Dongfang Yin Zhi Dongfang Building
Developer: Eastshade Studio
Publisher: Oriental Studios Studio
Release date: February 20 19 13.
Platform: steam
Attribute: Open the world and explore.
The mysterious adventure story seems to make good use of such a beginning. When you wake up from the cabin, the things in front of you are completely strange, not human beings, but "monsters" with monkey faces. They are not curious about you, perhaps because you look the same. Just when you thought the new version of Metamorphosis was about to be staged, the story took a Gulliver-like turn. The ship hit a rock and was about to sink, and then the picture darkened. When you wake up again, you are already lying on the beach of this mysterious island.
There is no reason to delve into it and no explanation. In short, the protagonist came to this dreamy island called "Oriental Yin". When you set foot on this island, you have already received the ultimate task of this trip-to complete four paintings for your mother and take away the wonderful beauty of this island. This is a very simple setup. Frankly speaking, for an adventure-themed game, I even like this setting of showing my cards at the beginning. At first, it activated my expanding curiosity, and I began to dream and fantasize about what these unique scenes were like. I paid attention to the information about them.
There is no doubt that you have understood your role since you received the first task. As a painter, you can leave your favorite beauty on the drawing board. This feature will help you save your first pocket money soon after entering Duling Town. Almost all interesting tasks revolve around the special function of drawing. Someone commissioned you to paint and asked you to paint some buildings at dusk. You find the right place, put an easel on it, adjust the frame range and reflect the scenery on the drawing board. Usually, your sense of accomplishment will come with praise.
Taking painting as the core is to have scenery that can match it. Designers rely on the Oriental Yin Island to provide a fertile land with romantic atmosphere. Strange "people", strange towns and strange stories, vehicles and plants that have never been seen before, they are responsible for providing a steady stream of freshness; A fairy-tale tree, with jungle remains and a rare traveler's camp, always reminds itself of the identity of an explorer. If painting is the core system of the game, then the core decoration in the environment is the blue planet hanging in the sky. When it overlaps with the noon sun, it will present the spectacle of solar eclipse, which indicates the protagonist's yearning for his hometown under the starry sky at night. You can feel that designers want to use as many proven romantic elements as possible, such as grasslands and windmills that appear in front of them after climbing to the highlands, exploring the whole island in a floating hot air balloon, and finding huge caves after jumping down with zip lines. There must be some special scenery that will impress you.
The serious game flow is not smooth sailing, which depends on your determination to integrate into the game. This is a game that needs to be touched with heart, not just a task, but the overall style of the game. You won't be given specific hints in the game. You need to consider what to do next. This is not to say that the guidance system is not good enough, but the result of the designer's deliberate efforts. They put the clue in front of you, and you need to find the answer by yourself. In the idealized adventure game, we had hoped for this form, but its threshold is too high, and it is difficult to be a solution that can kill two birds with one stone. Similar contradictions are also reflected in this game.
During the first two hours, I was suffocated by lack of guidance. The town of Turin is small, but there are not many "useful" places. You don't have that wobbly compass on your head You must look for clues from conversations with NPC and short task logs. As mentioned above, this design requires very high task text. If you want to be interesting, you must stand up to scrutiny, otherwise it is tantamount to drawing an arrow on the ground. You can feel that the developer of this game is interested in exploring the fun of word games, such as giving clues about what kind of house the items are hidden in, rather than directly telling you where the house is; Mentioning that a character appears in a room with lights on means that he will only appear at night. Inferring the truth from clues is a very interesting process, and this vague description is used in almost all tasks. On the premise of rationality, this is indeed a commendable advantage.
The two tasks that impressed me most were hotel theft and night choir. The former staged a mystery play on a closed island in the rainstorm to find suspects from people with ulterior motives. During this period, the unknown world view can be further supplemented through dialogue and documents; The latter is a task that needs to be triggered at night. Walking into a dark forest, looking for a goal by the movement from your ears, groping in the dark, and finally finding a bright surprise, the sense of accomplishment is no less than suddenly understanding an unsolved mystery.
However, the premise of rationality is not that 100% works, and the coin has another side, which means that once your thinking can't keep up with the rhythm, you will immediately fall into the fog. Some tasks with insufficient hints will waste a huge time cost. For example, in the task of finding amulets on the beach, I have seen many people get stuck in this task. In fact, in order to find the amulet, I need to use the elixir, but the players have not been informed of this premise (and the elixir is another reward for the hidden task), so I searched along the beach several times in vain. There are many similar situations, such as the reward order posted in the city, the discovery of poisonous melons and so on. All these require you to check and explore one by one, and lose the fun of deliberation.
