9 posts tagged with "Chinese game"

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In early September, I got an early hands-on with Manjuu's Blue Star Origin: LüYao "LüJi Test" in Shanghai. After four hours of play, the surprises far outweighed the disappointments. Compared to the April "Hengxu Test," the new build added quite a lot — new characters, new Chibos, and new map content — and the overall experience felt more complete than the previous test.

But what players care about most is the monetization design that Blue Star Origin: LüYao finally revealed this time — clearly defined dual gacha pools for characters and Reiryoku, plus some cosmetics and progression packs for purchase. This standard monetization model is very familiar to everyone, but Manjuu made a decision that won my goodwill: limited characters have a hard pity at 90 pulls, and limited Reiryoku at 80 pulls — no 50/50 losses at all.

A 3D open-world gacha game likely launching this year, being this upfront about the pull cap for getting the character you want, genuinely deserves credit. And looking further at the changes, you'll find Blue Star Origin: LüYao has made plenty of player-friendly trade-offs elsewhere too.

In past gacha games, what did players worry about most during the pulling phase? It was hoarding resources for several versions, going for the character they loved, only to watch, time after time, that animation heralding a gold pull land on a non-limited five-star character.

But in the gacha design of Blue Star Origin: LüYao, I felt a sense of "certainty" that is still rare in the industry.

In this test, limited characters take at most 90 pulls, and the Reiryoku pool at most 80. Even more crucially, the pity counts on the limited character and Reiryoku pools carry over to later banners. For Starfarers just starting out, the game shows plenty of goodwill: the beginner pool guarantees a five-star character within 30 pulls, and once you've made 50 pulls on the standard pool, you can pick any five-star standard character outright. In other words, even pulling only on the standard pool, a new player can secure at least two five-star characters within 80 pulls.

This test opened with 21 characters available, all of decent quality — a very friendly starting experience.

Why do I think no-off-banner design matters so much for a new gacha game? In gacha games, while pulling itself is part of the fun, the overly long distance between liking a character and actually obtaining them directly dampens enthusiasm.

The character art is gorgeous, the animations are beautiful, and the story has won you over — naturally you want to bring her into your team. But once you lose the 50/50, all that excitement and anticipation turns into hesitation: should I keep pulling? For gacha games that treat characters as the core driver, a few losses in a row will cause mid-to-low spenders' motivation to keep playing to drop fast.

Blue Star Origin: LüYao has removed the "loss" problem this time. If your target is the current banner character, you save up to pity and you get her. Your planned pulling budget won't suddenly be derailed by a non-limited character.

This kind of certainty is extremely valuable for a gacha game that relies on characters to attract players. Studying a character's skills, taking her out to explore, slowly learning her story — all of that starts with owning her. Only when the acquisition step involves less frustration can the content afterwards hold on to your anticipation.

A gacha pool that lets us plan our budget in advance and know exactly "how much we need to prepare at most" may be exactly the ideal balance between publishers and players right now. It doesn't promise that everyone can collect every character at low cost, nor does it require calculating the possibility of spending nearly double — it gives players an expectation they can understand and accept. Of course, whether overall progression is expensive still depends on how much free resource each version provides and how much improvement standard-pool characters and Reiryoku offer. Long-term pulling pressure will only be revealed by the post-launch versions.

But I hope that by 2026, high-quality gacha games will consider options like this in their monetization more often. Open-world updates, characters, and story all cost money — of course publishers need to earn. And all players want is a predictable investment they can calculate, on top of a version they're satisfied with.

Making people willing to pay because they love a character, while giving them confidence that they'll actually take that character home — this balance is worth more products trying.

Having covered the most practical part — the "pulling" — let's return to the game itself. The content of Blue Star Origin: LüYao has always been showing players exactly how anime, open worlds, and creature-collecting can be more fun together.

On creature-collecting: the "LüJi Test" features over 200 Chibo species, roughly 70 more than the previous "Hengxu Test." They can fight alongside players, join in exploration, and work around your homestead. These different uses give players reasons to keep hunting for new Chibos — there's always somewhere a collected little companion can be put to use.

This test also introduced "Starshine" Chibos. According to official info, each Chibo species has more than just one or two Starshine variants; they have special changes in appearance and material, and the vast majority of Chibos have corresponding Starshine variants. For players who love collecting, this kind of personalization is very easy to fall for.

When a player encounters a Chibo already in their encyclopedia but notices its appearance is different, they'll still want to catch another one. This kind of partiality is part of the fun of creature-collecting games in the first place. When the game is willing to add more visual variety, players get one more reason to keep an eye on their surroundings while exploring, and can pick companions according to their own taste.

The capture process was also reworked: in this test, "Starbond" no longer stops time — while capturing, players can keep moving and jumping, and wild Chibos will attack. You still have to deal with what's in front of you during the capture; actions and reactions all happen within the same battle, making the whole process feel more seamless and immersive.

There's also an easily overlooked supporting change: the "Chibo Hut" filtering and interface have been adjusted, supporting more convenient browsing and manual sorting. After all, once you've collected hundreds of Chibos, being able to find the one you want is equally part of the collecting experience. The more stuff you have, the less you can skimp on these basic functions.

I still remember during the last test, friends praising the game's art and adorable Chibos while complaining about the tedious systems. So when I set foot on this land again, my biggest question was: "There's more content now — will my daily routine be more tiring?"

The answer is not only no — it's even more relaxed.

Open-world traversal has become much smoother: the addition of wall-jumping, plus the ability to summon your mount directly in mid-air, made the connection between movement and traversal far smoother, saying goodbye to that rigid "jump — land — mount up" rhythm. Chibos essential for newcomers, like the Sprout Chick and Silly Chick, can also be used for short-distance flight. Put together, these changes make using terrain and chaining mounts much more flexible.

At the same time, the game bravely did some subtraction. Character satiety is gone, and so is durability for exploration and gathering tools. This means your exploration won't be interrupted by chores like "finding food" or "repairing tools." Streamlined progression materials and an auto-clear feature for dungeons are also quality-of-life improvements certain players have been asking for.

I quite agree with these trade-offs. Life details in an open world are nice, but when players want to explore, there's no need to be too realistic about preparation. Feeding and tool wear eat up a bit of time here and there, and traversal slows to a crawl — it all adds up until you feel like you've been busy half the day without playing what you actually wanted to play.

Smoother exploration, more fun creature-collecting, blended with the characters' own journey — the world becomes all the more worth lingering in. It gives us more reasons to collect, fewer interruptions along the way, and finally makes the three core pillars — anime, open world, and creature-collecting — work together organically. That is what "no off-course drift" means in terms of experience.

The most core, most emotional part of Blue Star Origin: LüYao is that it retains the essence of being an anime-style game.

In this test, the five-star character "Tushan Xiaoyu" got her exclusive "Flower Festival Bond Promise" event. Players accompany her in training for the fox spirit examination, arranging her daily practice and outings; after three rounds of training, the run branches into four different endings based on the resulting stats. For a character-driven anime game, designing a multi-ending story event around a limited character is both necessary and refreshingly inventive.

Also, in this test, Blue Star Origin: LüYao added customizable idle screens. Character animations, Reiryoku, and story CGs can all be set as backgrounds, with up to five rotating. Like a particular performance? Let it stick around a while longer. Fond of a certain character? Keep her somewhere you'll see often. Seeing these conventions of 2D games carried over into a 3D game, I always feel this is exactly the kind of clever touch Manjuu should be making — and is good at making.

Manjuu made Azur Lane; it has been doing "making great characters" for almost a decade. What makes me happy about Blue Star Origin: LüYao is that it's willing to keep the bond between characters and the player's Starfarer as a continuing highlight. After drawing players in with the art, there's story and gameplay that meet their expectations, letting them feel the core that makes Blue Star Origin: LüYao different from other open-world games.

Rather than empty talk about market trends and competitor cannibalization, after playing it, as a pure player, I'm left with one simple wish: keep this current feeling going. Make the characters even more lovable, make the creature-collecting adventure even more fun, and keep the monetization design considerate of players' expectations. Let the publisher operate for the long haul, so that anime fans like us — obsessed with isekai settings and anime-style art since childhood — can keep having new things to play.

The updates and adjustments in this test seem generous yet modest, but combined, they're already enough to convince me that Blue Star Origin: LüYao is genuinely good. And I hope that when we encounter similar designs in the future, they'll become more and more the norm. When we talk about a gacha game, we can talk less about what we once had to endure, and more about what we got to play today.

This article is republished with permission from Qingbao Ji.

Written by: Caibao

Layout: Luoya

"The distance between us seems to be exactly 1000 light-years"

"So I'm seeing the Earth as it was 1000 years ago"

"This means"

"The light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach you"

"And then, carrying your image"

"It traveled alone through the universe for 1000 years, finally captured by my eyes"

"I might be able to see the current you right now"

"Therefore"

"We might have known each other long ago"

"When we both look up at the starry sky"

"I might be gazing into your eyes"

This declaration, filled with the grand cosmic romance of a STEM mind, comes from a girl. She is alone, in a distant corner of the universe 1000 light-years away from you, and will die on an alien planet in two minutes, her oxygen depleted.

You can't do anything. You're just an ordinary person who wanted to play some games after work, only to find that Steam inexplicably connected to her ship's central control system. You met through a cosmic miracle and casually started chatting. There's no epic saga, no opera spanning the galaxy. You just happened to chat for a few days about trivial things, that's all.

You can't save her. Her companions are all dead, the ship is shattered, and the atmospheric sulfur dioxide concentration is 1.3%. She has been abandoned by the corporation; no search and rescue team will mobilize for her. Most importantly—

You live in 2024, while she, 1000 light-years away, lives in 3024.

But she isn't lonely. She even laughed and sent you a selfie. Because you're still with her.

Her name is Aliya. She asks you to turn off the heart rate monitor display on your computer. Because she doesn't want you to see the moment her life hits zero.

You respect her last wish.

She sends no more messages.

A few minutes later, holding onto a sliver of hope, you open the HRM again, wishing for a miracle rescue—

But reality is merciless.

You refuse to accept this ending. In the chat window, where no reply will come, you shout emptily, over and over.

Then you realize that millions of players are just like you... refusing to accept this ending:

But at the same time, another group of players have moved on, repeating in the comments the final cosmic romance Aliya gave them—the very STEM-heavy confession at the beginning:

……

Yes, this is the state of Bifang De Ta - Aliya — a text adventure game that costs only 9 yuan, small in size and simple in design, yet it carries the heavy, surging emotions of countless players, turning them into obsessed repeaters immersed in sorrow.

Of course, the opening story is just one of the five endings. Developed by TDGame and published by Anotherindie, Bifang De Ta - Aliya is a "Lifeline-like" multi-ending text adventure game.

"Lifeline-like" refers to a subgenre of text adventure games. As the name suggests, like the famous Lifeline series, it simulates a "real-time conversation between the player and the character" to drive the story, with the ultimate goal of helping the protagonist "escape". This type of game emphasizes "realism" — it syncs with real time, the player plays as themselves, and each reply sometimes takes minutes or even hours. The last time this genre went viral in China was with the well-known Yiciyuan Tongxun.

The story of Bifang De Ta - Aliya is more straightforward — as mentioned at the beginning, after opening the game, you inexplicably connect to the main control computer of a small spaceship adrift in the universe 1000 light-years away. The ship seems to have just experienced a disaster. It's a mess. In the chaos, someone frantically asks "you" for the correct medical measures to save a companion's life. The other party mistakenly thinks you are still the ship's main AI, COSMOS, unaware that COSMOS has been replaced by you. So, your next sentence will determine whether a life lives or dies.

After handling the matter, the other party slowly realizes that you are not COSMOS, but a living human from somewhere unknown. Her ship is on the verge of destruction, and she can only beg you for help. Through conversation, you find you're talking past each other — you are actually separated by a time difference of 1000 years. She is Aliya from 3024, and you are an ordinary player from 2024. You have no idea how you suddenly connected across time and space. But no matter what, you are Aliya's only lifeline. Next, you need to help Aliya repair the damaged ship, check the surrounding radio signals, monitor the ship's energy and oxygen levels, and step by step seek a glimmer of hope—

At the same time, chat with Aliya, get to know each other, and also exchange the chasm in human civilization shaped by a thousand years of time difference—

That's the story of Bifang De Ta - Aliya.

Actually, from the description above, you might have noticed that even compared to other excellent "Lifeline-like" games, this one has many novel, imaginative standout designs. Despite the touching script, it's those creative designs that truly give the game its soul. Without these mechanical designs, even the best story would lack expressive power.

Because the game is small-scale and belongs to a niche genre, the development team Tongdian Game Studio is also relatively strapped for cash. In fact, Bifang De Ta - Aliya didn't have much promotion — and the fact that it achieved "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews is largely due to word of mouth — just like the legendary ASTLIBRA Revision back in the day. This is a dream that many game developers can only hope for.

Saying the development team is strapped for cash is not an exaggeration — this team of college students really had to rely on taking on outsourcing projects until they were utterly exhausted, just to scrape together enough money to fund Bifang De Ta - Aliya. Truly impressive.

This time, Qingbao Ji was fortunate to contact the development team of Bifang De Ta - Aliya — the game studio [Tongdian Game Studio] from Chengdu University of Information Technology — and had a chat with game producer Wuli and team operations manager Steve. How did these young people, who worked themselves to the bone on outsourcing to fund their game with passion, come up with a bunch of creative "game mechanics" within the framework of a "text adventure game"? And how did they produce their first commercial game?

1. "The Story Moved Players So Much They Spammed, Passersby Thought We Bought Paid Posters"​

"Not long after the game was released, many players were repeating lines in the comments, flooding the same sentence. For example, 'I don't accept this ending.' It was so repetitive that many Zhihu users accused us of buying paid posters..."

Talking about the player spamming phenomenon mentioned at the beginning of the article, producer Wuli said helplessly.

Whether on Bilibili, Zhihu, or the Steam review section, you can see a large number of comments repeating two golden lines from the game. One is "I don't accept this ending," and the other is the romantic confession spanning 1000 light-years.

"But actually, when the reviews were still few right after release, seeing player feedback, I felt like half of my life's dream was already fulfilled. When I first wrote that line and tested it, the team's operations manager, Steve, said that those lines would definitely become golden phrases passed around by word of mouth in the player community. And he was right." Wuli said.

Especially in the complex gaming environment of 2024, a "viral quote" might indeed be more effective than many promotional methods. As it turned out, they succeeded.

And Tongdian Game Studio really didn't have the money to buy any paid posters. This comment frenzy was purely the result of word of mouth. When making this game, Tongdian Game Studio had to bear a fixed monthly expense of 10,000 to 20,000 yuan, and the six full-time members of the studio came from families with limited financial means. They could only scrape together game funding by desperately taking on outsourcing projects. If they didn't, they would starve. It was that extreme.

2. The Golden Rule of Realism​

Wuli believes that the reason the game's "story" resonated so strongly with players is mainly due to a combination of multiple factors.

First, Tongdian Game Studio is not actually a game development team that centers on "script". Wuli, who served as the writer this time, is primarily a systems and balancing designer. The highly praised story was actually born from a few "ideas".

Although this is a "text adventure game", the game's creation did not start from the script — they usually first determine "what experience they want players to have", then "what mechanism or interaction to use to achieve that experience", and finally "what script to write to support that mechanism". For a "story-driven" game, this might seem a bit "backwards", but in reality, this approach reflects a scriptwriting philosophy commonly used in commercial games today.

This point is clearly shown in their project initiation process written on Zhihu:

For example, to make players feel the realism of chatting with a girl in real time, they chose the "Lifeline-like" game format; to make players willing to help Aliya / feel the weight of her death, they designed Aliya to be cute and likeable; to make players feel that Aliya is a human with emotions and life, they created the "heart rate monitor" mechanism, dialog speed variations, and the system for missed conversations; to make players feel "the pressure and responsibility of carrying another's life", they visualized the "oxygen level" and introduced several mechanisms that could lead to Aliya's death. Of course, these cause-and-effect relationships are not strictly one-to-one but form a logical network that intersects — all design serves the purpose of "realism".

During early version testing, they received player feedback that the female protagonist's personality was too rigid, a bit troublesome, a bit like "Taylor (the male protagonist of the Lifeline series) without the sarcasm", bossing the player around and being annoying. Players didn't care about her, and of course, didn't want to help her or care about her survival. This made Wuli and the team realize that if the female protagonist wasn't likeable enough, it would be devastating to the desired effect of all subsequent gameplay.

So how to make her more likeable? At that time, he watched Shunji Iwai's The Case of Hana & Alice, and on a whim, decided to change Aliya to be more "childish", or rather more "lively, cute, and mischievous". In fact, many story segments were not designed to advance the plot but simply to create a chat experience between the player and Aliya.

Although Aliya now seems less reliable in terms of space exploration expertise, Wuli felt that this adjustment was the right choice to make players fall in love with the character.

It's not enough for the female lead to be just likeable; she also needs to be sufficiently "real".

Back then, Wuli and the team established a rule (they called it the Golden Rule): whether for system development, writing, or mechanic design, they must follow the principle of "everything based on real situations". For example, colloquial speech, verbal tics, mental overload, emergency cursing, humming in the shower, etc. — all these had to be kept intact in the game. They gave an example on Zhihu: if you ignore Aliya for too long, she can actually die from lack of oxygen (like in Metal Gear Solid).

To make the language colloquial, Wuli intentionally kept some grammatical errors in the game text, which caused a minor issue. For example, Aliya has a line:

"我听着在。"

It looks a bit confusing, but it means "I'm listening." Wuli is from Hubei. According to the dialect habits of Hubei, this sentence is written with this "inverted" structure. So he didn't realize that this line had regional characteristics. Some players didn't understand and reported it as a typo, which is when he became aware of the issue — but he still kept it.

"Maybe Aliya's ancestral home is also Hubei."

Wuli said that although many players reported the game was short and many options seemed meaningless, the current text actually amounts to 50,000 words. He devoted a large amount of text to variations in different options and Aliya's feedback to different player choices. For example, if the player doesn't speak and changes the topic, or if Aliya waits too long for a reply and goes to do something else, there are different variations. These minute branches require a huge amount of text, and he believes it is precisely these complex and diverse branches that make the conversations with Aliya more natural and realistic.

So, after shaping a realistic and cute Aliya—

They mercilessly handed the remote control that kills Aliya to the player.

After the player has had some degree of soulful communication with Aliya, the story opens up a new gameplay mechanic that truly carries the risk of death: controlling the engine.

Specifically, if the player intercepts a radio signal, it means there might be living people nearby, so they need to fly the ship to the signal coordinates to seek rescue. But the ship is already half-damaged, and control of COSMOS is in the player's hands, so the "engine switch" can only be operated by the player.

The operation method, simply put, is a countdown.

Although a countdown sounds simple, after a series of realistic interactions in the early game, most players have come to treat Aliya as a real girl. In this situation, the game tells you that her life or death is now in your hands. If you get the timing wrong even slightly, she will die because of your mistake, and die miserably, alone in the empty universe.

And precisely at this moment, to reassure Aliya, the player says things with incredible confidence.

You act casual, but the player is already sweating profusely, thinking "If I make even one mistake, she's dead." A countdown that would normally be simple becomes terrifying, making you doubt yourself. This design appears twice in the game: once early in the game and once near the end. The first is 8 seconds, the second is 15 seconds. Especially during the second critical engine burn, those 15 seconds of silence feel like an eternity. Who would have thought that a simple "countdown" mechanic, enhanced by the game's realism, could become such a nerve-wracking operation that increases the player's psychological pressure?

That's the effect Wuli was aiming for.

And if the player does cause Aliya's death due to a countdown error, you watch her heart rate drop to zero. The game doesn't offer any "restart" function. Dead is dead. Everything must start over from the beginning, no negotiations. Since progressing the game's conversation requires a fair amount of real-time waiting, replaying up to the death point really takes a long time. So for a text adventure game, such a death penalty is extremely severe, almost going against game design principles.

But Wuli ultimately decided to do it this way.

It's not that Wuli deliberately wanted to torment the player. In fact, the countdown window is designed to be quite generous. For the 8-second one, it's considered successful as long as it's within the 6-10 second range; for the 15-second one, success is achieved within 10-20 seconds, and Aliya will even urge you to close the engine at 17 seconds.

Wuli also thought for a long time about whether to give the player a checkpoint to retry if they failed. He said that many AAA games have "bridge collapse" sequences where even if the player is slow, the collapse speed slows down accordingly. But if the player still dies, they just go back to a checkpoint a few seconds earlier. For some exciting AAA games, that might not be a big deal — but for Bifang De Ta - Aliya, it would severely damage the immersion.

After all, Bifang De Ta - Aliya emphasizes "realism" from start to finish. If a "restart" design were suddenly introduced, both the weight of life and the emotional immersion would be destroyed. So in the end, he kept the severe death penalty, making the time window generous enough for the player to succeed, otherwise they die.

Wuli believes, "Because by this point in the game, players already have the tension of 'I must do well, or she will die' and care deeply about Aliya's life, this approach is consistent with the player's flow state. If we relaxed the penalty here, it might actually ruin the hard-earned emotional buildup."

This also shows that the game's script originated from ideas. First came the desire to "let players experience the tension of accidentally causing the female lead's death", then the countdown mechanic was born, and finally the ship navigation story to find the coordinates was written. But even this countdown mechanic went through several iterations, from "controlling the hatch" to "controlling the engine"...

Tongdian Game Studio, as an indie game development team, is indeed rare in its meticulous attention to these extremely detailed experiences.

3. Scientific Romance Across the Galaxy​

Apart from the design of gameplay and mechanics, the game's script also contains many humanistic romantic sentiments and outstanding sci-fi highlights, which are also reflected in their iterative thinking about the script.

For example, the ending scene at the beginning of the article, the confession across 1000 light-years, was not originally there. In the first and second versions of the game, Wuli did not include this scene. After playing through, they always felt something was missing, that the ending needed a climactic meeting scene between the player and Aliya. So the third version revolved around the core idea of "how to meet".

"If we used some method to make the player and Aliya physically meet, it would be too cliché and would affect immersion, since it's a meta-game set in different worlds. That would directly contradict the lore. So we thought about many sci-fi approaches, such as: the player somehow lives for a thousand years; or the player finds a way to talk to their future self a thousand years later; or the player passes down the belief 'remember to rescue a girl named Aliya in 3024' through generations of descendants; or suddenly the signal improves, allowing them to send frame animations to briefly meet Aliya... but none of them felt particularly good." Wuli said.

Finally, they decided to use the romantic description of light-years and time differences to conclude this rather "stream-of-consciousness" meeting, adding some cosmic-level romance and a STEM mind's imagination — the scene of seeing each other across the galaxy vividly came to life, and it was unanimously approved.

In fact, in the original setting, the distance between the two was not 1000 light-years either. The number 1000 was changed at the last minute to fit this meeting scene.

Wuli's mind is filled with this kind of cosmic-level romantic interpretation, including thoughts about the future form of human civilization. In the game, a thousand years later, human civilization is ruled by corporations. Planet explorers, who appear glamorous and admired, are actually slaves in the corporations' resource competition. The world of a thousand years later has lost the spark of imagination. Human rights have become the slaves of money. The spirit of star exploration has been tainted by profit. The gap between rich and poor maintains the surface-level cosmic cyberpunk aesthetic. Clones, Laika, Doll... various terms cover up the cannibalistic essence.

It is precisely because, in such a hopeless world, seeking some romance and beauty rooted in the human heart, and digging up some spirit of exploration long scorned by the secular world, becomes a thread of light at the bottom of the gravity well of desire. A thousand years ago, humanity's imagination of the galaxy, the fearless spirit of an explorer father against the times, and the cosmic adventure bought with the only desire in her short life — all are condensed into the brief conversation across 1000 light-years with you.

Before her death, Aliya can chat with you about the environment of Kelong 2-C, use her remaining oxygen to talk excitedly about the textures of new species never seen before, and, under the sunset created by the star, ramble on about how the afterglow of a red dwarf shapes golden snow-capped mountains.

In the white noise signal that no one will ever answer, she laughs, saying she dances in the afterglow of the Big Bang.

These chaotic and romantic elements across the cosmos, Wuli said, came from mixed inspirations. In fact, another ending of the game introduces a prop that explains "why the player and Aliya can communicate without delay across 1000 light-years". It's called the "Time Mapping Synchronizer", which can synchronize time differences and spatial differences (and also allows players in multiple playthroughs to skip waiting time for speedruns). Under the influence of this prop, Aliya sees a phone booth that can dial into the past — and the inspiration for this phone booth came from the TARDIS in Doctor Who.

And the ship's main control system, COSMOS, which the player occupies, was inspired by the dog named Cosmo in Guardians of the Galaxy, whose prototype was the first dog to go into space — Laika, the Soviet dog from 1957.

And the word "Laika" in this game becomes a derogatory term for those "space explorers". In this era where the spirit of exploration is eroded by corporate interests, "the dog that gave its life for humanity's space exploration" is indeed the most ironic nickname.

