Text: Yan Jinyan

The card market, which used to be the most profitable and the easiest to give birth to popular styles, is really getting harder and harder to do.

In the past, with a good IP and a "delicate" numerical design, a card could easily earn hundreds of millions of dollars a month. But now that masterpieces are coming out frequently, players' pursuit of high-quality content is getting higher and higher, and traditional numerical beauty is no longer the mainstream; If you just want to experience short, flat, fast, and pure numerical happiness, mini games have become a new choice for many users.

So much so that everyone says that the card category is not as good as it used to be, and even if it doesn't change, it's not far from death.

But how? In recent years, many so-called strategy card products have tried to use multi-play stacking and increasing the proportion of content to break through, but in the end, there are still very few that come out.

And today, there is another card product in public beta, which is "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence" by SGRA Silver Heart, a studio owned by Tencent Northern Light.

This product is also considered to be fateful. In 2023, when it was launched overseas, there was no product of the same type on the market, it vigorously bet on content, expanded the world map exploration, and the gameplay was also innovated for the core cycle of strategy cards, and the game once topped the free and best-selling lists in more than ten regions, cutting 98 million turnover in the first month.

But it didn't take long for it to encounter the adjustment of the byte game business, and finally transferred to Tencent, and it was not until now that it finally ushered in the national server.

Through the launch of the national server of "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence", we may be able to see the next direction of card products, and at the same time, it is also trying to answer a question: In the current market environment, is it possible for the small category to break through?

01

The sense of quality is a science

In my opinion, the so-called "small category" of orthodox Western fantasy is far larger than the inherent impression in the industry. Of course, it's not easy to please these players, they have eaten too many good things on PC and console, and if you don't taste authentic, no one will pay for it.

Therefore, in the past, many manufacturers did not dare to invest in the realistic track, so as to choose a safer route of Japan, South Korea and Western fantasy. But "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence" just wants to rely on quality to eat this group of users.

The most intuitive thing is art. In the past, many games said that it was Western Fantasy, but it didn't look right at first glance. It's either a Q version of the cartoon, or it's a Japanese and Korean style of magic to Western fantasy, especially the one that Korean MMOs like very much, the characters pay too much attention to beauty, the picture is greasy, and the dark style and seriousness of the Western fantasy theme itself are lost.

The art design of "Dragon's Breath: Silence" was obviously not affected by the "Internet celebrity style", and it still took a purely realistic route. I can't say how "good-looking" these characters are, after all, you don't often use that word to describe a lizardman or minotaur, but anyway, when you look at it, you think it's the right thing to do - maybe that's why the game has gained a lot of popularity overseas.

In terms of the construction of the big world, there are now six large maps in "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence". Forests, deserts, seabed and other areas correspond to different architectural styles and races, for example, Misty Town mainly renders the gloomy and dark atmosphere where the undead are located, and Dragon's Breath City corresponds to the development of human civilization. Combined with a top-down perspective and realistic painting style, this should also attract many players of dark IPs.

A while ago, "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence" also officially announced the linkage with the palace-level western fantasy IP "Dungeons and Dragons" (D&D), the latter's classic rival characters, Trist and Ertu, will join "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence" in the form of hero characters and dungeon bosses respectively.

I don't think it goes without saying much, even if you don't know D&D in detail, you have probably heard of its profound influence on modern Western culture, not only creating the game of running a group, but also influencing countless games and literary works later. Before this, D&D had never had a similar licensing linkage with mobile games, which should be enough to show that "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence" has been recognized by the "ancestors" in terms of theme expression.

Western fantasy lovers know how good this linkage is

Of course, I also once doubted that it was really necessary for them to put so much energy into the niche track of Western fantasy to throw resources into the niche track of the Western fantasy theme? But now it seems that the biggest difference between "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence" and other card products is the quality of their content.

02

Neither fighting nor nurturing can be left behind

Of course, no matter how well the packaging and content of a strategy card RPG is, the optimization and innovation of the core experience is the key. In recent years, many cards have begun to take the route of multi-game stacking, such as card + tower defense, card + game, etc., in an attempt to bypass the core contradiction in various ways, but it is difficult to operate in the long run.

Faced with the same dilemma, "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence" chose a slightly over-the-top method - more and more weight.

In terms of combat, Dragon's Breath: Silence is not only not a simple set of numerical collisions like traditional cards, but it also builds a set of playable build fun based on the traditional strategy card framework.

To put it simply, its lineup is similar to auto-chess, each hero has two tags for elements and genres, and all players have to do is to make up the number of heroes according to the tag to trigger the lineup bonus.

Among them, the bonds of the genre are easy to understand, for example, the summoning genre is a hero with a summon tag on the battlefield, and the summon can be summoned additionally at the beginning; The secondary genre is the opening full deck. When paired correctly, a lineup can trigger two Tether bonuses at the same time.

