Why should your next Dark Souls be an old man ring?
At the beginning of this year, the release of “The Ring of Eldon” completely ended the discussion about whether the “Soul series” is a niche game.
If you want to ask what new game types have been born in the past ten years, the “Soul Like” game must be on the list. From “Devil’s Soul”, which hit the streets at birth, to “Ayrden’s Circle”, which swept the world, Miyazaki Hidetaka single-handedly created a brand-new game category. Like labels such as “cards”, they frequently appear in various games.
With the increasing number of imitators, the debate on what is “soul smell” has naturally evolved into a resident event in major forums. “Dark Souls 2” was expelled from the “soul membership” on a daily basis; “Devil’s Souls Remake” was too high-definition but affected the tone of the original; the vast open world of “Elden Circle” diluted the charm of Dark Souls…
Strictly speaking, “soul smell” seems to have become a somewhat ridiculed word now. Even if Miyazaki Hidetaka was invited, he probably couldn’t tell what the soul smell in everyone’s mouth was.
Since there is an indelible gap between fundamentalists and the new generation of players, it is better to go back to the original starting point, restore the form of “Dark Souls” one-to-one, and completely resolve the debate over whether there is a “soul smell”.
Last week, Soul Like’s new work “The Last Hero of Nostalgaia” came out, which is a pixel-level remake of “Dark Souls”——
In the true sense
pixel
class.
1
“The Last Hero of Sigutagaya” is a rather awkward translation. Considering that “Sigutagaya” is translated as “Land of Nostalgia” in the game, we simply call this game Nostalgic Heroes.
The developers of Nostalgic Heroes, Over The Moon, aren’t a fledgling new team, having completed two story-driven games with strong narratives before. Out of their love for Dark Souls, they intend to build on their previous game development to create a game that is “fun from the heart”, which is the prototype of the nostalgic hero.
As mentioned earlier, this is a pixel-level replica of “Dark Souls”. When you open the game, players will enter the traditional face-pinching session of the Soul series, but the protagonist we control is a small stickman, or a few simple strokes, but no matter what, players can only play the game in this attitude , whether it is adjusting the skin color or body shape, it will not have even the slightest impact on the protagonist. The humorous and funny temperament of the game begins to take shape from this moment.
Very explicit (literally) character designs
It is not until they really enter the game that players can experience it firsthand that the line between tribute and plagiarism is so blurry.
From the inside to the outside, this work almost completely copies the core experience of the Dark Souls series, from the map design of the Little Garden level to the advice of players who appear and disappear on the ground. It is no exaggeration to say that this work is completely complete. It is a “Dark Soul” in the style of pixel art.
“But Hole” from Soul Series
In addition to the construction of the underlying structure of the game, the process of nostalgic heroes is full of classic elements that can make old players of the Soul series understand. Looking up at the moon’s Ilu Xier and the ancient city of Sain, which are all over the place, you can find the corresponding ones in this work. Scenes. At the same time, the restoration of Black Soul by nostalgic heroes is not superficial. For example, the teaching level of the game will specially place an archer who actively runs back. The AI design of such monsters is hard not to remind people of that dark The small northern undead asylum.
When the player finishes the brief teaching session, they will come to a scene called “Hero Church”. There is a “heart lamp” in the middle for rest and arrangement, a conspicuous and deliberate door on the left and right sides, and the chairs placed randomly in the scene, all of which imply that this is the most famous map in “Dark Souls 3″” Small Church of Purity”.
The design of the statue in the middle also has the feeling of spreading fire
For the senior players of the Soul series, the kindly sense of sight in the nostalgic heroes runs through, and there is a taste of “salutation” from beginning to end.
In the first generation of “Dark Soul”, there was a bug called “999 Wooden Arrows Brushing Souls”, which simply used loopholes to convert cheap wooden arrows into valuable souls to earn a high price difference. Among the nostalgic heroes, similar bugs have also been preserved. This is probably not a momentary mistake by the programmer, but a deliberate action by the production team.
Of course, if it’s just a simple and rude imitation, the nostalgic hero’s appearance can only be regarded as a poor imitation at best. The reason why players are full of praise for this meme-based game is to a large extent. Thanks to the various easter eggs hidden in the game that are too many to count.
Of course, the Easter eggs here refer not only to the Soul series. To borrow a message from the Steam comment area, this game is actually a “number one player” in a sense. The well-known masterpieces that have been developed in the game industry for decades can all be in the game. turn up.
The classic “Cow Pass” of “Diablo” is hidden in the description of the equipment; the inconspicuous mural hanging on the wall is actually the prototype of the “Legend of Zelda” protagonist Link; The Bee House of Fantasy 7… If you are an experienced gamer, the process of finding easter eggs may be more fun than the game itself.
Nostalgic Hero is such a work that is full of lawyers’ letters, but “Tribute” is not all of it. First use gimmicks to focus everyone’s attention on this, and then use hard power to convince players to give praise. Nostalgic Heroes may be the most “soul” soul-like game on the market.
2
In the Steam comments section of Nostalgic Heroes, the term “map design” is mentioned several times.
Looking back at “Dark Soul” 11 years ago from today’s time point, its shortcomings are already quite obvious. The battle is simple and rough, and the difficulty is too high to set a hard core. The original “Dark Soul” has too many deductions. However, any player who can clear the game independently will definitely be impressed by the map of this game. It is better to say that the map is the reason why “Dark Soul” has become a classic.
