Text/Yiguang Flow

In the Steam weekly sales list released last Tuesday (excluding free-to-play games and other types of apps), the top of the list in China is the famous new stalker series "Stalker 2", and the second place "Ruma Island" is the work that many players have been looking forward to for a long time.

At this year's Steam New Product Festival, "Ruma Island" has attracted a lot of attention. At that time, it only opened the trial demo of the 5-day process in the game, and it reached the height of the 15th place in the ranking of the new product festival, which surprised many farming players, and even some players gave the evaluation of "the biggest dark horse at the end of the year". For a while, on Station B, Xiaohongshu, and some stand-alone game media, you can see reviews and articles recommending or even recommending this game.

After all, when it comes to farming, Huaxia's genes can't help but be restless. In this demo, players can not only see the farming and mining of "Stardew Valley", see the pet breeding of "Phantom Beast Palu", but also see the monster fighting adventure of "Minecraft", and even choose different classes to take different gameplay routes.

It can be said that there are and no gameplay in farming games, "Ruma Island" has been sewn in, and the overall look and feel presented to players in the demo is not bad, plus the 5 days in the game are still unfinished, which makes it difficult not to look forward to it.

But with the launch of the official version some time ago, players spent dozens of hours of experience before they gradually came back to their senses: good guys, I thought the demo was just a part of the game, but it turned out to be most of it? As a result, a large number of bad reviews made the game fall for a few days before the release, but fortunately, the follow-up update remedied it in time, so that the game's praise rate stabilized at 83% (5300+ comments).

It's just that regardless of good or bad reviews, the label "Niuma Island", which points to the essence of the problem, "Ruma Island" can't be taken away in a short period of time.

01

Undeniably excellent foundation

From the point of view of the demo version, Ruma Island offers an almost perfect farming game framework, the dense content also makes the exploration fun continuous, and the 3D art packaging also makes the first two points of charm to a higher level.

At first sight, Ruma Island is easy to be attracted by its variety of classes and gameplay, and you can choose one of seven classes in the early game: chef, beverage, treasure hunter, blacksmith, fisherman, jeweler, and archaeologist, and you can also spend money to unlock other classes in the later game.

Each class has its own exclusive workbench and supporting gameplay, such as fisherman's main job of fishing, which does not require a large amount of materials to be collected in the early stage, and fishing is basically not limited by time and place, so it is relatively easy to play. Another example is that a chef is a profession that integrates planting, gathering, and food processing; Blacksmiths specialize in crafting tools and weapons, and have a great advantage in logging and mining.

In this game, the most important thing for different classes is the utilization of resources, the chef can use the land and crop resources efficiently, the blacksmith can use the trees and mineral resources efficiently, the fisherman can handle the catch, the jeweler can refine the minerals, the archaeologist can unearth the rewards of the temple dungeon, and the treasure hunter can explore the hidden treasures in the map.

Therefore, in the case of multiplayer online, multi-class cooperation can maximize the utilization of resources, and players can cooperate with each other to develop rapidly. When playing solo, you need to consider the combination of the initial classes, such as the blacksmith with the gemstoneman, the angler with the treasure hunter, etc.

No matter what class you choose, the early game will have a lot of content to deal with, such as random events that can be encountered within a few steps, treasure chests hidden in tricky locations on the map, and more difficult temple dungeons.

In addition, as the game progresses, players will be able to gradually unlock three new maps, which also include the above content to explore, as well as new materials to upgrade their technology.

On the whole, the single map of "Ruma Island" seems to condense the open world into a box garden world without cutting materials, and at the same time use technology to push players to unlock new maps, so as to build a "content-gameplay" cycle. This is a very typical, but very effective farming game design.

On the basis of the above design, the design of "Ruma Island" that takes the most care of the player is to "eliminate negative feedback as much as possible". In this game, there are almost no settings that restrict players in other farming games, such as stamina bar, health bar, weight, backpack grid, etc.

So the player lets himself go: he can keep cutting down trees, mining, and farming, because his physical strength is unlimited; You can go out on an expedition and not go home for a few days because your backpack is not stuffed at all; You can fight monsters without fear of death, because there is no blood bar; The next copy is a random wave.,Because it fails, it can also be resurrected in the original picture.。

In addition, in the process of players exploring the game, they can also obtain Ruma eggs (i.e. pet eggs), and after making an incubator to hatch, you can get Ruma in different forms (such as crabs, deer rabbits, griffins, mushrooms, snails, unicorns, hydras, etc.), they will help players farm, produce, explore, fight, and dig treasures, and players can also further improve Rumma's abilities through upgrades and enhancements.

What's more, the player's interaction with Rumma, such as feeding and petting, can generate Ruma energy, which is a necessary rare material in the later construction, so although Ruma is positioned as an auxiliary and a small helper in the game, it is very functional and necessary as a whole.

The above series of elements have included a series of gameplay methods such as agricultural and animal husbandry simulation, resource collection, fishing cooking, map exploration, dungeon puzzle solving, pet raising, etc., whether it is a division of labor or an adventure together, there is a lot of fun to explore.

