It is no exaggeration to say that "Plants vs. Zombies", as an extremely special tower defense game, or the most awesome tower defense game, became completely popular all over the world in the past few years. I believe this game has been popular in every country. It not only has a PC client version, but also a Flash version, Android version, IOS version, and it is available on almost every imaginable platform. Overall, it can be called It is an extremely successful classic game.
Regardless of whether they are men, women, old or young, regardless of their level of education, they have all been fascinated by this game. Its game elements and gameplay modes are very simple, but it is precisely because of this extreme simplicity that everyone has been fascinated by it. Players can be deeply attracted by this game in the shortest time. It is simply one of the most immersive stand-alone games.
Although smartphones have not really taken off yet, the game "Plants vs. Zombies" is not difficult to play on PC. Players only need a mouse to operate smoothly and easily. The game "Plants vs. Zombies" belongs to the sequence of super mini games, regardless of the game structure, game elements, graphics and technical difficulty.
Moreover, the most appropriate thing is that the overall development difficulty and product elements of this game are very simple, which is much worse than the current "Happy Farm" and not much different from the earliest "Happy Farm".
Think about it carefully, what does the game "Plants vs. Zombies" have? It’s nothing more than dozens of plants, dozens of zombies, several props, several modes and one character.
In fact, such a game may not be as complicated as the early "Happy Farm". After all, "Happy Farm" has multi-stage elements for nearly a hundred kinds of plants, such as seed purchase, sowing, growth and harvesting. In addition, there are many more Planting props assist it, as well as a fruit sales system and a farm development and decoration system.
Just these game elements alone make "Happy Farm" much more cumbersome than "Plants vs. Zombies". What's more, "Happy Farm" is essentially an online social game with friend interaction, which is a category of online games. species, and "Plants vs. Zombies" is a stand-alone game for self-entertainment.
However, Li Mu had to admit that even though "Plants vs. Zombies" is very simple and has little technical content, it is far more popular around the world than "Farm".
The overall development difficulty of "Plants vs. Zombies" is very small. If Li Mu directly provides the complete game structure and style settings, hand it over to a professional and powerful development team, and several artists design it together, the final decision can be made within three to five days. The element design draft of the game was produced, and the overall development of this small game, with a game development team of dozens of people, took less than a month.
In the previous life, the development team of "Plants vs. Zombies" only had four people, and it took three years. However, most of this time was spent on repeated polishing and improvement, and most of the time was spent on thinking and trial and error. Compared with the workload of real development Much smaller below.
It's still the same principle. People who don't know the exit of the maze may not be able to get out in a few hours. Those who know the route can cross the entire maze in three minutes. The difference between a few hours and three minutes is a hundred times!
Dozens of developers may be able to develop such a small game in half a month without taking any detours.
Regarding "Plants vs. Zombies", Li Mu made up his mind to make it the moment he thought about it, so what he is thinking about now is not how to develop it, but how to better integrate it with YY mix together.
There is no doubt that "Happy Farm" is currently the best game integrated with YY. After it has been transformed into a PC game, it can be launched directly from YY with one click, completes account login, and deeply utilizes the entire YY player network. , but the game "Plants vs. Zombies" is not a social game, it is a stand-alone game in itself! How to let it play a social role
Li Mu roughly deduced the product logic in his mind. First of all, he had to make it clear that he could not let "Plants vs. Zombies" become a stand-alone game again. In that case, the pull effect on YY would not be large enough, so it was determined. The first important idea: "Plants vs. Zombies" should be developed into an online version!
After determining that "Plants vs. Zombies" must be developed into an online version, Li Mu began to think about how to make "Plants vs. Zombies" better utilize social connections like "Farm".
If you want to take advantage of social connections, there are just a few ideas: either everyone can play together directly, or everyone can compete with each other.
If they want to play together, player A and player B can guard a house at the same time, plant plants and block zombies from two perspectives at the same time. However, in this way, it becomes a real-time strategy mini-game without giving players A long-term goal bundle.
After thinking about it, Li Mu felt that the most important thing was to let everyone compete with each other, because only comparison can form competition. Once the players in a game have the idea of chasing each other, the player stickiness will naturally continue to increase.
