Jia Jia's design idea is similar to the idea of "City Guardian Battle" on the whole, which is basically an optimized version, and the practice of changing the soup without changing the medicine can also be regarded as "City Guardian Battle 2".

Although there are some slight changes on the map, and there are optimizations in terms of classes and combat systems, in Zhong Ming's opinion, this change is still a bit conservative.

At the time of the appearance of "City Guardian War", this kind of gameplay was unique and very new to players, so it was able to achieve such good results; And now, "City Guard War" has been successful, and mobile game manufacturers all over the world are researching and copying the gameplay of "City Guard War", at this time, it may be difficult to achieve such success by launching a version of "City Guard War 2" without changing the soup.

What's more, such a game similar to "City Guard Battle" will impact the status of "City Guard Battle", and its own games collide with each other, which is not interesting.

Since you want to make a new game, you must take a long-term view, and you must be able to comprehensively surpass the gameplay of "City Guardian War" and form a dimensionality reduction blow to all other game manufacturers that make similar gameplay.

Zhong Ming took a hand-drawn tablet from the side and made a simple sketch on it.

Jia Jia looked at the few horizontal and vertical lines drawn by Zhong Ming: "This is a chessboard?" ”

It's really a lot like a chessboard, a chessboard of chess. This is an 8*8 chessboard, a total of 64 grids, Zhong Ming symbolically drew several small figures on the chessboard, there is a small army above and below the chessboard, and the two sides are distinguished by different colors.

"It's called Auto Chess." Zhong Ming said, "As the name suggests, the main gameplay of this game is to put together a lineup, arrange troops, and all battles are carried out automatically by chess pieces. ”

"Hmm......" Jia Jia looked at the sketch Zhong Ming had drawn and nodded.

"The game has some basic concepts. For example, population, money, how chess pieces are drawn, chess pieces are upgraded, and lineup matching ......"

The basic mechanics of the game are not complicated, Zhong Ming briefly explained it to Jia Jia, and Jia Jia quickly understood.

The basic mechanism of auto chess, to put it bluntly, is to maximize the funds in your hands by upgrading the chess game/refreshing the chess pieces/eating interest as much as possible through the limited funds given by the system, cultivate the strongest lineup, and finally stand in the end to become the winner.

From this point of view, auto chess is a bit like eating chicken, all of which are about trying to survive to the end as much as possible. To live to the last place is to eat chicken, and you can also get points for getting the first few places.

Players are ranked and ranked by points, and matched according to their ranking level. A similar ranking mechanism can ensure that the matched players are of a similar level and ensure the game experience, and on the other hand, it can allow players to have a long-term game goal.

"As for the lineup, there are three main aspects to consider. The bonds of the chess pieces, the strength of the chess pieces, and the difficulty of obtaining the chess pieces. Chess pieces can form different lineups, for example, N troops of the same class can have special lineup bonuses at the same time. The chess pieces themselves can release skills, and rare cards have higher attributes and stronger skills. Of course, these rare cards are also more difficult to obtain, and some easily obtainable pieces are easier to craft into three-stars. ”

"At the same time, three dimensions are used to restrict the player's lineup selection, and at the same time, there will be a certain randomness every time the chess pieces are refreshed. After adding the random factor, players need to always consider their lineup and use limited resources to find the optimal solution to win the hand, which is the fun of auto chess. ”

Jia Jia nodded as she listened.

Sure enough, this design scheme has basically nothing to do with "City Guard", which is a completely different game.

Jia Jia subconsciously compared this game to "City Guardian Battle". The combat strategy of Auto Chess is obviously completely different, there are no defense towers, and it is not possible to place the position of troops in battle to form the effect of gathering troops.

In other words, Auto Chess is a bit like some very traditional mobile card game, where the player has no way to intervene in what the lineup looks like after it is set. Players only need to focus on pre-battle strategy, and there is no strategy in battle.

"City Guard Battle" is a game that takes into account both pre-war and in-war strategies, and there is definitely a difference in the game experience.

