"Let's Hunt Monsters" is a commercial F2P mobile game published by our Studio. Although I didn't participate in the development of this project, I also witnessed the whole process from the highlight moment of peak DAU 5 million players when the game was just launched to the gradual loss of users to DAU 0.2 million players.
Now I want to review and analyze this game mainly as a normal player instead of a developer. The whole analysis will be divided into three parts: Overview, Game System Breakdown, Reflection & Summary.
Overview
1. Players' first thoughts will feel that this is a Pokemon Go clone App.
Due to the Chinese government's strict policy, many overseas games cannot enter the Chinese market. Therefore, some Chinese game studios, including Tencent, will choose to copy games that have a good performance internationally and sell them in the Chinese market. "Let's Hunt Monsters" is one of them. As a game lover, I despise this kind of plagiarism. But on the other hand, in terms of game localization, we need to see that this game does have a good job.
I used to ask our game producer, Huangdong, why we used the exact same method as pokemon go to catch pokemon by throwing a poke ball, instead of catching monsters by other more Chinese style methods? He answered: "We tried at least four different methods to catch monsters, like draw magic figures, use Chinese gourd, throw the circle... But these ways all worked out no better than throwing balls after CE (Customer Engagement). I think probably throwing action is indeed the most intuitive action in three-dimensional space. So we finally chose the most reliable solution, which also has been tested work fine in the global market."
2. The core gameplay is an LBS collection game. But we didn't do well in the three aspects of story telling, monster cultivation, Pvp combat.
The game is attractive for outdoor and collection players. Due to the lack of famous IP like pokemon, all the monsters were created by our artists and designers. As a result, monsters in this game usually can't arouse players' strong desire to collect those monsters. Besides, pokemon IP also brings them a complete worldview for P-G. Based on worldview, it's very convenient for the Pokemon Go designer to tell the whole story. Even though our designers tried to add some stories and background in the game, the game still has a low level of immersion for players.
Weak monster cultivation, and lack of Pvp combat, which I think is also an important reason why the game didn't have a good retention rate. Throwing balls and collecting monsters are too simple and boring afterward. Our cultivation rule is too simple for players to spend more time on our App. And lack of Pvp combat can not satisfy players' mentality to beat other players by raising their monsters, which also leads to the loss of users.
3. Good control of user time spent on the game. Nice casual game.
All the activities and daily tasks can be accomplished in one hour. The game has good control of the ratio between time investment and income. Players can get most of their daily income in a short time, and the income will be lower after a long time online.
4. Use AR, blockchain technology to give players a new game experience.
When we first advertised the game, we described this game as "Tencent's first AR game". These words really attracted a lot of players to download our game. AR technology enables players to catch monsters in real scenes, which enables the game to interact with the real world. Although players will never open the AR toggle to catch monsters after several trials, this technology really gave players some freshness.
The game also has a blockchain mini game like CryptoKitties. Lots of people contacted blockchain technology for the first time through this game.
टिप्पणियां