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

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: Liu Wengyi

"I want to talk about the state between people with Alzheimer's disease and their families, and I also want to show the plight of Alzheimer's disease, the negative things that really exist."

Long Dream is the second independent game of the Wild Monkey Game Studio. In September 2021, we recorded the experience of the studio's founder and only member, Lao Kong, in developing the first game, Bad Boy. At the end of that interview, Lao Kong said he wanted to make a game about Alzheimer's disease. After a year and a half, the "long Dream" arrived as expected.

A trial version of the game was released in September last year and was officially released on April 11 this year. If you have ever played Bad Boy, you can certainly experience the same line between the two games: the horizontal version is easy to understand, the narrative style is simple, and the pixel picture looks simple, but there are a lot of small details full of the flavor of the times. Only this time, the production of the game has matured a lot. As the only art, program and screenwriter, you can find that Lao Kong's pixel painting is becoming more and more handy, and the guidance and performance of the game have also improved a lot.

From "bad boy" to "long dream", Lao Kong's change does not stop there. On the eve of the game release, we contacted Lao Kong and talked to him about the story in the creation of "long Dream".

This article contains many spoilers of "long Dream". Please read it carefully. )

As soon as the phone was connected to Lao Kong, an electric drill began to roar above my head. I was worried that the call would be affected. Lao Kong comforted me and said, "it's okay. When I just got back to Changsha from Shenzhen, I was bored to death after drilling upstairs for two months. During that time, I was writing code in the coffee shop downstairs."

In July 2020, Lao Kong quit his job as a media operator and began to be a "bad boy" in a rental house in Shenzhen. After finishing "Bad Boy" in July 2021, he devoted himself non-stop to the new game "long Dream". At the end of July last year, Lao Kong returned to his hometown of Changsha. In his view, his working status in Changsha is similar to that in Shenzhen, and there is no social interaction at ordinary times, and there is little difference.

"in fact, there is no difference in the state of development, especially 'veteran cadres'." He described his life when he was making games: "get up in the morning for dinner, go downstairs for a cup of coffee, and look at the information in the morning, and the time passes." after lunch, he began to do serious work, typing the code, drawing pixels, looking for Bug, working for a few hours for dinner, cooking a little more after dinner, and going to bed at that time. This is basically how it has been over the past three years. "

Special thanks to the iced American coffee in the cafe. The opportunity for "long Dream" is a movie. A month before the release of Bad Boys, Lao Kong saw a "father trapped in time". The film shows the world in the eyes of Alzheimer's patients through incoherent editing, and he likes it especially after watching it. Jin Min's animated film "Millennium Actress" also impressed him. The protagonist Chiyoko Fujiwara shuttles between reality and movie clips, somewhat similar to the memory disorder and flashback of Alzheimer's disease. He goes from movies to puzzles: is it possible to play a game about Alzheimer's disease in this form?

Another reason for setting the theme of Alzheimer's disease is the personal experience of more than a decade ago. When Lao Kong was in high school, his grandfather also got the disease. In the months before Grandpa died, he had to take on the responsibility of helping to take care of Grandpa. This experience of taking care of the elderly became the basis for him to write the story "long Dream": "because I have these experiences, I have something to say when I write."

In the early days, long Dream set the theme and tone of the story early, but it has not determined the form of the game for a long time. At first, Lao Kong wanted to make a click puzzle game similar to the Rust Lake series, when he made a Demo, in which there was only an old man with Alzheimer's, no other NPC and no plot. He always felt wrong and didn't know how to go on. Change it, and finally change it back to the same linear process as "bad boy".

When the story got stuck, Lao Kong slowly began to add more characters to it. First the wife of the protagonist, then the son and daughter of the protagonist, and finally the grandson. "it was written, and found that the grandson's character was more and more like Wang Han in the Bad Boy, so he simply wrote him as Wang Han."

The world in Lao Han's eyes is in the warm afternoon sun, and the story unfolds slowly with the soft music. Lao Han wound the clock, trimmed the Masson pine on the balcony, walked slowly into the house, but ran into a guy he didn't know. The boy called himself Wang Han and said he was his grandson. But my grandson Mingming is only 13 years old, and the guy in front of him seems to be 30!

Turn off the overhead light, the warm home turn no longer exists in an instant. The cold white light came in from the corridor, and Lao Han's clothes became hospital gowns, and the dark window told the real time-it was late at night. The grandson and daughter he had just met disappeared, and Lao Han bent his back slightly and walked out of the ward. Where is my wife? He needs to find a wife.

