泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
Change of viewpoint makes novelty
Do you know a recent Japanese mobile game Survive! Mola Mola!? In most games, a game character has to survive, which is the most important mission. However, the more a fish dies, the more gets it stronger in the new concept of Survive! Mola Mola!. Nowadays I'm coming into competition with my friends how many times it dies. It's even hard to die after numerous death and rebirth because the character is too strong. My character has died eighty times and I'm now playing the game with my eighty-first sunfish. I'm hard at playing it for the hundredth revival.
Do you Know a recent Korean movie The Deal? Most crime thrillers deal with a story of the main character tracking down a criminal. But the newly-released film talks about revenge for a murderer who has already caught since he frustrated due to limitations of the administration of justice. Unlike most common crime thrillers, there are very little movie scenes where the main character chases a criminal.
Do you know an animated superhero comedy film Megamind? In most animated films, a hero/heroine fights for justice. But Megamind is a supervillain. The film presents a situation after the villain, who accidentally defeated a brave man, took over the world.
I'd like to talk about fresh attempts as mentioned above. Recently, lots of well-made video games have released. But regardless of the quality, it's not easy to discern their differences because they look pretty much similar comparing random screenshots from one and another. A new trial usually can be said special effort to make something new applied a different method with others. Recent new games seem to be repackaged and renamed after combining some games with a good sales performance without any change of view. New challenges of Survive! Mola Mola!, The Deal, and Megamind are fresh and pleasant in that sense.
Of course, the new attempt doesn't bring about good result all the time. We knew there were many fresh games which are not interesting to play; You must have deleted the games just right after you downloaded or you don't even remember at all about the games themselves. Plus there are a lot of games which are not fresh in the least and don't leave a tiny impression behind; In the past two years, it's hard to count how many Wind Runner-style run games and puzzle games like Anypang were have made.
A new trial is always hard to do and painstaking research is necessarily needed. It is not only a mission but also a challenge itself. Therefore, I love to try to do something new and also to see others' new challenges all the time. For that, I support game developers who launch a fresh attempt. At the same time, I give a big hand to developers to Survive! Mola Mola!, The Deal, and Megamind who already have created the new-style contents.
※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.
(http://www.khgames.co.kr)
Translation by Kim Ki-hui
