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After two years of silence, this year's domestic SLG market has come to a small climax, with new fist products such as "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World", "Endless Winter" and "World Qiyuan" appearing one after another, once again proving to everyone the strong gold-absorbing strength of the SLG category.

And "Star Era", which started the paid second test today, may be the last new SLG to be unveiled on stage this year. The product was previously named "Codename: Lone Star", and it was ranked third on TapTaP's reservation list. Currently, the game has user ratings of 9.1 and 7.5 on TapTap and Haoyou Kuaibang.

According to Grape Jun, most of the core members of the project team are from "Under the Hongtu", including the main process, the core planner, and the producer Yang Meng. Since the team left in 2021 to start a business, it has received investment from Tencent and Zulong, and has become one of the key products of Ruyi Jingxiu in 2025.

According to the 2023 annual performance report released by Zulong Entertainment, the cumulative turnover of "Under the Hongtu" has exceeded 1.6 billion yuan, and the cumulative number of registered users has exceeded 7.3 million, and it is still contributing a certain increment to the company's revenue.

In hindsight, "Under the Hongtu" made some attempts on the basis of the local like 4 years ago, including the current popular category to reduce the liver and reduce the burden, and the product has also done a lot of testing, and the team has actually always wanted to make breakthroughs and innovations.

According to reliable sources, "Star Era" has done 6 rounds of launch verification in mainstream countries and regions around the world, and the cost of customer acquisition is extremely low each time, and the CPA in North America is basically in single digits, and the domestic CPA is not more than 10 yuan.

This time, the team plans to make a breakthrough in the integration of themes and gameplay, and come up with a sci-fi theme + human and insect war experience + RTS/tower defense gameplay, trying to make a tight combat experience similar to "StarCraft" and "Starship Troopers" on the basis of ROKlike, so that every player can play a role on the battlefield.

They want to use this to differentiate themselves from the mainstream turn-based SLG combat gameplay on the market.

01

How to play RTS:

The pace of combat is tighter and the player presence is higher

After actually trying it out, I feel that the biggest difference between "Star Era" and other SLGs is that the core combat gameplay of the game really makes an RTS flavor.

Friends who are familiar with SLG should know that no matter how visual you look like "real-time" when fighting on the sandbox map, in fact, many times the actual battle settlement is still based on turns, if you want to be more specific, it is eight rounds.

In these eight rounds, the enemy and the enemy will settle the attack and defense values, skill effects, troop damage, etc., and finally determine the winner. Players' understanding of the battle process can often only stay in the battle report.

Therefore, some SLGs will choose to make a "battle process" on the performance layer, although the result has already been calculated, but it will still make the player wait for a while.

The battles in "Star Era" are settled in seconds, completely real-time, plus different classes have different ranges, players can also play similar to the hit&run operation in RTS, which is commonly known as "go A".

It is also thanks to the game's combat settlement rules that are free enough, there will be no queue in the game to be harvested by the big players (one by one), or your team will be stuck by someone, you can continue to maintain displacement in the battle, rely on movement speed to open up your position, and rely on range to establish an advantage.

The whole game is very easy to recall the classic scenes of RTS games: retreat, siege, circle, and demolition of buildings against enemy attacks. And the pace after the firefight is fast, often ending the battle in a few seconds, removing a lot of boring waiting time.

In order to further enhance the richness of the battlefield, the units in this game can also be transformed during the battle, for example, tanks can be set up mortars in place, gunboats can summon small planes, and helicopters can attack or cut into healing ...... Doesn't that sound very StarCraft?

Yes, the game is made with the feel of RTS, and this is where the most obvious difference between the game and other SLGs is that.

At present, the game provides three body types: large, medium and small, with a total of 7 classes, each with its own characteristics. The characteristics of this class are not purely numerical designs such as bow and gun and gun and horse, but like RTS, there are big differences in movement speed, rate of fire, range, attack mode, and so on.

For example, the Titan Guardian is a large meat shield class, and it can raise its shield when switching to a defensive form, but this shield can only defend against the front, and the attack range and movement speed will be reduced. At the same time, the game has designed mechanisms such as stealth/anti-stealth, back injury bonus, etc., which puts forward more requirements for the player's real-time operation and judgment of the battle situation.

Coupled with different terrain changes and troop combinations, the richness of the game's battle situation is guaranteed. At the same time, players of different skill levels can play a role, such as using the Medic milk core output, or bringing meat shields to provide output space for the back row to resist damage in the front row.

And this gameplay is not a sub-gameplay of a certain mode, but the core that runs through the overall product, whether it is a sand table or an exploration in the city, whether it is PVE or PVP, it is based on this set of battles with RTS logic.

It shows the team's confidence in this core gameplay.

02

Concept aligned with experience:

On the interstellar battlefield, the insect tide is coming

After talking about the gameplay, let's talk about the theme.

The theme of science fiction, frankly speaking, is not unpopular in China, but I don't know if it is the reason for "The Wandering Earth", most of the products are hard science fiction, to talk about the universe and starships and other grander levels.