The originally warm old house

Press the light switch, the perspective of the cold ward story is constantly changing in Lao Han's memories and Wang Han's observation, through the sense of surprise of the alternation of time and space, it naturally pulls the player into the world of Alzheimer's patients. Memory and reality are mixed together. One second, Lao Han, who was still delivering a letter on the mail road, was pulled back to the ward by his daughter the next. The grandson who was talking to him disappeared without paying attention, and the doctor showed him the pen box without end. But what question did the doctor ask? The loss of short-term memory has shattered the world in Lao Han's eyes.

In the game, each scene change does not seem abrupt. The experience on the postal road, the parents in the mountain village, the memories of the Anti-Japanese War, and even Wang Han's memories of Lao Han, these seemingly unrelated fragments were straightened out by Lao Kong and joined together obediently. Of course, there is a lot of knowledge behind it. Lao Kong told me that there are superficial and deep connections between these stories. From the surface point of view, each time there will be the same clue, which plays a connecting role between two different time and space. This may be an object in the scene, such as the same light switch on the wall and the old mail bag brought by Wang Han, or it may be a similar feeling or scene, such as the leg of gout on a rainy day reminds Lao Han of the injury he suffered in Marpo. The anti-war film shown on TV took him back to the war years.

The deeper common ground is buried in every piece of memories, and it is also the theme of the whole work-looking for seven younger sisters. Just as Chiyoko Fujiwara, the heroine of the Millennium Actress, has been chasing the back of the painter all her life, every memory of Lao Han is on the way to finding his wife, Seven Sister. In most of the content of the game, Lao Kong did not let seven younger sister show up, players can only gradually depict the image of seven younger sister from the letters sent to Lao Han. This may symbolize that Lao Han can no longer remember the appearance of the seventh sister, which brings a kind of deeper regret. These regrets continue to accumulate in a period of memories, until Lao Han finally reached the peak when he forgot the name of his seventh sister. Wang Han's roar at Lao Han shouted out the player's voice to some extent: "Why don't you remember? how could you not remember? Yang Qimei has forgotten, what else do you remember?"

Wang Han's anger looks so powerless at the moment. Lao Han's image stems from the combination of Lao Kong's grandfather and his grandfather: his grandfather used to be a postman in the mountains, and his grandfather participated in the War to resist US aggression and Aid Korea. Grandpa told Kong a lot of stories about the mail road, and he also watched many movies about the country postman, coupled with his cousin's account of his grandfather's experience and consulting the historical materials of the Anti-Japanese War, all of which shaped Wang Han's grandfather Han. Lao Han connected the wire with his own body and repaired the electricity meter for the village. Grandpa's story and Lao Kong's textual research were turned into detailed details, laying a solid and warm tone for the game.

In the comment area of the game, players sigh: it's like having a dream, it's like watching a movie. I have also talked with Lao Kong about similar feelings, and the coherent narrative design brings people a flowing experience. When I asked Lao Kong if he had any tricks, he smiled sheepishly and said, "I don't know." is that a bit of an advantage and a good boy? I don't know what the trick is. Maybe I've seen a lot of movies. "

In the parcel in the movie "the Man and the Dog", there are also links in the game to sort out the parcel in the narrative design, and Lao Kong actually struggled with it. He also thought that if it was just storytelling, would it be less "game"? To this end, he has added a lot of interactive games and deleted them one by one. "in the end, about 30% of the content was deleted." Lao Kong summed up, "the item list on the right can hold up to five props, but in the actual game process, a maximum of four will be used. I don't know if it will be discovered by players."

The puzzle design of the game is very simple. The part of finding things is not difficult, and every puzzle can be solved in the same segment. 'it 's deliberate, 'Mr. Kong said. The process of "subtraction" can make the game flow more compact, and players rarely get stuck. This kind of interaction is not tedious, only draw back the player's attention at the right moment, the excellent play design allows the player to better immerse himself in the plot, and the emotion is slowly driven by Lao Kong along with the story. When players manipulate Han to find a way out between inverted clocks, chaotic scenes and doors, Han's helplessness resonates with players' confusion at a deeper level.

Compared with the constant exploration of the form of the game, the story that Lao Kong wanted to tell was decided from the very beginning. "I want to talk about the state between people with Alzheimer's disease and their families, and I also want to show the suffering of Alzheimer's disease, the negative things that really exist."

