news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

During my long years of gaming, I have played at least 800 games, and among these vast number of games, tower defense games have never been my main game, but perhaps due to fate, they have accompanied me through every stage of my gaming career.

Take my high school days for example. When I was living in the school dormitory, I would climb over the wall and sneak out to play "DOTA" all night whenever I had the chance. After a few games, I was tired of playing and yelling, so someone would start organizing a game of Warcraft RPG in the second half of the night. The most popular games at that time were "Legion War" and "Tower Defense TD". This kind of tower defense gameplay does not require much operation and is also very interesting to play.

Just before, I became addicted to the hybrid version of "Plants vs. Zombies". I would slack off in a small window every day at work. I have to say that this thing is addictive and addictive to play. A day would pass by unknowingly while I was playing, and then I would happily clock out and go home after getting the boss's gold coins.

Now that World of Warcraft is about to reopen in China, my forgotten memories of the Warcraft RPG have inevitably been awakened. Although it is not difficult to download the game and play it now, the wonderful experience of playing with strangers in an Internet cafe is really gone. In addition, there are too few new tower defense games on the market, so I have to temporarily say goodbye to this game type that I love so much.

Just when I was mentally prepared for "no tower defense games to play for a while in the future", I accidentally discovered a Western fantasy-themed tower defense game called "Tide Watcher" while watching short videos. This game not only has very good graphics, but also seems to have a lot of gameplay, which instantly made me interested in trying it out.

Flowers bloom inside the wall, and the fragrance spreads outside the wall

Although many domestic players may not have heard of it, "Tide Watcher" created by Moonton Technology is actually not a new game. Not only was this game launched overseas last year, but its revenue in the first month exceeded 70 million, ranking 10th on the free download list in more than 60 countries, and it is also the first on the download list of both German and French platforms.

In addition to being enthusiastically sought after by overseas players as soon as it was launched, the game is also well-known in terms of reputation. The game's CG has been viewed more than 10 million times, and 50 gaming media have reviewed and promoted it. Even its stunning appearance can be seen at the highly anticipated IFA game show in Berlin.

So, at a time when the gameplay of each game category is becoming more and more rigid, how can this game achieve such impressive results in the fiercely competitive overseas market and be both critically acclaimed and commercially successful?

The revenue trend of Watcher of Realms since its launch, from Diandian Data

After personal experience, I found the answer to this question.

First of all, it is not difficult to see that the selling point of the game "Tide Watchers" lies in its visual effects. It has both a pure Western fantasy style and excellent picture quality. The development team of the game has magnified and utilized these two advantages very well, making it extremely special among the piles of second-hand games on the market.

Regarding the subject matter, this game does not simply rely on Western fantasy themes to differentiate itself. In fact, in order to make the game's story and characters have depth, the official has specially constructed a detailed Western fantasy epic story for "Tidewatch", and incorporated settings related to vampires, steampunk and Cthulhu into the background of the story. Therefore, players can not only experience the charm of the collision of multiple elements, but also the intricate forces and the various stories behind the characters are also worth savoring.

This kind of detailed background setting is not a one-off deal. In order to support the huge game content, the official will not only launch distinctive characters based on the factions and camps in the game from time to time, but will also release some settings and materials related to the game's world view and plot from time to time.

Although it is costly to build a rich worldview, it is of great benefit to a Western fantasy game. It will not only directly attract curious players to try it, but also make the characters in the game become flesh and blood. The previous popularity of "Baldur's Gate 3" was largely due to this. Now "Tidewatch" has chosen to delve deeper into this, and it is obvious that it has also seen these benefits.

Of course, a theme alone is not enough to attract the majority of players. In fact, this game has a very strong visual expression, which is also the fundamental reason why it can shine overseas.

"Tidewatch" not only uses a 3D realistic style, presenting hundreds of characters in the game in the form of CG animation, but also allows players to rotate the characters 360 degrees in the game to view every detail.

Not only the characters, this game is also a master class in scene design. Each scene in the game not only fits the background of the game, but also has many differences in mechanism. It brings a sense of freshness while also building a very good stage for combat gameplay.

Judging from the results, "Tide Watcher" has good strength in terms of overall picture effects, mission modeling accuracy and macro scene design. It is no exaggeration to say that it is far ahead in the industry. This can directly give the game an unparalleled sense of immersion and ritual, allowing players to feel the happiness brought by the "double BUFF" of sensory stimulation and emotional value during the game.