The biggest feature of the “Dark Souls” map is the ingenious three-dimensional design. The early process of the game does not provide the teleportation function. Players can only measure every corner of the world with their own feet, and use various shortcuts to integrate and collude with different levels of difficulty. This is the amazing and exquisite design of this map. place.
Dark Souls 3D map model
In the subsequent series of works, the “3D Metroidvania”-style map design of the first generation is no longer common. Although the single level of “Ayrden’s Circle” still retains a high level of design skills, in the context of the open world, each super-large garden has failed to form a connection, losing the romance pursued by many fundamentalists.
But the nostalgic heroes who are highly imitated and borrowed can obviously afford the “spiritual sequel to “Dark Souls”.
Like the original Dark Souls, there is no convenient teleportation function in Nostalgic Heroes, so the quality of the map design becomes the core of the game experience.
In each scene of Nostalgic Heroes, there is never more than one tackling route for players to choose, which can be several paths leading in different directions, or several open doors.
The nostalgic hero uses a large number of entrances and exits to properly extend the game time, and at the same time, it has a good grasp of the psychology of “RPG players just have to walk all the fork in the road”, and pieced together the twists and turns of the corners into one after another. Shortcuts, if you want to relive the magical shortcut design from the undead parish to the fire shrine in “Dark Souls”, this work must be able to meet your needs well.
very classic elevator design
In order to strengthen the recognition of a single area, the nostalgic hero has created a new mechanism called “recall”. Most of the equipment and weapons that players pick up in the game cannot exert their true strength because they have lost their original memory. Only by visiting the location recorded in the equipment description can they recall the original performance of this equipment.
This can not only allow players to pay attention to the special scenes in the game, but also expand the plot in the form of text. As one of the few original content, the introduction of the recall mechanism can see the production team’s narrative and fragmentation of the soul series scenes. Reflection and consideration of information.
As for how to properly plan the connectivity of each area, nostalgic heroes also gave their own answer: design a scene independent of the overall tone of the game, and use it as the center to unify the whole world.
Throughout the game process, players will repeatedly visit an empty scene called the “NPC room”. There are almost no monsters here, only a dark atmosphere and long corridors. Players will suddenly find a door leading to the NPC room in a corner of a certain level, and through this neutral space independent of the world, the to various regions.
Every time I encounter this kind of subtle level connection, someone will always leave a message “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 traced. Imagine that we are on the vast stage of the game. Players will shuttle back and forth between the various stages. The NPCs in the game need a convenient shortcut to appear in time and where the player needs them. This is the The meaning of the existence of the NPC room.
abstract looking NPC
Yes, Nostalgic Heroes is a meta game that breaks the fourth wall. The commentary of the game will talk directly to the player, and 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 in other words, the temperament of independent games should be so maverick.
3
The biggest motivation for independent game producers to make games is often to satisfy their own desire for expression. The creative motivation of the nostalgic hero is naturally inseparable from the author’s bad taste.
The impression of the Soul series is often a grand epic in the style of Western fantasy, but the nostalgic hero is to do the opposite, although it has already stripped the game design of “Dark Souls” to the bottom of his pants, but It’s still about deconstructing the narrative style of Dark Souls in a playful and humorous way.
According to the answer of the producer’s interview, this work draws on the commentary form of the famous work “Stanley’s Fable”, so that the player and the commentator who appears in the game as a passer-by are in a binary opposition situation. The player is not a late hero. The commentary is not necessarily a nanny who takes good care of the novice. Although the game as a whole still presents a sense of apocalyptic sadness, the producer will try his best to destroy the player’s sense of substitution and let the word “trick” fill the whole process.
Rainbow Bridge that is out of tune with the surrounding
“Playing” is the pursuit of nostalgic heroes. In the crucial final stage of the game, players will experience a wonderful final BOSS battle. The imposing final BOSS carries a green water pipe behind his back and shoots fireballs as a Attack method, taking a certain amount of damage will reduce the size, and eating mushrooms will restore a strong figure. It’s impossible to judge just by looking at it, but this is indeed a tribute to Nintendo’s classic character Super Mario.
The lava background is also hard not to think of Mario’s castle level
It is probably this self-deprecating style. Even if the nostalgic hero copied “Dark Souls” in its entirety, no one cared and no one cared. There is an old saying on the Internet: “If you are serious, you will lose.”
Nostalgic Heroes is an indie game that is a highly remake of Dark Souls. Compared with other works of the same theme, the nostalgic hero has a stronger sense of design and a more outstanding degree of restoration. The “Dark Souls 4” in the mouths of players is by no means empty talk.
It certainly has countless shortcomings. The map connection that this game is proud of seems very beautiful, but looking at the whole situation from the perspective of God, the game production team’s obsession with map connection may be a bit extraordinary. A large number of redundant and meaningless connections destroy the harmonious beauty, redundant and redundant. The rest of the content design also makes shortcuts, the reward mechanism, boring.
As for the bad shortcomings of the Soul series as always, the nostalgic heroes are also restored without reservation. Pile of monsters are like commonplace, and the battle with hands and feet is also throughout. Of course, these shortcomings are also part of the “soul taste” to some extent. As the so-called “not difficult to play”, for those players who pursue “soul taste”, nostalgic heroes can still be a quite high-quality meal replacement.
This article is reproduced from: https://www.yystv.cn/p/10006
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.