Similarly, the game also features a concept related to the core mystery of the plot — "Doll". Dolls are clones implanted with memories, unaware of their own identity, without human rights, existing only as company assets, consumables for exploring the boundaries of the universe. The design of these names also draws from various dolls in Japanese culture, such as the Fire Keeper doll in Bloodborne, little Ranni in Elden Ring, the doll aesthetics in Ghost in the Shell...

A vast and colorful range of experiences became the foundation for Wuli's creation of this wonderful story.

4. "All the Money from Outsourcing Went into Making the Game"​

As mentioned earlier, to make Bifang De Ta - Aliya, everyone at Tongdian Game Studio was constantly taking on outsourcing projects to earn money. Many media outlets have reported on various college student indie game teams, but few describe where these teams get their financial support, leading many to think that "college students" making indie games is a youthful, passionate endeavor.

However, that youth and passion only exist in the minority of teams that have funding, channels, technology, and connections.

Steve summed up the current state of Tongdian Game Studio in one sentence: If we don't do outsourcing, we starve.

Currently, Tongdian Game Studio has six full-time core R&D members. They actively participate in various college student game development competitions. Bifang De Ta - Aliya won the Best Story Design Award at CUSGA 2024. They also made it to the finals of the 2024 G-bits Future Game Developer Competition with their multiplayer party game Pengpeng Party, and developed a unique interactive narrative game called Ma Fan Ji Chu Zhe Feng Xin for the finals.

It's no exaggeration to say that their achievements today are the result of working to the bone.

In May 2021, Lilith Games' Avatar project happened to be working with university studios. Steve and the team serendipitously contacted a Lilith employee and established a game studio at Chengdu University of Information Technology, using this as an opportunity to form the team. In May 2022, they rented an office off-campus and officially began trying to pursue a commercial path. In May 2023, they registered a company and officially started their entrepreneurial venture. The team has now been working together for three years.

During these three years, until the release of Bifang De Ta - Aliya, they had no source of income — they relied entirely on outsourcing to keep the operation running.

"Since the monthly operating cost was 10,000 to 20,000 yuan, we had to spend a significant amount of manpower each month on outsourcing just to barely survive. The fixed expenses were there; if we didn't earn money, we'd starve. Moreover, we lacked channels, so we had to pick up the leftovers from others. When doing outsourcing, we could only take the jobs that others didn't want." Steve admitted.

"People in business roles know that with the current economic downturn and the deterioration of the game investment environment, many teams are taking on outsourcing, leading to a market where ten bidders fight for one client. In this environment, channels are king, and connections are most important. Without connections, you have to rely on middlemen — but many middlemen take a 40% to 50% cut just for connecting you. We still had to do the legwork ourselves, scouring various outsourcing order groups for leads, constantly looking for contracts. Being heavily deducted, getting orders canceled — it's all too common."

The situation Steve described is also a microcosm of the ecosystem faced by most college student teams silently dedicated to their game development dreams.

"Even so, we kept going." Steve gritted his teeth.

They often joked among themselves: Wealth and glory, go elsewhere; cowards, do not enter this door. Who among those willing to work in this industry isn't charging in with a passion for games?

But despite lacking channels and connections, they occasionally got lucky. For example, their team of six talented individuals, including the music producer for Bifang De Ta - Aliya, Azure_Lag, were all recruited from their own university.

Normally, the probability of assembling a complete team with clearly defined roles from the same university is relatively low. Most teams participating in various game development competitions are a mix of people from different schools. Moreover, Chengdu University of Information Technology is a comprehensive science and engineering university, so finding students with excellent art skills is quite rare. Wuli said that originally, they wanted to check out the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and Sichuan Conservatory of Music next door, but they had no connections there. Fortunately, they eventually found suitable art students from their own university — and these two art students are quite versatile, capable of handling all the art needs, including 2D animation, concept art, motion effects, etc.

Wuli said that for a small startup team, making a critically and commercially successful indie game involves a certain element of luck. Even now, he still has a slip of paper in his phone case that he got from a Taoist priest, inscribed with the words "Game Sells Well".

This endearing superstitious spirit is also reflected in the naming of the studio.

Out of admiration for Steve Jobs, Steve initially named the game studio "Think Different Studio". But they didn't dare to use that name when registering the company — what if Apple sued them? So they ended up using the initials TDS, changing it to "Tudousi" (potato shreds). When they participated in CUSGA 2024, they went on stage to accept the award under the name "Tudousi" team...

"But when we tried to register the company with that name, the commerce bureau didn't approve it. So we decided to change it to a more anime-style name and chose 'Tongdian'. But then we found out that 'Tongdian' was already registered. We were stuck. At that time, we happened to see an article reviewing miHoYo, which mentioned that the name miHoYo was inspired by the most successful internet companies from Silicon Valley, all of which had two 'o's in their names. So we decided to learn from miHoYo and add 'you' (游, meaning game) after 'Tongdian', so that our name would also have two 'o's. We thought the feng shui would be better." Steve added.

"Everyone has their own fate, and riches and honors depend on heaven. For a small startup team, especially a team of naive college students, there are too many uncertain factors in making a well-received and profitable game. Seeking these superstitions is also a way to motivate ourselves."

5. Conclusion​

As of early August, Bifang De Ta - Aliya has sold over 7,000 copies. For a small-scale indie game in a niche genre, this is a decent achievement.

They hit many walls. Initially, they planned to make a Hades-like game, but after six months, they realized that with their abilities, it would take at least three to four years to complete, with no visible progress in the short term. At the time, the money earned from outsourcing was immediately poured into a bottomless pit, leaving them feeling desperate.

In the end, they decided to abandon that game and change their goal. They would first make a small-scale project they could handle to learn the process of releasing on Steam.

Steve believes that whether in the game industry or the internet industry, for any startup team, it's crucial to quickly produce a game (product) to get market feedback and validate their design concepts. Otherwise, they risk building things in isolation. So they initiated Bifang De Ta - Aliya.

Wuli also shared his own experience: a common mistake for indie game developers is to want to go big from the start, investing a large amount of money and hoping for immediate results. After being tormented by the Hades-like project for half a year, the team was exhausted, depressed, and withdrawn. So they needed a small-scale game that could be released quickly to restore the team's confidence. That was the birth of Bifang De Ta - Aliya — messy, shameful, but effective.

"Fortunately, I started making games from my freshman year. The cost of making mistakes in college is low. I happened to step on all the pitfalls during this low-cost period, which was already lucky enough. If I had stepped on these pitfalls after graduation, I might have lost millions. Besides, starting game development in freshman year meant that by senior year, I could write four years of game development experience on my resume. That's a win."

