Chapter 153: Imperial Dynasty Interactive Internal Experience Exchange Lecture 3/17
After roughly explaining the design philosophy behind *Onmyoji*, Chen Mo began assigning tasks to the three of them.
In reality, after working on *Warcraft* and *The Legend of the Martial Heroes*, everyone was already very familiar with their respective responsibilities. Basically, Chen Mo didn’t need to say much; they all knew what to do.
Chen Mo then emphasized the story background of *Onmyoji*.
Actually, *Onmyoji* had an IP. Its source material was a novel of the same name by Japanese author Baku Yumemakura. However, this novel had very limited influence in China; its greatest value was that the stories within it formed the main plot framework for the *Onmyoji* game.
Of course, the original novel was quite lengthy, and Chen Mo didn’t need to reproduce the entire thing. He just had to write out the story outline for Zheng Hongxi to flesh out.
Additionally, the original *Onmyoji* was actually derived from folk tales of the Heian period, drawn from the *Konjaku Monogatari-shu*. The vast majority of its monsters and characters had real prototypes, so it wasn’t difficult for Su Jinyu and the other two to understand.
After the work was assigned, the three of them went off to handle their own tasks. Zheng Hongxi, in particular, was writing a Japanese-style storyline for the first time and needed to prepare a lot of material.
As for Chen Mo, he, as always, had to oversee the overall quality of the game.
Back at the studio, Chen Mo used a Memory Recall Potion and began producing the original art line drafts for the various onmyoji and shikigami in *Onmyoji*.
Abe no Seimei, Kagura, Minamoto no Yorimasa, and Yao Bikuni.
Great Tengu, Shuten Doji, Lord of Arakawa, and Ibaraki Doji…
In reality, *Onmyoji* continuously added new shikigami through subsequent version updates, eventually reaching nearly 100 shikigami—the so-called “Hyakki Yagyo” (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons).
But for the first version, there was no need to release that many shikigami. Around 70 would be enough to support the entire game’s content.
Following his memories from his previous life, Chen Mo first provided the design line drafts, positioning, and skills for each shikigami.
These were considered the core fun of *Onmyoji*. Its combat system was very rich, and each shikigami’s design perfectly matched its skills. In this regard, *Onmyoji*’s standard basically surpassed all other domestic card-based mobile games.
For example, Yuki-onna’s Blizzard, the three-tailed fox’s Crimson Fury, and Juzu’s Trickle. The skills perfectly aligned with the shikigami’s own design and backstory. Moreover, after consuming the same shikigami, skills could be upgraded. Combined with different soul sets, this made the overall lineup choices much more diverse.
One major feature of *Onmyoji* was that it was a content-driven product with an extremely distinct style and very high completion.
Strictly speaking, *Onmyoji*’s core wasn’t novel. At its essence, it was still a card game, and its gameplay was very similar to *Summoners War*.
In reality, *Summoners War* wasn’t considered a phenomenal mobile game in China, but its overall game framework was very complete.
*Onmyoji* didn’t make too many innovations in terms of stats or gameplay (aside from being more grind-heavy), but its success lay in the fact that it filled the game with a massive amount of content centered around the “Onmyoji” theme.
In terms of art, the UI, original paintings, and models were very refined and highly unified, giving the entire game a strong sense of immersion.
In terms of music, the background music and voice acting were of top-tier quality, making it easier for players to immerse themselves in the story.
In terms of storyline, it used the wonderful stories from the *Onmyoji* novel as a blueprint. Every character/monster had its own story. The actual animated cutscenes and text biographies of the onmyoji reached hundreds of thousands of words, and they were continuously being expanded.
Therefore, the true success of *Onmyoji* lay in its story and content. While other card-based mobile games were still stuck in the stage of “piggybacking on IPs,” “buying IPs,” or “forcibly applying IPs,” *Onmyoji* had achieved a high degree of unity between content and theme, reaching the level of “I am the IP.” This was the main reason it became a phenomenal card-based mobile game.
For Chen Mo, to create the *Onmyoji* game in the parallel world, he also had to grasp this point.
This game could be frustrating, it could be grind-heavy, it could have monotonous gameplay—these flaws didn’t matter. But the strengths had to be locked in, which was to make its content crush all other card-based mobile games.
…
While Chen Mo was busy creating *Onmyoji*, other designers weren’t idle either.
Imperial Dynasty Interactive Headquarters.
In the conference room, a PPT was being displayed on the projection screen. The title was “Experience Sharing on *Demon Slayer Calamity*,” and the speaker was Qiu Bin.
There were many people in the room, mostly B and C-level designers and assistants from within Imperial Dynasty Interactive. They were all listening intently, afraid of missing anything.
Qiu Bin looked to be in high spirits, speaking eloquently.
The *Demon Slayer Calamity* he had led the development of had reached a monthly revenue of 45 million yuan, dominating the top of the mobile game bestseller charts. In the mobile game field, his reputation had greatly increased, and his status within Imperial Dynasty Interactive had also risen.
The earlier bet with Chen Mo had nearly made him resign, but fortunately, Lin Zhaoxu gave him enough trust and let him lead the development of a game similar to *I Am MT*, which led to the explosion of *Demon Slayer Calamity*.
In fact, Qiu Bin was a relatively smart person. Although he lacked innovation, he was steady. After being defeated by *I Am MT*, he also delved into studying the success factors of *I Am MT*.
During the development and operation of *Demon Slayer Calamity*, Qiu Bin’s understanding of the core of *I Am MT* became increasingly thorough. Now, Qiu Bin was confident in saying that he should be the designer who understood the model of this type of card game the most thoroughly.
Of course, except for Chen Mo.
This time, Imperial Dynasty Interactive organized a lecture, hoping that Qiu Bin could popularize the experience gained from developing and operating *Demon Slayer Calamity* over the past year to other designers, further consolidating Imperial Dynasty Interactive’s advantage in the mobile game field.
On the podium, Qiu Bin spoke eloquently in front of the PPT.
“Regarding the core fun of card games, I’ve analyzed it before. It’s essentially about building the player’s recognition of card value. Of course, this is something that basically all designers who have studied card games can understand. So, how do we break out from the crowd of numerous card games?”
“For the successful experience of *Demon Slayer Calamity* and other similar card games, I’ve summarized three key words: fragmentation, low cost, and big IP.”
“The so-called fragmentation means that in terms of gameplay, we need to plan and limit the player’s playtime, try to reduce the player’s daily playtime, and at the same time break up large chunks of time, allowing players to make full use of fragmented time.”
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