There are also some details that make people less happy when performing tasks. The most obvious thing is the process of collecting things. If you want seven sticks, you will want to look for them near the logging yard. However, most sticks just lie casually on the side of the road. If you need some props urgently, then deliberately collecting them becomes an extremely boring process. The setting of freezing to death at night makes people laugh and cry. Without a coat in the early stage, you can't stay outside for 20 seconds and are trapped in a room far away from the hotel, so freezing to death directly (returning to the hotel) is warmer and more convenient than drinking tea and setting up a tent, because there is no punishment for freezing to death; If you choose to stay indoors, then time will not pass, so it is most cost-effective to freeze to death directly. In a game that pursues life experience, this setting is somewhat less particular.
There is no map in the early stage of the game, which is not unreasonable design, because even if you get the map, it will not play much role in completing the task. I say this because the map in this game is a real map, and the real map is just a picture ... It has no high-tech navigation and instant labeling function, but its function is to let you know the whole picture, geographical layout and regional positioning of the East. After you get the map, refer to the landmark buildings. Your general direction can't be wrong, but it won't help the analysis task much.
I described many difficulties encountered in the early stage. In fact, from the flow layout, this game is only divided into two stages in my eyes, one is before entering Nava City, and the other is after entering Nava City. It seems that the main line of the game really started after entering the city, and stood by the abandoned pit several times before entering the city. The reason for this intuitive feeling comes from all kinds of props bought in the market, including coats that are not afraid of cold at night, zip lines that open up new areas, fishing gear and so on. Accepting the manuscript in the gallery is also a node that directly changes the gameplay, which is almost the most important fun in the next step. Meeting the strange demands of the bosses requires you to be familiar with every inch of land in the East, which can also keep you fresh when exploring the unknown. For example, I haven't found the place where I asked to draw a sad face, and until now I am still full of desire to answer.
Strictly speaking, the process of this work is not long, and the task chain of the main plot is simple and straightforward, leaving a lot of space for the branch line and free exploration. The last task-that is, the task of reaching the position of the last painting among the four paintings, will really take a long time if you don't look at the raiders. As mentioned above, it doesn't give you any hints, but tells you that there are several mysterious places on this island, and you need to go through every landscape to find them. When you are lost in the dreamy atmosphere of the East, you don't want to leave so soon. In the open world, there are many landscapes worth exploring, all of which are related to the requirements of the manuscript. You can stay here as long as you are interested.
In the open world, we can see that there are too many things to express, so we always stay in the simple stage. For example, fishing should be a side dish at the moment, but in this work, fishing is only related to one task, which is useless. The operation method is also a one-click flicker, and there is no value of repeated play; The zip line in the jungle swings once and there is no value in trying again, because the transmission efficiency is obviously higher; There are also hot air balloons, and the excitement and freshness of the first ride are quickly diluted by a single route; The speed of a bicycle is not much faster than that of a leg, but the process of getting on and off is repeated every time, so it is too complicated to pick up props at any time and put them away when not in use.
Perhaps the original intention of the game is to create a dream paradise for you, a paradise far away from the noise of the world, and there are bound to be many things divorced from reality and some things related to reality in this pure land. Everyone can experience it personally, but due to resource constraints, every project can't be completed, which should be regarded as a pity.
Even so, the dreams and memories created by the game are still worthy of nostalgia. Especially at the end, you go back to your room. It is no longer empty. The wall is covered with masterpieces made by myself. There are letters from people who have helped you on the desktop. They invite you back to the island. Only then do you realize that during this strange trip, you have unconsciously made many friends and established the connection between reality and the East through painting. There is a quiet chair hidden in the corner of the room. This chair has no function. Only you sit on it and look around, quietly touching these memories. Until you finally had to push the door and leave, you were still a little reluctant and moved. This ending is simply the best as the ending of an adventure game.
Finally, I have to talk about optimization again. If superficial exertion and the lack of guidance system can be summarized from different viewpoints, the difference of optimization is simply an unreasonable short board. There are too many problems about optimization, and these problems have not been completely fixed even half a month after the game was released. When using a higher configuration (I7+GTX 1080+ 16G), the playback process is still not very smooth, and the phenomenon of frame dropping is common, and it is easy to get dizzy after playing for a long time. There are also many burrs on the model, which often appear stuck and teleport when moving. I even met a vicious BUG. At the highest quality resolution of 4K or 2K, 100% got stuck after entering the ruins of Modi. This BUG can be reproduced yesterday. The first time I was stuck, my heart collapsed, because at the same time, another problem was exposed, that is, the archiving mechanism was not humanized enough, and the automatic archiving interval was very long, which forced me to start all over again. It should be said that none of these problems should appear in a finished game.
A9VG experience summary
If you want to use a metaphor to describe this game, it is nothing more than a painting. Oriental Yin is picturesque. Although there are no high-quality canvases and dyes, it only paints landscapes and portraits with emotional infiltration with superb skills. Its unique style is unforgettable. After indulging in the deliberately created atmosphere, you may overlook some flaws in the edges and corners. This work needs a peaceful and soothing heart too much, so it can only be oriented to small fields. If you are really interested in adventure travel, you might as well try it at the right time.
A9VG is the score of oriental wormwood: 7.5/ 10. The specific scores are as follows: