turn the corner into one shortcut after another, if you want to review the "Soul of Darkness" from the undead parish to the fire sacrificial site of the shortcut design, this work must be able to meet your needs.

In order to enhance the identification of a single area, nostalgic heroes have rarely created a new mechanism called "recall" in a very classic elevator design. Most of the equipment and weapons picked up by players in the game are unable to play their real strength because they have lost their original memory. Only by visiting the places recorded in the equipment description can they recall the original performance of this equipment.

This can not only make players pay attention to the special scenes in the game, but also well expand the plot in the form of text, as one of the few original content, the introduction of recall mechanism can see the production team's reflection and consideration on the narrative and fragmented information of the soul series.

As for how to properly plan the connectivity of each region, nostalgic heroes also give their own answer: design a scene independent of the overall tone of the game, and take it as the center to bring the whole world together.

Throughout the game process, players will repeatedly visit an empty scene called "NPC Room". There are few monsters here, only a dark atmosphere and long corridors, and players will suddenly find a door to the NPC room at a corner of a level, which leads to different areas through this neutral space independent of the world.

Every time you encounter this kind of exquisite level connection, someone will leave a message that "Great Game Design" the NPC room is obviously a strange existence, but if it is related to the plot of the game, it seems that everything can be followed. Imagine that we are on the vast stage of the game, and the players will shuttle back and forth between the stages. The NPC in the game needs a convenient shortcut to appear in time and place where the players need them. This is the meaning of the NPC room.

The abstract-looking NPC Yes, nostalgic Hero is a Meta game that breaks the fourth wall. The commentary of the game will talk directly to the player, while the producer of the game is responsible for deconstructing the carrier of the game. This is not uncommon in the field of independent games, or the temperament of independent games should be such a maverick.

(3) the biggest motivation for independent game producers to do games is to satisfy their desire for expression. Naturally, the creative motivation of nostalgic heroes has something to do with the author's bad taste.

The impression of the Soul series is often a magnificent epic of Western fantasy style, but nostalgic heroes want to do the opposite, even though it has stripped the game design of "Soul of Darkness" to the end of its underpants. However, it is still necessary to deconstruct the narrative style of "Soul of Darkness" with a playful humor.

According to the answer interviewed by the producer, this work draws lessons from the interpretation form of the masterpiece Stanley's Fables, which puts the player in a binary opposition with the commentary who acts as a passer-by in the game, and the player is not a belated hero. The commentary is not necessarily a babysitter who takes good care of the novice, although the game as a whole still shows a sense of eschatological sadness, but the producer is to try his best to destroy the player's sense of substitution. Let the word "prank" fill the whole process.

The Rainbow Bridge "play", which is out of tune with the surroundings, is the pursuit of nostalgic heroes. In the crucial final part of the game, players will experience a wonderful final BOSS battle. This magnificent final BOSS carries a green water pipe on his back and launches fireballs as a means of attack. If he is injured to a certain extent, he will regain his stature after eating mushrooms. It's impossible to tell just by appearance, but it's a tribute to Nintendo's classic character, Super Malio.

Magma background is also hard not to think of Malio's castle level is probably such a self-deprecating style, nostalgic heroes even if the whole copy of the "Soul of Darkness" no one cares, there is an old saying on the Internet: "seriously, you lose."

Nostalgic Hero is an independent game that highly replicates "Soul of Darkness". Its flow is about 1/3 of that of the latter, and the price is about 1/3. Compared with other similar theme works, nostalgic heroes have a stronger sense of design and a more outstanding degree of restoration, and the "Dark Soul 4" in the mouth of players is by no means empty talk.

Of course, it has countless shortcomings. The map connectivity that this book is proud of seems beautiful, but from God's point of view, the game production team's obsession with map connectivity may be a little extraordinary, and a large number of redundant and meaningless connections destroy the beauty of harmony. redundant content design also makes the reward mechanism of shortcuts boring.

As for the soul series as always bad shortcomings, nostalgic heroes also unreservedly restore all. The accumulation of monsters is like a common occurrence, and the hand-tied battle runs through it. Of course, these shortcomings are to some extent part of the "soul flavor", the so-called "not difficult not to play", for those who pursue the "soul flavor" players, nostalgic heroes can still be a very high-quality substitute meal.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: Okny

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