Unanswered questions Alzheimer's disease is a high incidence of neurodegenerative disease. According to World Health Organization (WHO), there were more than 55 million people with Alzheimer's disease worldwide in 2019. The disease was mistaken for natural aging or "dementia" and was not officially named until 1906. So far, we have not found a treatment to stop or reverse the course of the disease, and the existing treatment can only temporarily relieve or improve the symptoms.

The early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease are short-term memory loss, which makes it difficult for patients to remember recent events. With the passage of time, the disease gradually aggravates, and patients' understanding of the world will become more and more blurred. A painter once used a self-portrait to record the progression of his Alzheimer's disease: the original painting was not much different from his previous style, and over time his portraits became more abstract until they were unrecognizable. In M é morable, a short film about Alzheimer's disease, this cognitive disability is treated in a more artistic form: the image of the wife in the eyes of the protagonist becomes more abstract until there are only a few sketches of the human figure. Finally, he didn't remember who his wife was, but he still held out his hand and invited his wife to dance.

In forget-me-not, there are only a few short films left in the artist's eyes, which is very romantic, but it also shows another fact that can not be ignored: when the disease reaches the middle stage, the patient will lose the ability to live independently. Not only is it impossible to recognize former loved ones, but loitering, irritability and emotional instability are all common symptoms. In the game, the sunset syndrome on the protagonist Lao Han is also one of the manifestations. About 20% and 45% of the patients will have this situation: every sunset or evening, the patients will be extremely anxious and even hallucinate.

This undoubtedly puts great pressure on the family members of the caregivers. Lao Kong still remembers that his grandfather was particularly "noisy" at that time. He was preparing for the college entrance examination that year, but his grandfather always ran out when he went to bed at night. "it was a breakdown." These things are also arranged by Lao Kong into the game: Wang Han, who is in charge of nursing, takes a nap, and Lao Han on the bed is gone.

Lao Han became more and more confused in the end. In the face of the quarrel between his grandson Wang Han and his daughter Han Kangmei, he could not understand the reason, but he vaguely understood that the cause of the quarrel was himself. At that time, the energetic little soldier, the postman over Qianshan, and the old urchin who shot a slingshot with his grandson can only keep saying "I'm sorry" like a child who did something wrong.

Lao Han's memory is also fading. Besides Lao Han, the elderly and their families in Qianshi Mental Health Center also have all kinds of stories. Some old people always feel that someone is going to take away their property and beat people with crutches in the corridor; some old people always talk about the white gloves issued by the factory, and they don't want to eat if they don't get them. The situation of each family is different, and the only thing they have in common is the tired family.

Lao Zhou's daughter did not come back to see him when she went abroad. The Peng family quarreled again and again over whether to take the old man home. Lao Kong stuffed one slightly heavy story after another into the game, but always with a trace of optimism and tenderness. Exaggeration relieves this sense of gravity with a trace of witty lines and plot. Conversations with each character at different points in time will yield different content, and these stories hidden in the background will continue to make progress as the main line advances.

It is not easy for Xiao Peng, who smokes on the balcony, to perfect so many stories. Lao Han has watched a lot of interviews, news and documentaries about Alzheimer's disease, and his creative inspiration for writing lines often comes from a flash of inspiration. " 80% of the time is distressed, 10% of the time is at a loss, and sometimes when you join a character, you don't know what to tell him to say, and you leave it all the time, until one day a word pops into your head and you think you can put it on a character in a scene. "

The state of having a "long dream" is still different from being a "bad boy". Lao Kong's state of mind has changed somewhat. When I was a "bad boy", the original idea was to practice my hands. "there is no psychological pressure, just add whatever comes to mind." But for the "long dream", he has a plan, but also gradually has higher requirements for himself.

According to the standards of Lao Kong's mind, the current "long dream" has made about 70% to 80% of the expected rate. Art and code all rely on self-study, and in Lao Kong's view, he still has a lot of room for improvement in technology. In the limited development time, many of the imagined art effects have not been realized, which Lao Kong regrets.

"the most important thing is narrative. I have regrets about narration."

The regret that Lao Kong said was a question he raised in the game through the mouth of Wang Han's mother, Han Kangmei. Han Kangmei had an argument with Lao Han because of Lao Han's running around, dropped the lunch box, and one person ran to the corner to sulk. Wang Han ran to her, and the two were chatting. Han Kangmei suddenly asked Wang Han, "the doctor said that Alzheimer's disease is likely to be inherited, in case I am like your grandfather when I am old."... "

As a family member's helplessness and outbreak of Han Kang's beautiful words, Wang Han's uncle interrupted them, and the plot stopped here when the game was released in September last year. Lao Kong never figured out what to do with the plot line, so he left it there. "I didn't come up with the answer to this question at that time. I wanted to do it first. I thought about it while I was doing it. As a result, the game was done, and I still had no clue."