Before the game's release, Wuli was caught in a state of internal conflict and self-doubt. Whenever he thought about his internal struggle while his teammates were giving it their all, he felt both guilty and pained.

Finally, when Bifang De Ta - Aliya was released and received overwhelmingly positive player feedback, his worried heart was relieved. At that time, the first thing he did every morning when he woke up was open Steam to read player reviews. This became his spiritual pillar, his motivation to make games.

He said that this was the moment when, as an indie game developer, he felt his efforts were not in vain — the most no-regret episode.

Author / SD

This article was edited by < the Reliable Editorial Department >

On the first day of the first test of Langrisser: Sea of Swords, the moment I opened the game, I was struck by its art.

Thick-painted characters, a classical fantasy palette, and the strings of the login screen reminded me of the JRPGs of the 1990s and early 2000s. Players whose eyes have been "spoiled" by cel-shaded flat art or Korean-style 3D art may find themselves even fonder of this classic painting style.

As the team's new work, Langrisser: Sea of Swords continues the Langrisser IP, and retains hand-drawn 2D art, stage-based battles, and JRPG-style storytelling. Rather than blindly chasing the currently popular open world, the developers added concepts like dual commanders and mixed units into the classic framework, reworking a language of game design players already know with today's production capabilities.

It seems we players have not been forgotten by the times after all.

Over the past few years, anime-style games have increasingly relied on striking 3D characters, three-dimensional scene construction, and open-world map design. Players have also gradually come to see box-garden structures, fixed camera angles, and a lack of exploration as signs of insufficient production scale. Product specs keep rising, yet aesthetics and controls grow ever more alike. For some players who are used to 2D portraits, stage-based progression, and turn-based combat, playing these new anime-style games means re-adapting to new cameras and controls.

At the same time, designs like fully 2D character portraits, character animations, stage-based progression, and troop deployment have gradually faded from new products. Some players who cannot adapt to 3D can only go back to their old games; even if the graphics and systems are outdated, the familiar characters, stages, and music can still keep them quietly playing for hours. To be honest, every so often I too open an old game, play a few stages, or listen through its soundtrack, savoring a kind of fun that was engrossing even without an open world.

Langrisser: Sea of Swords was developed by BlackJack Studio under Zlong Games. As a top Chinese SRPG team that previously made the Langrisser mobile game, Tiandi Jie: Youcheng Zailin, and Gang Lan, it has been nearly 8 years since their first product launched. By industry trends, the next step really ought to have been a "3D SRPG open world." Surprisingly, this new IP entry still chose hand-drawn 2D and a classic JRPG framework.

For me, this choice feels long overdue. The first test of Langrisser: Sea of Swords proves, at least to the outside world, that classic game design language can still be used to develop a new title aimed at the present day.

The art of Langrisser: Sea of Swords certainly is not the strongest of this year, but it displays considerable skill. Semi-realistic thick painting, JRPG-style European characters, armor, classical fantasy — each of these elements alone is common, yet they are rarely put together in commercial blockbusters. Even as a 2026 game, Langrisser: Sea of Swords did not follow the trendy flat-color art style, nor the somewhat fatiguing pixel-art style, nor did it turn all characters into 3D models. In story scenes and battles, characters switch to seven-heads-tall forms, letting the figures and temperament of the portraits be expressed through classic 2D animation performances.

Beneath the classic art style, the texture of characters' skin, the sheen of armor, and the folds of fabric — aided by today's device performance and 2D animation techniques — showcase a wealth of motion that in old games had to be imagined. After the trailer was released, the player community had no shortage of voices comparing it to Unicorn Overlord, but the character designs, temperament, and visual presentation of Langrisser: Sea of Swords still belong to the Langrisser IP. The classic characters, redesigned, remain instantly recognizable through their hairstyles, silhouettes of their outfits, and class features.

For an SRPG, the combat often determines longevity. Players must judge unit counters, calculate positions, and arrange skills, while the design of main and secondary commanders and mixed units further expands team compositions, and terrain and elevation differences on the map also change the solutions.

Moreover, the various elements on the battlefield map also affect how each encounter is solved. Judging from concentrated community feedback, Chapter 2 alone has already stumped a batch of players. The strategic depth of an SRPG shows in the fact that repeated attempts alone don't guarantee a pass: beyond developing your pieces, you need to adjust your team composition, unit types, and positioning to find the right solution.

Only when the stages offer real resistance do team development and tactical choices gain value. That satisfaction of clearing a stage after repeated deliberation may seem a bit old-fashioned today, but it is precisely why SRPG players were willing to invest time in the first place.

The first innovation in strategy is the dual-commander system, where a single unit consists of a main commander and a secondary commander. The main commander controls movement, range, a unique talent, and the whole squad's life or death; the secondary commander covers the main commander's weaknesses, but has fewer soldiers and more limited skills. Without changing the SRPG core logic of "calculating positions and counters," this opens up the ceiling of team building.

Secondly, commanders' class system now has dedicated class lines — for example, the effect of the exclusive class "Runaway Princess" is increased damage when there are no allied units nearby, plus a movement bonus. This gives a hero multiple developable class paths; combined with complete independent talents, exclusive skills, and main-commander traits, hero building is stretched from a single class-change into multiple mutually exclusive independent builds.

These gameplay experiments bring richer depth across team building, character development, and late-game exploration.

Beyond its strategic innovations, whether the dual-commander and class-line systems will lead to heavier character development has become one of the questions of the first test. In addition, there are issues like Chapter 2's difficulty rising rather quickly, and some stuttering in certain scenes and animations.

But judging from this first test, I am actually willing to give it a bit more confidence. The art may be what first draws players in, but what truly keeps people playing is no longer limited to the art style itself: the basic combat delivers the fun of strategic interplay, while the dual commanders and class lines prop up the strategic space — showing that the developers are seriously building a gameplay skeleton capable of producing content sustainably. As long as they continue filling in content along this skeleton and keeping the development burden in check, Langrisser: Sea of Swords has a chance to turn first-glance novelty into a real reason for players to stay.

The 2026 January–June China Gaming Industry Report shows that the domestic gaming user base has reached 684 million, up 0.82% year over year. New user growth has already slowed to a crawl, and what developers must compete for is increasingly mature players with settled preferences. Now, the core player bases of top games form a clear断层 — an overwhelming advantage in marketing that makes it harder and harder for new games of the same genre to break in.