In addition, the theme of the game itself is very unique, and its style is very much to the taste of European and American players. It is extremely conspicuous in the market full of second-hand games. Therefore, it is both unexpected and reasonable that it has won the favor of players so quickly in the overseas market and achieved the feat of "blooming inside the wall and smelling fragrant outside the wall".

Overcoming difficulties in gameplay differentiation

Having said that, Tidewatch is not just a framework built on themes and audio-visual experience, it also has good performance in strategy and gameplay. If it had taken a popular path, I don’t think it would be able to maintain such a high popularity today, one year after its overseas launch.

In the tower defense area, players don't just throw heroes along the path they have to take and call it a day. Instead, concepts such as "blocking", "unit direction", and "skill release value" are incorporated. The official also added real-time combat elements to some modes, which greatly enhances the richness of the strategy.

On this basis, the game also tries to reduce the size of the game map as much as possible, and adds various interesting mechanisms to the design of the map and enemy units, in order to lower the threshold of the game as much as possible, while also making scenes such as deserts, dungeons, mountains, ancient ruins, etc. not just "superficial", but truly integrated into the gameplay, becoming a key link in determining the outcome of the battle.

The strategic depth and strong playability of Tidewatch are not only achieved through design, but I also found that the lineup building system of the game is also very interesting. Since there are up to 10 camps in the game, there can be a synergy effect between camp members and captain characters (that is, some characters set as camp leaders will bring additional bonuses to characters in the same camp in the team when they serve as captains), so players must take this set of bonuses into consideration when building a lineup, and also consider the professional positioning of the characters.

These alone have made the formation of the lineup in Tidewatch more varied, but the game has also added an additional dual-captain mechanism, which means that players can bring two teams from different camps into battle. This undoubtedly further enriches the strategic depth of the game, giving players a lot more aspects to consider when forming a team.

For players, these mechanisms that exist to increase the depth of strategy can actually all be utilized. The flexible lineup matching method allows players to use epic heroes and legendary heroes to pass the difficult levels in the later stages. This kind of "high-low matching" method can accomplish the feat of "low combat power to win the difficult level", leaving players with more than one way to pass the level by strategy.

In terms of more specific gameplay, the gameplay of "Tidewatch" is a deep combination of tower defense and RPG, thus creating a variety of gameplay modes with different rules.

According to my actual gaming experience, this game not only has campaigns to promote the main storyline and character growth, obtain core resources and challenge higher-difficulty dungeons, as well as rich basic gameplay such as mowing the lawn and climbing towers, competing for the overall server ranking, but also derivative gameplay such as "Oracle Battle" and "Magic Army Expedition" are also endless fun.

Take the "Demon Army Expedition" gameplay for example. In this mode, players will "turn the tide" and become the attackers of the tower defense, sending their own monster army to attack the tightly defended positions; and in the "Book of Leaders" gameplay, players will face the attacks of BOSS with different mechanisms...

For those social players, Tidewatch also provides arena, guild war, ranking competition and other gameplays, which can be said to provide a stage for players to compete with each other. For example, in the guild war gameplay, players can DIY their own defense lineup, or use their own "monster" lineup to attack the defense lineup of other players, which is full of game fun.

Although these multiplayer modes are slightly inferior in content and variety to the above-mentioned single-player modes, the official has promised to launch more related content in the future. Moreover, with the example of foreign servers, there is no need to worry too much about this.

So, on the whole, a strategy tower defense game like "Tidekeepers" with a unique theme, rich gameplay, and the feature of "play and stop" may be the way for us old men who can't play MMO to experience the classics. At least I have enjoyed a lot from this game.

Conclusion

Whether from the perspective of subject matter, graphics, strategy or richness of gameplay, "Tidewatch" is a good game. We, the old players who were addicted to Warcraft RPG in the past, can now find some of the happy times of the past through it, which in itself is very gratifying.

Now, as the official Moonton has chosen to introduce it to China, it can be regarded as giving this masterpiece, which has already proven its strength abroad, an opportunity to release greater energy. At present, the Chinese server of this game has opened reservations on all platforms. Interested players may wish to participate and try it out!