Lao Kong told me, "Wang Han actually heard this question, but I didn't figure out how to let him answer."

This is a more realistic topic than Lao Han's romantic story of looking for seven younger sisters. In reality, most of the post-90s generation, like Wang Han in the game, has reached the age of high incidence of Alzheimer's disease for two generations. Here in Wang Han, there is a generation of parents in the middle, and there are still people holding up when the sky falls. What if the parents fall, too? What if one day I walk into the position of my parents? Han Kangmei said bluntly: "your grandfather is blessed. Your uncle is responsible for the money. I can lend a hand and have the condition to stay in the hospital." She didn't say the rest, and Wang Han knew in her heart.

In Father trapped in time, the stubborn, stubborn and funny Anthony is finally sent to the nursing home by his daughter and cries like a child in the arms of a nurse. In the game, Peng's sister was finally taken home, and Lao Zhou waited for his daughter, whom he had not seen for a long time, but could not recognize her face. Lao Kong said he wanted to give an account to each character, but he didn't know how to end the story of Wang Han and his mother.

"I think it's too hasty to give a random answer, but I don't want to give a high-sounding ending."

Mr. Kong said he wanted to leave the question to the players themselves.

Another reason for Lao Kong's return to Changsha from Shenzhen is his mother. Mother has not been in good health in recent years. She often runs to the hospital and does all kinds of examinations. He always has to accompany her. It is not so convenient to run back and forth between Shenzhen and Changsha, which makes Lao Kong make up his mind to rent a house in Changsha, which is not far from home and can be looked after at any time. I tried to ask what kind of disease it was, but Lao Kong didn't say it in detail. "Oh, heart disease. She always thinks she's sick."

The end of the game may be an alternative answer to "Alzheimer's disease is hereditary": Wang Han did not continue to look for Internet-related jobs and did not promise his uncle to work as a security guard, but decided to learn knowledge to apply for a nursing worker. Is this some kind of response from Wang Han to his mother? Maybe he just weighed in his mind the salary of 8000 a month as a nurse. In any case, one thing is worth affirming: in the process of becoming a caregiver for the elderly, Wang Han will find the answer to this question on his own.

It is easy to find a job, but it is difficult to find a career. I asked Lao Kong, what is the most proud part of the whole game? Lao Kong answered very bluntly-the song at the end of the film.

If the serious plot in the second half of the game suppresses Lao Kong's humorous nature, the ending song with the ending animation is when he releases himself like a wild monkey. With the sound of a lazy Xiangxi dialect in the background music, the seven younger sisters who were missing in each memory were found in the old photos. With some kind of comic strip exaggeration and unique sense of humor, Lao Kong's pixel paintings can outline the joys and sorrows of the characters with just a few pixels. His Lao Han held up his son, daughter and grandson in turn, making the players who were immersed in the sentimental ending laugh and cry like the classic scenes in the Lion King.

"that's what I want to do." After listening to my feelings, Lao Kong has a kind of happiness like success. "to make you sad, but also to tickle you after you are sad. Don't be too serious. I'm afraid of being too serious."

The song at the end of the film uses the Su Orchestra's "Tonghe Tonghe". It is said that there is only one lead singer in the orchestra, who happens to live in the same yard with Lao Kong's brother. This song makes Lao Kong feel very kind. The "No.1 Middle School Bridge" mentioned in the lyrics is downstairs of his house, and he has been walking this way for 30 years. He got in touch with the lead singer through his brother, invited him to dinner and settled the authorization while drinking.

"if 'long Dream' has 10 points, the song will be worth 4 points." He Hey, hey, smile.

Lao Kong said that among the songs of the Su Orchestra, this one is the most gentle. In Hunan Jishou words, "Bao Si'er" in the lyrics means human Han, which matches the name of Wang Han in the game. Like babbling in the ear and chatting about everyday things at home, this song is a little confused, a little homesick, but also with a stubborn impulse-just like every character in Lao Kong's works.

People are like ants.

I don't know what I'm looking for.

It's a little scary to try.

A person is no longer heartless.

I don't want to be talking nonsense at home.

Boss, remember for me.

Donghe told us not to be a nuisance

Boss, remember for me.

Donghe called on us to have fun.

-- "Tonghe"

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