Therefore, Li Mu has determined a basic idea in his mind: "Plants vs. Zombies", like "Farm", should adopt a long upgrade and unlock system to allow players to constantly compare and catch up with their friends, so that they can be immersed in the game for a long time. In the game, this requires strict level restrictions on plant types.
So, Li Mu held it in his office for a long time and basically came up with a game plan for a social version of "Plants vs. Zombies".
The core rule is: every player of "Plants vs. Zombies", after registering, will have his own small villa and a front yard. There are five horizontal passages in the front yard. Zombies will attack the villa from the five horizontal passages. , and the length of each passage is ten blocks, which means that a total of fifty plants of various types can be planted. This is the basis;
At the beginning, players only have three available plants, namely single-headed sunflower, single-headed peashooter and small nut wall;
Players have just entered the game. Just like Happy Farm, they have to plant sunflowers and harvest sunlight. After accumulating enough sunlight, they can plant pea shooters and small nut walls;
Zombie attacks no longer follow a level-breaking system, but a timed activation system. Li Mu’s idea is that players will have the opportunity to start a round of [Zombie Attack and Defense] every ten minutes. After resisting this round of zombie attacks, players can Get a certain amount of experience points and gold coins;
Experience points are the key for players to upgrade. Only when the level is reached, more plants can be unlocked step by step. This is the same as the system of "Happy Farm", and Li Mu will not let them upgrade to level N in one day. They must control the rhythm. Make it harder and harder for them to upgrade and obtain new, more advanced plants and props. Only in this way can they maintain an immersive rhythm;
The purpose of gold coins is to purchase various props. Li Mu believes that there should be as many game props as possible, so as to motivate players to obtain gold coins or even recharge them. For example, various [cards] can be designed, such as those that can increase the rate of fire of aggressive plants. [Frenzy Card], [Enhancement Card] that can improve the attack and defense attributes of plants, [Acceleration Card] that can increase the speed at which sunflowers produce sun, [Slowdown Card] that can slow down the attack speed of zombies, or [Weaken Card] used for BOSS-level zombies card] and so on, you can also put cherry bombs into prop types, rakes, mines, etc., and these are all added to the prop system.
As for why [Zombie Attack and Defense] is set to have a round every ten minutes, the reason is: players want to level up quickly and must stay online for the longest time!
If you can only play in the game for half an hour every day, then you can only start three rounds of [Zombie Attack and Defense] at most. The experience you can get from three rounds of [Zombie Attack and Defense] is very limited. If your friend plays for an hour every day, the experience value will be The acquisition speed is twice as fast as yours. If you want to catch up with him, you can only play the game longer than him. This is the same as the principle of "Happy Farm".
As players continue to upgrade, with sufficient level and gold coins and recharge assistance, players can open up new lands. The five horizontal passages are immutable, but the pattern of ten cells in each passage can be changed. Players use gold coins or By recharging, you can open up more grids, such as upgrading from ten grids per row to eleven grids. This will not only increase the attack distance of zombies, slow down their movement speed, but also plant more plants.
Players will no longer be divided into different bureaus when playing in the game. From the beginning, the player has been managing this area, so he must manage his own territory well. By then, the lifespan of each plant will be limited, such as a Sunflowers have a life span of 24 hours, and pea shooters have a lifespan of 48 hours. Other plants have different life spans. Players must constantly eradicate dead plants and plant new plants to ensure that their defense power is stable and improved, so players need to Constant consumption, constant output, and constant re-consumption will allow them to have the inertia of planting and harvesting in "Happy Farm".
As for how to integrate this game with social networking, Li Mu thought of two options.
The first option: steal!
If players are to have the same fun stealing as stealing vegetables, then based on the core principles, all plants must be set to produce, harvest, and store.