Elemental affinity, on the other hand, triggers bonuses based on the attributes of the hero elements in the lineup. In other words, when you want to think about bonds and make up elemental affinities, the permutations and combinations of heroes in your roster will increase exponentially.

A massive lineup of elemental bonds

At present, "Dragon's Breath: Silence" does not have a set of unsolvable lineups. During the second test, there was an anchor who held an all-gold card lineup with a combat power of 9w and lost to a blue and purple card lineup with only 2w combat power. Seeing this, you should also understand that one of the great pleasures of "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence" is to use the existing cards to form a lineup to deal with different scenarios, and achieve the following level of combat power through strategy.

In terms of development, Dragon's Breath: Silence adopts a far more liberal character development system than traditional strategy cards, with each hero's talent tree having multiple branches and unlimited growth paths. For example, Ihukart, the nurse in the game, if you choose the talent branch of the output, with the "Heavy Attack" set, and then match it with the character skill "A Little Retaliation", you can output damage explosion. Many players may be able to play for a long time for a single character, and a card can play different roles before the team is formed.

In the past, among the common card products in China, one of the major functions of the dungeon boss battle was numerical verification, and it is difficult for you to say how differentiated the experience of the battle is. The boss design of "Dragon's Breath: God's Silence" is more inclined to MMO, emphasizing the monster mechanic, which not only tests the character development, but also has strategic matching.

At present, there are more than 40 dungeons and bosses in the game, each with a different mechanic to play, and also produces a corresponding amount of development equipment and materials. A large number of dungeons and bosses are produced, building another pillar of cultivation in addition to talents.

The level mechanics and enemy configuration also test the character's positioning

If you want to farm your favorite equipment more efficiently, you need to adjust your lineup, character positioning, and even the timing of your skills as much as possible. This kind of delving into the dungeon boss play, as well as the experience of treasure farming, should be familiar to players of Warcraft and Dark. Of course, this amount of dungeon and the smell of brushes, most of the time, you can only see on console games.

Full of gram flavor......

03

Localization transformation of liver reduction and krypton

Before the launch of the national server, I was still worried about whether such a "export-to-domestic" team could re-adapt to the rhythm of domestic card games? As a result, they gave domestic card players a big deal before the server opened.

"Dragon's Breath: Silence" has launched a pre-draw card event with a lot of benefits. To put it simply, players can obtain the qualification of up to 300 draws in advance, and then choose 100 draws to generate a "prophecy code", which will be imported into the game account after the official open beta.

It is worth mentioning that under the dual niche track of Western Fantasy + strategy cards, the commercialization pressure of the game itself should not be small, but they still launched pre-drawn cards with high risks, which shows their determination to make profits. Of course, the more adventurous pre-draw card design is also to better meet the needs of domestic card players and leverage more users.

From the actual performance, this hits the pain point of the card category all along, and the seemingly reckless amount of benefits dwarfs many card delivery activities of the same product, and it has attracted a large number of card users.

After the pre-draw card activity was launched, it quickly appeared on the hot search of TapTap and Xianyu, and a good "prophecy code" can already be sold for hundreds of yuan. It's been a long time since I've seen this formation on a strategy card product.

The latter is even more rare

Judging from the current performance of "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence",It should want to take the route of reducing liver and krypton,On the one hand,Its single draw price is lower than the same product,The game's blue and purple cards are as powerful,Even they are the core of many genre lineups,This can at least ensure that you don't spend too much on card drawing,The payment model is more friendly to small and medium-sized R。

On the other hand, "Dragon's Breath: Silence" is also trying to reduce the liver level in terms of cultivation, and its hero resonance mechanism is more open than similar card products, and all hero levels follow the hero with the fastest progress - you only need to increase the level of one hero.

Many Blue and Purple cards have the same core mechanics as Gold cards

04

epilogue

Finally, back to the discussion at the beginning of the article: Is it possible for the small category to break through?

The answer given by "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence" is: first achieve the ultimate in the category track, and when you reach the top of the track, you will be able to explode with the growth of the market in the future. And this is also the direction that many small and medium-sized teams have agreed with and chosen one after another.

When the Western Fantasy mobile game market was still blank, "Dragon's Breath: Silence" had insight into the needs of segmented players, rolled up the quality of content, and made a long-term playable gameplay.

Compared to the same type of products that are just blindly piling up content, "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence" has now delivered a good tone, and you can see that this is a group of people who understand Western fantasy and are seriously making content. Even in the European and American markets, which are extremely strict with Western fantasy, it has also gained a group of core fans. When the overseas server was taken off the shelves, many players left messages in the community to sigh.

In China, although the Western fantasy theme seems to be niche, and most people may not know about D&D, the level of players in Warcraft and Dark, as well as the topic popularity of "Baldur's Gate 3", also shows that the Western fantasy theme and gameplay itself have potential.

Nowadays, if you want to compete in the stock market, you must either be extremely vertical or extremely inclusive. "Dragon's Breath: Divine Silence" has achieved "deep cultivation of small tracks", and it is not impossible to cultivate a large enough market in the future.

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