Among today’s young players, 3D animation seems to be becoming a new favorite with great momentum. But if we add the word "horizontal version" in front of this, the attention seems to be lower.
Admittedly, the scarcity of this category in recent years is a key reason. Since about 2016, it has been difficult to see new big hits in the horizontal animation genre. This leads to the fact that when we mention the side-scrolling action genre, what comes to mind are often games from nearly 10 years ago, or independent works in recent years. In the eyes of many people, this category seems to be overshadowed. A layer of "backward" or "niche" filters is not far away from being "retired".
For these reasons, when "Time Hunter 3" was first announced, I always had doubts about it. But soon, the number of pre-orders for this game soared beyond my expectation. The game has approximately over 7 million reservations online. After pre-downloading opened yesterday (June 28), the game quickly ranked TOP 1 on the free list. As of press time, the game also entered the best-selling list. Top four.
Looking back on 2012, when the previous IP "Time Hunter" was launched, it also quickly became a phenomenon-level product. According to online records, the cumulative registered users of "Time Hunter" have exceeded 250 million, and once set a record of 500,000 players online at the same time around the world.
has such a hit predecessor, and the blessing of IP sentiment will certainly be one of the reasons why the game attracts attention, but after all, things are different now. Side-scrolling fighting games were the most popular category back then, but now they have been dormant for a long time. . 10 years later, what is it about "Time Hunters 3" that breaks doubts and still attracts attention in this era?
01 The "original flavor" and "novelty" of "Time Hunter 3"
As a side-scrolling fighting game, "Time Hunter 3" still follows the "original flavor" of the category style in terms of its basic structure. The game focuses on character numerical development, and also focuses on the arcade-style beat-'em-up gameplay in terms of in-game combat experience.
But at the same time, the game has also kept pace with the times in many aspects.
Let’s first look at the combat system level of the game. To put it simply, while the game follows the exciting combat of "Time Hunter", it also adds some hard-core operation experience.
As a side-scrolling fighting game, the thrill of combat is naturally one of the core user experiences of "Time Hunter 3". The performance of the combat pleasure focuses on the design of skill diversity.
First of all, players can arrange four characters in each level, and the characters can be rotated according to combat needs. Characters not in battle can also provide a variety of auxiliary skills for characters on the field, such as gathering monsters, providing shields, etc., enriching players' team arrangements and rotation strategies.
In addition, each character not only has three basic skills and one finishing move, but the operation method of each basic skill is also divided into multiple operation methods such as multi-stage, charging, tracking, long and short press, etc., which enriches the player's combat feel. The combination of basic skills can also initiate the monster's floating state, and then extend the two-stage floating pursuit skill.
In this way, players can have nearly ten combat skill choices including basic attacks at the moment of battle. Many of the skills are also combinable, which allows the game to be more sophisticated in terms of strategy and combat screen performance. It has rich changes and a strong sense of combat pleasure.
In addition, the BOSS in the game has added more regional skills, which will also drive players to move frequently to avoid damage. These have strengthened the operability within the bureau.
At the PVP competitive level, the game has higher operational requirements for players, and is more like a hard-core "fighting" category. Players choose three characters to take turns fighting another player. Moreover, the game's ladder match adopts a fair competition mode, eliminating the influence of character training, weapons, chips and other development factors. It also tests players' understanding of the skills of different characters, as well as their awareness of skill combos, positioning, etc.
Generally speaking, we can see in "Time Hunter 3" a lot of the mobile game logic that current users are accustomed to: Outside of the game, the game focuses on the collection and development of characters, and builds a series of bonus content around the characters.Within the game, the teaming system is used to strengthen the game strategy, while emphasizing positioning and skill types, adding more hard-core operability to the game. In addition to the gameplay,
also has new ideas in the content packaging of the game.
The world view of "Time Hunter 3" is inherited from "Time Hunter", but it is not strongly related. In the game, the time and space rift brings a new energy source to the Adala continent in "Time Hunter". This energy has not only enabled the rapid development of human civilization, but also turned some humans, animals and even machines into monsters called "fusion cores". Players will serve as the commander of the human resistance organization "Time and Space Hunters" and lead the troops to fight against monsters.
In terms of art, at the beginning of the game, a nearly five-minute "3D+2D" animation is used to catch people's attention, allowing players to quickly feel the "hot-blooded battle" atmosphere that the game hopes to convey.
In addition to the opening animation, the game's scenes, characters and monster designs are also very interesting. The characters and monsters adopt a younger art style, and the three-rendering-two processing method gives the picture a strong comic-style texture. Characters and monsters also have a variety of combat and standby actions, which are dynamic, which will also visually enhance players' excitement in combat levels.
02 Category upgrade strategy, how to change the horizontal version of the game
From the product performance, it can be seen that "Time Hunter 3" obviously hopes to attract the attention of new users while attracting the return of old IP users. Therefore, their strategy is to subvert people's inherent impression of this category through quality upgrades. While
insists on horizontal version fighting, they also use a mature system with more refined content packaging to cater to the preferences of today's young users. In this regard, "Time Hunter 3" not only responds to the big ideas, but also captures many small details.
for example their art style.