In a market with limited new users, a new product can hardly gain attention just by raising graphics specs and map size. For a team like BlackJack that has long developed strategy RPGs, continuing to leverage 2D presentation, stage design, and accumulated strategic depth may fit their own experience better than chasing the open-world route. Langrisser: Sea of Swords represents a choice suited to a specific team and audience. The 2D space, once seen as conservative, short on money, people, and technology, holds more latent opportunities when polished by a mature production line.

Of course, adaptive innovation on classic gameplay has no ready-made answer. Change too little, and players will say it's treading water; change too much, and the parts that truly attracted people may vanish along with it. The difficulty for Langrisser: Sea of Swords lies in that the developers must know both what to add and what must not be touched.

From the first-test feedback, players' expectations for a new Langrisser IP title are not complicated, and Langrisser: Sea of Swords is not merely making the SRPG more modern. It carries the story and exploration from the overworld all the way into battles. Players can freely walk between forests, towns, and caves; side quests and puzzles are scattered across the map, and field encounters and story progression unfold naturally along the journey. A place players just walked through may turn into a battlefield the moment they turn around. The SRPG remains Langrisser's most distinctive gameplay, but the reasons to stay in Langrisser: Sea of Swords now go beyond just playing out one more battle.

IP fans can recognize the "Langrisser" elements in it, while newcomers to the IP also have the chance to become loyal players through the adventure of a classic JRPG.

If new games are willing to come back and keep innovating on classic content in a language players understand, then this seemingly homogenized genre may see more possibilities for a breakthrough.

Over these days of the first test, my biggest takeaway has been this: players don't necessarily need to change themselves to follow every trend. Every now and then, there should be a new game that walks back and gives them a hug.

Author / Hashichai

Edited by < the Kaopu Editorial Team >

A new character, "Linuo," has launched in Arknights: Endfield (hereafter: Endfield). Strangely, even before her launch, my world had already become the "Linuo Universe."

I had just walked out of the Hypergryph Carnival at Shanghai C4, and the excitement hadn't worn off yet. In the Endfield exhibition hall that day, during the official Linuo coser's stage appearances, the booth was packed with people, and I barely managed to snap a few photos.

Looking further out, Nymph was being mobbed by 11 Linuos — "wild" Linuo cosers were everywhere you looked.

Some players also got an early look at Linuo's idle animation in the operator showcase area.

When I got home and picked up my phone, my feed was full of Linuo cosplay recap videos, with even more Linuos in the background.

Discussion about Linuo started as early as May, and the closer her launch got, the more it felt like she was on a pre-launch nationwide tour, with fan-made content already everywhere.

The single PV teaser and silhouette were enough to be reinterpreted in all kinds of versions — players' edited videos switched between "Indoor-Kei Trackmaker" and "Catch Catch," and even idol-group or hip-hop styles could fit.

Plenty of netizens took on the challenge of cosplaying Linuo, some hand-crafted Linuo light sticks, and in those silly AI skits, a whole "grew up listening to Linuo's songs" plotline had already evolved.

I had previously played Linuo's narrative event "Like a Meteor Crossing the Border" at Hypergryph's demo, and back then I felt Linuo was bound to be popular, but I never expected the explosion to come this fast.

Players' expectations had hyped a character who wasn't even in the gacha pool yet into something like a real idol — she even had fans and "haters" in advance.

"Even a Sarkaz can become an idol." Because Linuo is of the Iteru race, gifted with perception of hearts and minds, she also got teased with "stereotypes."

It even reached the idol herself — but thankfully, my idol responded directly: curious? Why not come see for yourself?

Once I actually got into the story, I realized: she can not only fly, but also set traps.

At first, I was just a passerby watching the free "comfort concert." Everyone said "Linuo" was hugely popular, the "Morning Star of Rafdoma," but I didn't know her at all and had no expectations.

Until she went missing, and I found her in Valley No. 4. A high ponytail, a highly saturated purple dress, heart-patterned socks — then she looked at me with starry eyes and shouted "Administrator...!!" I honestly froze for a second.

At this point I had already lost. This story was not about "heroically rescuing an idol after she's been kidnapped." Quite the opposite — she had planned the disappearance herself, and with lies, acting spoiled, and a few sudden takeoffs, she lured me, a "passerby" administrator, into her own independent scheme.

The Little Idol's Trap Fooled Me Into the Sky

What Linuo excels at most is "five frames a second, ten expressions." One moment she's radiant, the next she's fragile and needs help.

Lies roll right off her tongue — like "I even patted her head when I was little." The moment I questioned it, she immediately went hurt, teary, angry, and clingy all in one breath.

Anyone would be at a loss here; all I could do was comfort her. Then the very next second she switched back to smiling eyes, grabbed my hand, scooped me up, and took off. This was the little idol's first flight with me — and I was tricked into the sky.

It's not just Chinese people who can fly — Iteru can fly too, and so did my heart. As for why the sudden takeoff, don't ask; if you ask, the answer is "the valley is dangerous."

While playing through this part, a friend next to me asked: "You didn't actually believe her, did you?" Hearing that, I felt a bit embarrassed — "Wait, was she lying to me?"

She was.

Once my heart rate settled, Fiona confirmed that "I had never had any prior contact with Linuo," which cemented the fact that she had lied. At the time I thought this Linuo was no simple character — she had her little schemes, wanted to use people, and was very skilled at controlling the pace of a conversation with her "five frames a second" expression changes.

But being lied to didn't matter, because she had her reasons!

No More Puppet — the Second Takeoff

Her little schemes and cunning, just like her fan service, are adorable and charming — and she truly had her reasons.

The Brady Mining Group controls the Huanta Entertainment Agency, and the group squeezes her through the agency. Her workload: two shows back-to-back, four ads, ten gigs, and when budgets go over, she takes the blame — all while being threatened by management that "you can be replaced at any time." Now these "capitalists" have doubled down, using her performances to lure guild members away with high-paying poaching offers, scamming fans with overpriced tickets, and worse — even the signed merch is fake.

The "comfort concert" originally planned last year for her guild fans had now been stuffed with other agendas by the group. Linuo's avoidance wasn't about dodging the concert — it was because she wanted to organize a concert truly her own.

When she learned the group was still sabotaging her, Linuo snapped.

In an "inner monologue" sequence, I could see two Linuos talking to herself — from the frustration of "they still won't give up," to the rhetorical "do they really think I'm that easy to control?", to the resolve of "this time I'll show them what I'm made of." Past grievances slowly turned into the courage to fight back, and she finally resolved to stop being a puppet.