For example, sunflowers produce sun. If the player does not harvest, a considerable part will be stolen by friends; another example is that the pea shooter has a certain number of peas. It produces 10 or 20 peas every once in a while. The player must harvest enough peas. Only with peas can the pea shooter accumulate enough "bullets" to kill zombies. The principles of the ice pea shooter, pea machine gunner, corn thrower, cabbage thrower, and watermelon thrower are all the same. If the player does not plant, If you don’t harvest, there will be no bullets to use, and then the plants alone will not be able to withstand the zombie attack;
Once all the plants need to be produced and harvested, the player can go to a friend's house to steal fruits, steal some sunshine, steal some peas, steal some corn and watermelon. The more bullets you steal, the more you can accept [ Zombie Attack and Defense], obtain more experience points and gold coins, and cycle through this cycle;
In this case, it is natural to develop a warehousing system. For example, each person's granary can only store 300 units. If you want to store more, you must upgrade. What does it take to upgrade? special material! Where do you get the special materials? After successfully resisting [Zombie Attack and Defense Battle], you will be rewarded immediately...
At the same time, we will develop a sunlight collection system to store the collected sunlight. The principle of the upgraded system is the same as that of the crop storage system;
In this way, players' enthusiasm for stealing each other's fruits will be greatly increased, and interactivity will immediately increase.
Moreover, Li Mu believes that friends should not just steal, but also interact in the form of mutual help!
For example, each person can water the dying crops of five friends every day. After watering, he will receive a certain experience reward, and the friend's plants can also gain a certain life extension;
In addition, each player can bind three special friends. When the player cannot hold on at the critical moment of [Zombie Attack and Defense], he can urgently call special friends for help. The special friends can buy a plant at the critical moment. Gifting to the other party can be offensive or defensive, but the donated plants are only valid in this round of [Zombie Attack and Defense]. After the [Zombie Attack and Defense] is over, they will be taken back by the system regardless of success or failure;
The second option: copy!
When each player reaches a certain level, he or she has a plant library that can be purchased. Depending on the level, there are more or less plant libraries. The system can give players the opportunity to enter the dungeon. They can enter the dungeon by themselves or invite friends to join them. When you enter the dungeon mode, you enter the original single-player mode of "Plants vs. Zombies". Regardless of success or failure, the player's original "base" will not be affected;
If the player invites friends to join the dungeon, the greater the number of players, the greater the overall number of zombies in the game. For example: one person can fight five channels, two people can fight ten channels, three people can fight fifteen channels, and the upper limit is four people. There are twenty passages. In this case, players must cooperate closely with each other, because zombies are likely to focus on attacking certain passages, and one person cannot resist them, so everyone must cooperate;
Moreover, since the friends who play dungeons together have different levels, the higher the level, the stronger the weapon strength, and the more friends will want to play dungeons with them, making high-level users become popular among friends!
The advantage of this is that it not only gives high-level players more vanity, but also gives more low-level players more motivation to improve their levels.
The dungeons are designed to become more and more difficult. As long as the random combination of various terrain materials and the logical algorithm of various zombie strength and quantity bonuses are used well, the number of levels can theoretically be infinite.
The more levels there are, the higher the playability for players. At the same time, the more dungeon levels players complete, the more extra rewards they will receive. At the same time, when playing dungeons, everyone can experience the thrill of teamwork. This It is something that ordinary tower defense games, or "Farm", or the original "Plants vs. Zombies" don't have.
As long as these points can be achieved, Li Mu believes that the social game version of "Plants vs. Zombies" will definitely surpass "Farm" and completely become popular all over the world in a short period of time, becoming the most loved social game by people all over the world. ! Moreover, once this game is launched, it will be popular for at least two or three years.
At that time, Li Mu will use special technical means to completely bind "Plants vs. Zombies" to YY. The binding will be a little more conservative and adopt a strategy of not accepting players to register directly, but only accepting YY account logins. This way Forcing players who are not YY players to register a YY number;
If the binding is a little more radical, you can set the startup method of "Plants vs. Zombies" to one-click startup in YY. Only after downloading YY and "Plants vs. Zombies" can you start it in YY with one click. And log in to "Plants vs. Zombies". Otherwise, if you just download "Plants vs. Zombies", you will not be able to log in or log in, and naturally you will not be able to play it.
At present, YY has become popular among the elites in the United States, and I believe it will soon spread to the elites in Japan, South Korea, and Europe. The overseas version of "Farm" has now begun to prepare to promote YY among non-elite groups. Absorb users in advance. On this basis, if you can also bring out the social game version of "Plants vs. Zombies", the combined strength of this whole set of punches will probably make it fly!
Today's two chapters add up to 9K+ words, which is equivalent to three updates. Everyone... let's take a monthly pass!
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