The character paintings adopt the popular art style
Today's young players are paying more and more attention to the artistic quality of the game. Whether it can bring visual enjoyment is the key point to attract these young players. At the same time, these player groups also show a preference for a more "two-dimensional" style of painting. This is not only limited to the two-dimensional circle, but also expands to more non-two-dimensional games for young groups with the popularity of many phenomenal two-dimensional products. Judging from the results, the changes in the art style of "Time Hunter 3" have indeed won the favor of many new users for the game.
Young players’ demand for content packaging such as stories is also a trend. A good game story coupled with good art can help the game create more topics for discussion. In the current fiercely competitive game market environment, this can also add some confidence to the game's future long-term operations.
And what kind of stories do current players like? "Time Hunter 3" has a sci-fi theme, and the plot incorporates moving twists in addition to killing enemies, which just hits the points that players are keen to discuss at the moment. In addition to
content packaging, "Time Hunter 3"'s measures to improve combat operability also show the team's attention to the current trend of young players.
With the continuous development of mobile platforms, judging from the performance of popular games in the current market, players are increasingly pursuing games with a strong sense of operation, such as MOBA and shooting mobile games. In this case, if the focus is on simple operations, not only will it not be able to maximize the pleasure of a side-scrolling fighting game, but there is also a risk of causing player dissatisfaction.
As can be seen from the above, the category upgrade of "Time Hunter 3" does not just mean "making the game more beautiful", but the result of truly re-investigating the current player needs.
The characteristic that best reflects the idea of "category upgrade" lies in their transformation from 2D to 3D.
Nowadays, 3D has become the trend of most action fighting games, but this trend has not yet spread to the field of horizontal version fighting mobile games. If the horizontal fighting genre can follow this trend, it will obviously allow more new young users to accept this gameplay.
In addition to the sense of fashion, 3D itself will of course also bring more advantages in content packaging capabilities to the game.For example, in "Time Hunter 3", the 3D characters and monsters can more comprehensively display the design of each aspect, and can also perform richer and more vivid action interpretations, so the characters can better release the design charm.
In addition, the base camp "Cang Ju" in the game has also been designed into a 3D metropolis that can be explored from a free perspective. It is not only modern in style, but also increases the fun of players' time outside. These are the content that current players love.
The same is true for the game distribution strategy. "Time Hunter 3" not only calls on old players to "return", but also strengthens the perception of IP among new user groups through youthful content marketing.
Game activity page
For example, on the "Time Hunter 3" theme page at Station B, they used "start again" and "return" as keywords to trigger the feelings of old players for the "Time Hunter" IP, and also arranged " Data Center" and "Concept Original Art" pages display the game's youthful story content and character scene art on a large scale, attracting new users who did not know IP before.
In addition, they also invited well-known UP masters "Sanwu Marblue", "Zuya Naxi" and "litterzy" in the Bilibili music area to jointly produce a new adapted theme song "Awakening Time and Space". After the submission was published, it quickly received nearly 1.2 million plays and 2,000 comments, attracting the attention of a large number of potential users.
03 There can be more surprises in the horizontal version fighting category
Nowadays, although action games have attracted much attention, the horizontal version has become a blind spot for many manufacturers. In fact, the audience of the side-scrolling fighting genre has never diminished. At the end of last year, an UP owner released a video about "Time Hunter", which quickly received 2.75 million views, indicating that there are still many players who are still attached to this IP and this category.
On TapTap, although the number of side-scrolling fighting games has decreased in recent years, last year, this category was still able to produce new products with over one million downloads. From this point of view, the attention of the horizontal action genre has not disappeared, but the subject matter and quality have solidified, causing this category to gradually fail to keep up with market trends and player preferences.
In fact, horizontal fighting is not the only category where such problems occur. Therefore, more and more products are now trying to use the "category upgrade" method to bring some long-dormant categories back to life. The "Time Hunter 3" team did the same, and so far, their strategy has achieved initial results.
If "Time Hunter 3" can achieve more results in the future, then for this product, they will not only make full use of the team's experience accumulated in past products to further widen the gap with their opponents in terms of product quality; at the same time, they will Their strength in content packaging also allows them to attract more young users to pay attention to this category with their themes and styles.
In addition, as a track with fewer opponents, the game team’s insistence on horizontal fighting has also strengthened the perception of this IP in the field. The connection between "Time Hunter" and the gameplay category also allows the influence of IP to penetrate into the user group more vertically.
In the opinion of Mr. Putao, their bold attempt is not only beneficial to the product itself, but also beneficial to the development of the entire category.
Relatively speaking, the cost investment of horizontal fighting itself is obviously less than that of 3D action, but the current performance of "Time Hunter 3" proves that the attention this category can get is not necessarily weaker than that of 3D action. After this product drives players to regain their attention on the category, more teams may use this track to counterattack. Mr. Putao believes that in the future, there will be more surprises in the horizontal fighting category.