"It's a bit like chess. It's just that the packaging of the chess pieces has all been changed to game characters. Jia Jia said.

Zhong Ming nodded: "Yes, besides, don't you think it's a bit similar to mahjong?" ”

Jia Jia was stunned for a moment, but when she thought about it, it was true.

Auto chess is really similar to mahjong in some aspects, such as to see luck when playing cards, playing cards to talk about strategy, the real masters are to use good cards to win as much money as possible, get bad cards and lose less money.

In auto chess, the three chess pieces can be upgraded, which is somewhat similar to the pong and kong in mahjong, and the ultimate goal of auto chess is to form a perfect lineup, which is also a bit similar to the pursuit of some high numbers of tricks in mahjong.

In the actual game experience, auto chess gives people a similar feeling to mahjong, so many players who get good cards in vain at the beginning are called "Tianhu Ge", which should also have some connection with mahjong.

As for the playability and fun richness of mahjong, a traditional chess card, it is needless to say. Auto chess has the characteristics of both chess and mahjong, and there is no problem in terms of the richness of the gameplay.

After that, there are the specific chess pieces, each of which has different elements such as basic attributes, skills, and bonds, through which players need to filter out a set of lineups that suit them.

If for novice players, you only need to memorize a few sets of commonly used lineups that are well matched, and then work hard to make them; If you're an expert, you'll also need to pay attention to the lineup of other players or make an improvisation based on the pieces you get.

In short, Auto Chess is a game that is not particularly easy to pick up and difficult to master. Compared with "City Guard Battle", its learning cost is higher, players must first memorize at least a more powerful lineup, and to figure out the most basic gameplay of the game (such as just getting the money and don't rush to keep brushing the chess pieces to spend the money) in order to get the fun of the game, otherwise you can only play confused.

But once players get started, this game brings players far more joy than "City Guard Battle". Moreover, the balance of this game is also much better than that of City Guard.

After a brief explanation of the gameplay, there are some relatively less important designs, such as the game's art style, special effects, and the game's monetization mechanism.

Now that the bracelet game is fully holographic projection, "Auto Chess" must be made into a holographic projection mode, which is a matter of course. On a holographic virtual chessboard, players feel like they're playing chess in the real world. The three-dimensional display effect of the holographic projection mode is much better than that of the flat display.

As for the operation mode of the game, it is mainly done by dragging, clicking and other operations, and it can be done according to the general operation method of most mobile games.

Then there's the game's art style.

Zhong Ming's auto-chess players in his previous life played in the Q style, partly to take into account possible copyright issues, and partly to take care of a wider range of users, such as female players, as much as possible.

But in Zhong Ming's view, the Q style doesn't really match auto chess.

There are many problems with the art style of the Q version, first of all, the Q version causes the chess pieces to be not highly recognizable, and the screen of the mobile game itself is relatively small, so it will be more difficult to distinguish the chess pieces; Secondly, the core player group of "Auto Chess" is male players, even accounting for more than 80% of the game group, and the Q version style does not meet their taste, even if it is a Q version, the head-to-body ratio is kept at about 1:3 is the limit, and the style of Q has some dissuasion effect on the straight men of steel; At the same time, the Q print style means that the style of the entire game has to be adjusted, whether it is combat special effects, dubbing or action, etc., it is inevitable to move closer to the Q version, and the effect is difficult to be particularly outstanding.

Therefore, this time Zhong Ming's "Auto Chess" is basically based on a realistic painting style, as much as possible to strengthen the differences in the appearance of different chess pieces, and make some rare chess pieces as handsome as possible, so that the texture of the whole game is stronger.

Of course, a little bit of detail will also be added to make the whole game not seem so serious. For example, the daily actions of these chess pieces, the lines when they are played/sold, etc., will be made playful, and some female chess pieces in the game are also very good-looking, taking care of the appearance of party players a little.

Then there's the issue of the game's revenue.

