Text: Yan Jinyan

The life simulation category is about to explode again.

Recently, the performance of "Heartbeat Town" should have exceeded many people's expectations. At the same time, many large manufacturers are also laying out this track, such as miHoYo's "Xingbu Valley" is rumored to be a dynamic forest-like, and their recruitment poster also clearly states that there are life simulation products under development; Another example is NetEase's first exposure of "Codename: Strange Journey" a while ago......

Among the new products, Grape Jun is currently most concerned about "Mim Mimha".

It was first exposed on the first day of resumption of work after the National Day holiday - specially picked at the time when everyone's mental state was most chaotic. It's very magical from the name of the product to the announcement of PV,BGM has been repeating "Mim Mim",At first glance, it looks abstract brainwashing,But what is shown in the actual picture is a healing pet,It gives people a feeling of madness and relaxation,Both cute and gold。 It's also in line with the feeling that the life simulation genre wants to deliver: the pressure to get people away from the real world.

Many players have been brainwashed by PV

Another important reason why I paid attention to this product is that it is the first product started by former "Moore Manor" producer Ricky Zheng, who previously tested it once under the name "Project M" and received more than 500,000 pre-orders on TapTap and Haoyou Kuaibang.

Whether it is from the background of the team or the degree of completion, "Mim Mimha" should be a new product that should not be underestimated. After experiencing the product earlier, I think it has really made something new in the life simulation track.

01

If you want to live a decent life,

Hour memes first

In the past, life simulation games have always been a pain point in the long-term experience of players.

The first is the boredom caused by low production efficiency. For example, in the early stage of the game, players may still feel new to the fishing and farming in the game, and are willing to enjoy the tranquility and far-reaching under the east fence of picking chrysanthemums. After playing for a few days, everyone will soon fall into fatigue, and even feel that the burden of collection and production is too heavy. The second is that the sense of purpose is too simple. Most of the game, players may just be producing and making orders, and in the long run, it is inevitable that they will lose interest in the game.

And "Mim Mimha" tries to solve these problems by adding differentiated memes.

Just like this year's popular pet hunting gameplay, you can see various styles of memes in "Mim Mimha", and you can increase the success rate of catching them through simple pet battles.

Each meme can help you farm and build your home. For example, the blue-skinned rat can help water the fields.

Small firebirds can be produced by fire-breathing processing.

The peach monkey is a panacea, and the carrying capacity is a must.

There is even a Kapi dolphin that young people like very much (the prototype is Kapibala at first glance), and the Buddha sells cuteness. Each meme is cute and healing in the style of fairy tale fantasy.

With Meme, you only need to get through the early stage of land reclamation, and soon you can build an automated assembly line, no longer care about those repetitive and boring work, and concentrate on business and social play. This is also in line with today's market trend of reducing liver and burden.

At present, the game has created a relatively complete ecology of the meme race, and their distribution area and behavior are different according to the race. At the same time, different memes will also have their own characteristics and personalities, and will show different expressions according to their mood. Coupled with the game's cute art style, you should be tempted to collect and cultivate memes. This actually expands the richness of the game's objectives and provides players with more motivation to play.

Also, remember when everyone was eager to find their beloved islanders during the Great Fire? "Mim Mimha" seems to want to use pets to meet the emotional needs of players of the same type.

Looking at the community of players in the life simulation category, you will find that a large number of players want the game's NPCs to be designed to be more spiritual, such as wanting NPCs to be more vivid or have more ways to interact. One of the big needs behind this is that many life sim players are not all social players, they may be I, but they also want to experience friendship and even family in a warm and beautiful world.

"Mim Mimha" designed a variety of human-pet interactions for Mime, trying to provide emotional companionship through Mime.

For example, when Mime is in a bad mood, you have to pet, feed, and even listen to music for them. Usually, in addition to helping you build production, they will also adventure the world with you, and some can even ride. Through the day-to-day interactions in the game, it's easy to form a deep emotional connection with Meme. In fact, this has been proven for a long time in those excellent pet games in the past.

And for F2P products, Meme may also be more suitable for the requirements of long-term operation of games. After all, the amount of work to make a meme can be relatively easy compared to NPCs. However, the design difficulty of the meme still exists, and the game must not only consider how the meme looks better and is more in line with the tone of the product, but also consider its functionality. The further along, this design difficulty should be rising, and how to continue to give players a sense of freshness may be a challenge for "Mim Mimha".

In general, the current integration of meme and home management gameplay not only provides players with practical burden reduction, but also emotionally satisfies the player's fantasy of collecting cute creatures and living together. Although it is not a novel way to play pet hunting, looking at the market, there is really no life simulation game with pets as the core gameplay, which makes "Mim Mimha" a unique existence and has the opportunity to meet the needs of some players.

02

Exploration + Island Building = Longer Shelf Life?

In addition to memes, there are many differentiating features of the game, and almost all of them serve to build the atmosphere of the game and operate in the long run.

Let's talk about the impressive "flying house" in the PV of the previous real machine. In Mim Mimha, players can not only decorate the layout and furniture of their small home, but also fly around the world in their huts. This fantastical experience is very reminiscent of Pixar's animated "Flying House". And this should be the atmosphere that the game wants to shape and convey: the world is so big, I want to see it.

In fact, in addition to life simulation, a large part of the gameplay of "Mim Mimha" is placed on exploration.