The Star Era team felt that these content concepts had a high aesthetic threshold for users, and they wanted to go a more popular route, like the Devouring of the Stars.

The game is set in the background of the alien human and insect wars, compared to the vast but dark universe, or the Three Kingdoms theme that can only be made of natural scenery due to realism, "Star Era", which focuses on the planetary ecology, will be easier to make visual differentiation.

In addition, these people who came out of the ancestral dragon are already good at using the Unreal Engine 4. Compared with "Under the Ambition", which is restricted by the historical background, the science fiction planet "Star Era" will also be more suitable for the PBR rendering of Unreal Engine in terms of art style.

In my opinion, "Star Age" not only relies on Unreal Engine, which has made enough art quality, but also more stylized than in the past, and some of the characters are quite interesting, such as this super agent.

At the same time, the team also made some more pleasing designs this time, such as this little robot that is a bit silly.

What is commendable is that the so-called sci-fi planet or human-insect war in the game is not just gimmick material used to absorb volume, but content that is strongly related to gameplay. In fact, most of the PVE or GVE gameplay in the game is based on this point.

In the inner part of the city, players need to fend off the insect tide through troops and defense towers, and enjoy the thrill of mowing the grass while also getting the fun of tower defense games. And this can be regarded as a disguised increase in the gameplay value of the SLG urban construction part, rather than a simple art performance.

Outside the city, players can also join forces with other players to fight against large world bosses. These bosses not only look at the comprehensive combat power of the alliance, but also test the division of labor and cooperation of players - they need to operate a certain number of movement dodge skills, attack different parts of the boss respectively, and players also have to deal with some special mechanisms of the boss, such as injury resistance, nurse, fire, etc.

To put it simply, in addition to the SLG's regular teaming and siege strategy, the core of the game is this set of RTS battles. The team has even simplified the team's in-game teaming from 3 players with 9 skills to 2 players with 6 skills in order to make players more focused on RTS gameplay - you must know that this set of formulas established since "The Shore of the Land" has not been changed for more than a decade.

"Star Era" is really daring for the sake of differentiation.

03

Core Experience Acceleration:

No selling resources, no marching

Of course, having said so much, SLG is still a category with long-term operations in the final analysis, so no matter how beautiful the gameplay and art theme of the game look, it is still possible to encounter Waterloo in a certain version in the future, and then collapse.

"The Age of the Stars" is obviously prepared this time.

One is the subject matter. The main planet exploration of the game will have more imagination space in long-term operation. The game will be followed by different themed planets according to different seasons. Each planet has different art settings, physics rules, landmark environments, monsters, ...... It will be easier to bring freshness to players.

And the game can also be more daring in terms of linkage, making gimmicky scenes such as M78 Nebula vs. Ultraman, Cybertron Star Gun vs. Megatron.

This content undoubtedly provides breadth to the experience of the game. Even from the perspective of buying volume, these settings can be called convenient.

As for the social part, the game has also made a lot of new things according to the theme and gameplay, for example, in addition to the GVG national war, it will emphasize more GVE gameplay, in addition to the boss battle just mentioned, there are also different levels of multiplayer experience such as big sand table cart escort, map ore grabbing, stronghold battle, hub battle, etc.

The core gameplay based on RTS logic makes the "regular gameplay" of these SLGs more variable, and then ensures the depth of the game experience.

After the gameplay experience has breadth and depth, the product naturally needs to shorten the path for players to contact and enjoy the gameplay.

Therefore, in terms of reducing the liver and reducing the burden, the game chooses not to sell resources, not to sell urban construction acceleration, as long as the base upgrade resources are enough, it can rise in seconds, no need to wait; Compared with the traditional rate of soil like, it lowers the threshold for gameplay, improves combat efficiency, and can be freely teleported in the alliance territory, shortening the marching time.

These actions are designed to allow players to focus more on the fun of RTS combat.

Judging from the results of the two test recruitments, the game has indeed attracted a group of RTS players, including KOLs in the RTS field such as Interstellar Old Boys, who not only experienced it themselves, but also brought the interstellar player group to the game.

And the successful release experience of Ruyi Jingxiu in "World Qiyuan" is estimated to be applied to this product, such as linkage. At present, the product has opened linkage negotiations with the "Nantianmen Plan", and perhaps the follow-up will see the "domestic science fiction weapon" landing in the product.

Referring to the success of "World Qiyuan" "Zhuge Liang borrowed Dongfeng 3 missile", "Star Era" may also be able to borrow "Dongfeng".

Of course, frankly speaking, from the perspective of the market after the fact, products that focus on RTS logic usually encounter great challenges, because the threshold of real-time operation is really impossible to ignore, and higher requirements are put forward for the player's online, team command, and instantaneous judgment.

But if you look at it from a previous perspective, perhaps because of this, "Age of the Stars" has enough outstanding differentiation to become a new product worth looking forward to. Even realistically, in today's fiercely competitive market, you can only have a chance to succeed if you challenge what others have not done.

After all, how can there be a low-hanging fruit that can be picked without taking a little risk?

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