Learning that the poaching deal contained unequal terms, she turned the tables — organizing her own show ahead of schedule, delaying the group's poaching move while warning guild members "there's a pitfall ahead." It was her counterattack against the group, and her sense of responsibility toward her fans.

We fought through layers of guards, heard her loudly announce her concert plan at the broadcast station, dealt the group a heavy slap in the face — and as we escaped the guards, Linuo took me on my second flight.

This time the escape was real; our relationship had become that of "accomplices."

This solo concert was thus elevated: it was now Linuo's declaration of independence, reclaiming control of her stage, an action to remind guild members to reconsider their transfers, and her most heartfelt greeting to everyone in Valley No. 4.

After the Filter Comes Off

After two flights together, it was time for a heart-to-heart.

The administrator and Linuo both "took the filter off" in each other's eyes. Linuo had originally seen me as "an important person who must be used well," but then discovered that beyond my title, I was just an "ordinary person" willing to listen and help. I had originally seen a "hugely popular traffic idol" — or rather, everything matching every stereotype of the idol symbol. But now I thought: so what if she's a bit scheming? She also has genuine sorrows, her own kindness, and her own persistence.

She may have lied to me plenty, but she never lied to anyone else.

Even while fleeing, she still took photos with fans and asked them to keep her secret — she truly treats fans as her own people. She holds firm on stage quality, willing to take risks rather than lower the booster power. And her worry about the risks fans might face was genuine.

Her sense of responsibility even exceeds most people's — beyond the concert itself, she personally covered the costs of rehearsals, stage construction, and breach penalties, and after the official show she donated 4.2 million to Valley No. 4, defusing the "poaching crisis" through action.

She has not just cleverness but real wisdom. Her "escape" was planned; she had even investigated the administrator in advance — nothing impulsive or spur-of-the-moment. Even her little schemes to trick the administrator were fine — she doesn't just sweet-talk people into helping; she had been laying out her solo career and concert plan for a long time.

But right after that slightly blush-inducing, totally honest heart-to-heart, the very next second she switched back to tsundere mode: "How could a perfect, adorable idol like me be so easily seen through?" These five-frames-a-second expression changes are truly "little idol."

As an "all-round idol," Linuo instead gradually revealed the adorable, scheming, clever, persistent, wistful sides of an ordinary person... These genuine emotions made her feel more three-dimensional in my mind, and remarkably, her idol aura didn't fade because of it.

The Third Takeoff — Linuo Flies on Her Own

With the filter gone, we truly became friends. She let me experience a private preview of her performance up close, and my face turned red.

At the official concert, I cheered with all my might. This time, everyone saw it: my oshi can fly.

In the end, having paid the breach penalties and made her donation, staring at her negative account balance and looking for a "powerful shelter," she simply chose to join Endfield.

The story also shifted from "idol escaping control" to a new chapter: Linuo finally truly owns her own choices.

This narrative made Linuo a real, three-dimensional idol in my heart, and the meticulous control over the character's expressions better showcased the innate cunning and playfulness of this "little idol."

Character animations paired with facial expressions together present the little idol's incredibly lively side — hushing, squinting, blinking, angry, hurt, melancholy — happy or sad, every single frame is different when you look closely. Her eyes when she smile carry a liveliness with a hint of slyness; the combinations of cute poses and fan service are lively enough to be called "five frames a second."

On the narrative side, beyond the high-production stage performance and the character's inner-monologue scenes — the "heavy weapons" — there are also subtle stylized touches serving the story: for instance, the camera cuts to Linuo's heels, gently shifting back and forth, precisely at a moment after she lets her guard down and feels a little shy.

Montage editing is used in many places too. For example, when talking about her stage vision, Linuo spins in circles as she speaks, and at one point her mech launches into flight — you don't need dialogue to understand that Linuo is getting carried away, since she's prepared her stage concept for so long. But as she takes off, slow motion cuts to the administrator — in that instant, it's hard to say whether it was the wind stirring, or my heart.

As for the technical details, her hair physics are remarkably smooth: after swaying left and right, her hair keeps an inertia-driven flow as it slowly settles back. And in that classic tech-showcase moment, the texture of raindrops sliding off her hair and soaking her black stockings is strikingly realistic.

In combat, every skill's ending pose is a fan-service gesture, and holding the attack button during her ultimate triggers a cheering effect. The makeup bag on her waist pack during idle — from the front it's just a heart shape, but it actually has dedicated animations for opening and closing, and taking out and putting back a mirror. Even Linuo doing a backflip after stepping on a banana peel has become a fan favorite (as expected of a little idol who minds her image every single second!).

"Linuo" may be more than just the best little idol on Talos-II — she also carries a different kind of significance for Endfield.

In past versions, the centerpiece content generally landed in the first half. Whether it was main story developments, new map openings, or gameplay event updates, version updates brought concentrated content releases, giving players plenty of new things to do and driving higher discussion.

The second half of a version is better suited to serving functions like "a change of pace" and "letting everyone catch their breath." The content doesn't need to be massive, but it should be clever enough — or eye-catching enough — otherwise discussion in the second half easily dries up. This is a communication challenge baked into the structure of gacha games with long version cycles.

During this window, Hypergryph has tried several different kinds of character design — like this version's "Linuo," and before her, "Rosie" and "Camus."

In Rosie's case, the Little Red Riding Hood and wolf visual theme was very distinct; the character narrative didn't need to carry a grand main storyline, yet still left room for illustration, chibi, and slice-of-life interpretations. The official content itself gave creators a simple, clear emotional anchor.

In Camus's case, a vivid personality and well-crafted character relationships generated tons of fan creations; interpretations in different art styles and different relationship combinations were all hugely popular, and even though she debuted last version, discussion has continued to this day.

Looking at Linuo this time, her influence began surfacing as early as May, and after her official debut she directly ignited all kinds of fan creations from netizens. It's clear Hypergryph has truly grasped the craft of character design.

Over the past six months, Endfield has changed a great deal.

The gameplay experience has improved, with more content that rewards replaying; the storytelling has matured, with more distinctively characterized characters. Whether at showcase livestreams or behind-the-scenes development shares, a wall of "thanks for your hard work" in the danmaku perhaps shows that players have noticed these efforts; the "if it releases, I'll keep my promise" comments also reflect recognition of how the game's content is presented.

Like a meteor crossing the border, Endfield players have welcomed a wonderful summer season.