Under the floating island theme, each player's home is a small island, and players can visit each other, which is very reminiscent of the online social experience of the moving forest.

Other public islands can also be seen as places to explore and socialize. Each island has its own theme and design, and players will encounter different NPCs and experience the story and gameplay as they explore. For example, players can come to the island of giant trees, jump on huge tree trunks, and parachute and glide over the canopy. This MMO-like experience may attract different types of players to the product.

It is worth noting that although "Mim Mimha" provides multiple small world scenes, its content experience is not utilitarian, unlike traditional online games, which require you to rush and pull the intensity. It also provides some warm and loving scenes, allowing players to have more social possibilities.

For example, you can fly an airplane, shuttle between floating islands and a sea of clouds, and have a free drive or race. For example, you can explore new landscapes with your friends, find a check-in spot, and take pictures in nice clothes.

Don't underestimate the needs of players for this type of gameplay. Take "Light · Encounter", which also focuses on warm social interaction, for example, there are a large number of interactive theaters shot by players in the community, and everyone likes to share the beautiful moments in the game in their own way. To a large extent, this is no different from recording your life in Moments and Xiaohongshu.

In the previous test of "Mim Mimha", you can already see many players taking photos together. In the future, there may be a new famous scene such as a pair of people driving a small plane to chase the sunset, or everyone collectively posing an umbrella array in the air. In these scenarios, players should be able to unguard and enjoy rustic socialization.

At this point, you should be able to get a rough idea of what "airplane mode" means in "Mim Mimha" - not only can you have a walk-and-go adventure in the game, but it also hopes to provide players with a virtual world that will not be disturbed and temporarily leave behind the worries of reality.

More importantly, for life simulation products, the exploration gameplay with the island as the main scene also solves the long-term problem of the category again. Since each floating island is an independent small world, the game can update the island at any time during the long-term operation to introduce new content, gameplay, and even theme styles to keep everyone fresh.

Another aspect of the game that has gained a lot of attention from players is its UGC creation gameplay.

As mentioned earlier, the game has a high degree of freedom, and players can decorate their own courtyards and flying houses, but this is far from its limit. In Mim Mimha, the entire floating island that the player owns is free to build.

Players can use blueprints and furniture yards with various themes to build different styles of islands. At present, there are many types of floor paths alone. It's entirely possible to turn the island into a theme park, such as a creative labyrinth garden or a retirement home in the clouds.

From this point of view, the island construction richness of "Mim Mimha" should be the closest F2P product to the dynamic forest. This should be able to meet the needs of many renovation players, and at the same time stimulate everyone's enthusiasm for creativity.

Moreover, as you can see from the actual demo, players can place different colored blocks on the ground, and when they look down from the air, it is a giant picture.

In a way, it already has a prototype of a construction system that players may be able to use to raise tall buildings from the ground in the future. It is not difficult to imagine how much the island construction of "Mim Mimha" can be played in the hands of Chinese babies who are keen on infrastructure. How many wonderful UGC content will be born in this to drive the self-dissemination of the game.

A more imaginative point is that if UGC can really develop in the future, will the game be able to introduce more building components, such as some interactive types of props? Can the game get closer to "Dragon Quest Genesis Player" or even "Minecraft"? To put it more exaggeratedly, as long as the player's imagination is enough, can they use props to make an interactive game level on the island? If that's the case, then "Mim Mimha" has more opportunities to move towards the big DAU track.

In the last test, some players even made an Internet celebrity toilet

Of course, even if we don't open this brain hole first. Just the exploration, socialization, and UGC gameplay at the bottom of the game should be able to support the long-term experience of many players.

03

Return to simple healing and decompression

In my opinion, the resurgence of life simulation games now, including the craze that Kinemori set off at the time, should be inseparable from the current environment.

We all laugh at ourselves with cows and horses, and we always want to go crazy and decompress, and at the same time, we also yearn for the simple emotions between people. The small bridge and flowing water provided by the life simulation are exactly the pastoral life that everyone has been looking forward to for a long time.

But the reason most F2P products haven't been successful in the past few years is that it's easy to get screwed up in the development process. For example, in order to solve the problem of commercialization and long-term, many products will put forward more liver requirements and krypton elements in addition to the skin, which causes the game world to become less pure, after all, no one wants to get off work and still work in the game.

For another example, many products want to provide a paradise, but they can't avoid the design inertia of online games in the past, adding a series of guidance with a strong sense of purpose to the game, and even rows of UI and pop-ups, which make the tone of the game more and more blurred.

And now, products like "Heartbeat Town" show that as long as you can get the atmosphere and experience of life simulation right, players will still pay.

At present, judging from the painting style and gameplay of "Mim Mimha", it should be thought out clearly, that is, it wants to return to life to simulate real healing, decompression and spiritual liberation. From the first exposure of PV, you can see this crazy and serene temperament, which is more in line with the mental state of young people today. At the same time, the gameplay also relies on a loving atmosphere, and does not set too many tough goals for the player.

In terms of product differentiation and long-term construction, "Mim Mimha" should have its own direction, and they have now gained a lot of attention, and the question they will face in the future is whether they can run through the big DAU, or whether they can come up with a better solution in commercialization. If it could, maybe it would be able to roll up the entire category again and make life simulation bigger and stronger.

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