Just by connecting this series of content, "Ruma Island" deserves a good review, not to mention that the game also greatly eliminates negative feedback, allowing players to experience it more freely and at their own pace. This kind of open, comfortable, and comfortable life on a small island is also the most attractive feature of farming players.

02

Infinite physical strength makes good cattle and horses

However, the demo of "Ruma Island", and the fun given by the early stage of the official version, did not last long. As players commented: "The first five hours, this game is really fun, after five hours, I want to get a refund, it's too late." ”

It is true that the game of "Ruma Island" has a good framework, the gameplay stitching is also well done, and the art is also very kind, and he even boldly came up with no physical strength, no health bar, unlimited backpack and other burden reduction settings. But the game doesn't solve several key spin-off issues.

The first is the problem of too fragmented experiences between different professions. Although the professions in Ruma Island are rich and diverse, the unreasonable thing is that it forcibly restricts the player's development path. The dedicated workbench of each class restricts the use of cross-class technology, resulting in only those who farm the land, those who mine can only mine, and those who explore have to stay out and about.

Nowhere is this disconnect more pronounced than in multiplayer. Obviously, everyone is playing games online together, but most of the time they use the resources of their respective professions to make their own professions for sale.

The second is the problem of repeated content and repeated experience being amplified after the novelty has passed. As mentioned earlier, the game can unlock new maps, but the new maps do not continue the freshness that players get in the initial maps, and the most critical problems are the map skinning and card technology.

In the new map, everything the player encounters gives a sense of déjà vu, such as skinned materials, skinned monsters, puzzles with the same mechanics, similar caves and temples, in other words, the new map lacks a core theme, and a new design to match.

At the same time, for step-by-step farming players, the significant increase in the difficulty of collecting resources on the new map is basically equivalent to bringing the technology of the initial map upgrade back to the prototype. Unless players randomly acquire more advanced material upgrades during their exploration, they will have to spend a period of inefficient mining of new maps, which can be extremely frustrating due to the change of soup and medicines for new maps.

Then there is the knock-on effect of eliminating negative feedback. It may be that the starting point of "Ruma Island" is to reduce the burden on players, so negative feedback settings such as physical limits, backpack restrictions, and health bars have been canceled. But the problem with this is that the positive feedback from players is also gone.

The most typical chain reaction is the disappearance of the "stamina/health bar→recovery consumables→ cooking, drinks, medicine, → related materials and technology tree promotion, → cultivation and cultivation gameplay". In Ruma Island, since there is no health bar or stamina bar, the dishes made by the player cannot be eaten (or there is no need to eat them, so they are not made), so they can only be sold as sales.

Similarly, almost all crafting professions lack a corresponding gameplay drive chain, resulting in the final high-level production of the profession can only be sold for money. As a result, in addition to the weakening of the driving force of professional gameplay, the more terrible chain reaction is the homogenization of different career development directions, as well as the high degree of convergence of related game experiences.

Finally, there is the problem of churn caused by unreasonable gameplay design and value settings in the later stage.

We can use Ruma as an example, this set of pet gameplay does not have a strong presence in the game, a clear example is that in "Phantom Beast Palu", Palu can be a cow and a horse for the player in the early, middle and late stages, but in "Ruma Island", Ruma has always been a support character, and the cow and horse are always the player himself.

However, this auxiliary character has become the key to card technology, and the Ruma energy that can be produced by interacting with it is not only very limited (daily quantitative output), but also the key material for some buildings in the later stage, and the demand is still very large. It can be said that if you don't deliberately accumulate in the early stage, then in the later stage, not only will the card make people's heads big, but also the player will have to manually collect a little bit.

This also leads to the persecution of Ruma's gameplay, which becomes more obvious in the later stages, unlike other games, which are more automated and stress-free in the later stages.

Similarly, many materials will be in demand in the later stages, such as the last level of tool upgrades requires a lot of money, and achievement buildings require a lot of hard-to-collect materials, etc., which require players to waste a lot of time to accumulate.

This kind of gameplay and numerical stuck points, compared with the early self-liberating burden reduction design, it seems that the developers are deliberately extending the player's game time, rather than relying on providing new content and adding new fun to extend the life of the game. It ends up looking even more cart-posted.

The ultimate achievement of "Ruma Island".

Therefore, although the early stage of "Ruma Island" is very fresh, and there is a sense of freedom to open the Wind Spirit Moon Shadow, but once the player touches those numerical card points, technology card points, and gameplay card points, he will lose a patience and have to fight for the liver, so he seems to be more like a "cow horse" who is tricked by the game.

03

epilogue

Now that I have played the official version, and then I look back at the new product festival demo of "Ruma Island", it inexplicably makes people feel that the labels on it "like "Stardew Valley" and "like "Phantom Beast Palu" are very unreal. The 5 days of in-game time was like a big joke with all the farming players.

Fortunately, this game was updated in time not long ago, and many details have been improved, and it is generally developed in the direction of "improving player efficiency, reducing input costs, and increasing product revenue". Visible to the naked eye, this game has less negative feedback.

However, Ruma Island is still a long way from the enduring farming game of Stardew Valley, and its height still depends on how to solve a few key problems and what new content will be released to retain players.

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