The game of "Auto Chess" is not suitable for the routine of "City Guard" that costs money to draw cards, because the fun of "Auto Chess" lies in the lineup of different chess pieces. While giving players all the pieces at once will increase their learning costs, it would be extremely unfair if they were restricted from having access to pieces.

Even if you add a matchmaking mechanism based on the strength of the player lineup, so that all novice players are matched together, then the "castrated" lineup will change, which will directly lead to the novice and veteran playing different games, which is completely inconsistent with the gameplay of Auto Chess.

Therefore, the profit model adopted by Zhong Ming is the Dota 2 jewelry sales model.

Players can get in-game tokens by playing or topping up, and they can get accessories through the lottery of these tokens. These cosmetic items mainly change the appearance of chess pieces, chessboards, or other elements in the game, and have no effect on combat power.

Ornaments can decorate various parts of different chess pieces, and there are different qualities according to the appearance. At the same time, these cosmetics allow in-game trading and have a certain value preservation effect.

As for the way the appearance is displayed, whether it is made of jewelry or skin, there is not much difference.

The advantage of making skin is that it is more controllable, because the skin is designed by a special painter as a whole, there will be no spicy eye matching, and it is also more convenient to make; The advantage of accessories is that they can be matched at will, and players can match unique outfits according to their preferences and needs.

……

Zhong Ming went through all aspects of the game, and then talked about the general lineup.

According to the bonds between the chess pieces, the player group lineup needs to comprehensively consider the bond effect, the strength of the chess pieces, and the difficulty of obtaining them, and there are naturally countless kinds of lineups. But at the end of the day, players will definitely come up with the optimal solutions for several commonly used lineups, which is normal, and novice players are encouraged to memorize these optimal solutions by rote, all they need to do is balance the various lineups and not let the game fall into homogenization.

As for the specific balance, it must be done by Jia Jia, Zhong Ming only needs to give him a list of these commonly used chess pieces.

"Boss, I feel like this game is going to be a long time." Jia Jia suddenly realized a problem.

"Auto Chess" is divided into the front, middle and late stages, even if you compress some game time, forty rounds will take at least thirty-five minutes, if you can really eat chicken or make it to the top three, and the battle in the finals is more intense, the game time may be longer. As a mobile game, this is obviously quite slow-paced.

However, it is not appropriate to forcibly compress the game time, because there are different strategies in the early, middle and late stages of Auto Chess, for example, some players will choose to sell blood in the early stage to save money and hold back the chess pieces in the later stage, which is also a strategic choice. If the game time is forcibly compressed and the pace of the game is accelerated, players may be more inclined to take the best classes in the early stage, resulting in the homogenization of game tactics.

Therefore, Zhong Ming's approach can only be to shorten the battle time of the chess pieces as much as possible, after all, the battles are all automatic battles, and some battles that "slow down the battle time" can be accelerated under the condition that the overall speed of the battle is accelerated by 1.5 times. For example, when the battle has been going on for a while, and the other battles are over, and only the two meatier lineups are still playing, then speed up the playback to let the battle end as soon as possible.

In addition, you can also add a "Ready" button, which you can click when everyone has finished the formation stage to immediately move on to the next round without waiting for the time to run out.

For some players with handicap skills, there may be situations where there will be a lack of time, and the game may start before the lineup is adjusted. In this regard, Zhong Ming added a "time bank" mechanism according to the usual practice of general board and card games.

Each player has a "time bank" that does not start the game when the player sets the time out, but instead enters an extra few seconds of stoppage time, allowing the player to be more prepared. This stoppage time comes from a "time bank" and cannot be used frequently, just as a contingency.

At the same time, if the player completes the operation within the specified time, or presses the prepare button in advance, they can recharge the "time bank", and the more time saved in the front, the more "time bank" can be used in the back, so as to form a dynamic time balancing mechanism. This also encourages players to use the "Ready" button more often and save time in the game.

Of course, Auto Chess is a game that takes time, but that's also part of its fun. What Zhong Ming wants to do is to optimize it as much as possible on the premise of ensuring the fun of the game, so that it can adapt to the rhythm of the player's game.