To be honest, I was bored and browsing the app store last night before going to bed. I saw the game "Fairy Tales" with a very eye-catching icon, so I downloaded it and played it for two hours. As an old player who came from the Saipan era, I suddenly felt a little emotional while playing - the changes in mobile games in the past ten years are simply faster than cultivating immortals😅.
I'm not going to brag about it, but the current mobile game graphics are really nothing to say. A game like "Fairy Tales" has exquisite character modeling, blinding light and weapon special effects, and a mount that can fly with wings. It would have been unimaginable on the Nokia N95 ten years ago. At that time, we were playing Snake, Arkanoid, or the pixel style of "Prince of Persia". Being able to play well depends entirely on brainstorming. Now this game also has a weather system and NPC interactive tasks. Although the essence is still the same as killing monsters and upgrading, at least the form is more immersive.
However, if you play it too much, you will feel that most Xianxia mobile games are just skin-changing battles. "Fairy Dream" is no exception - cross-server PK, marriage system, fashionable mounts, these routines are used in nine out of ten games in the past five years. If you say it's not good, it really makes people feel good; if you say it's good, it still feels like it's missing a bit of the freshness of the past. The paid model is free, which is quite conscientious. After all, there is a 648 card drawing pool at every turn. It is friendly to light players to have a zero-threshold Xianxia game experience.
I think the mobile game industry has reached a bottleneck period now. Technology has improved, but gameplay innovation has slowed down. Everyone is more willing to copy mature templates that have been proven, such as Xianxia's automatic pathfinding, one-click hangup, krypton gold to become stronger, and then add a bunch of social systems to retain people. From a business point of view, after all, making money is the core; but from a player point of view, sometimes I really miss the small and beautiful games of the Saipan era - the process is short but complete, there is no mall and no physical limit, and you can be extremely satisfied by hiding in bed at night and playing one level.
Games like "Fairy Tales" are essentially tailor-made for today's fast-paced era. You don't need to spend too much thought, go online and follow the missions, fight monsters, level up, see the dazzling wings and mounts, brag with friends in the fairy alliance, or find a fairy companion to complete the dungeon together - it meets the needs of social interaction and relaxation. I think the developers also know that most players now don't have that much time to delve into complex systems, so they simply make the experience straightforward.
However, as a veteran player, I still hope that the industry can have more different voices. For example, try to be more purely plot-driven, or simplify the values so that equipment and level no longer determine everything. Of course, this may be wishful thinking. After all, even I have passed the age where I was willing to stay up all night to research bugs, and now I play games more for fun. Like last night when I played "Fairy Dream", although I knew its routines, I still felt quite comfortable watching the dazzling skills on the screen and flying in the clouds on that unicorn mount😌.
In the past ten years of mobile gaming, from Symbian's pixel art to the current 4K Xianxia, technological progress is visible to the naked eye. But feelings are like old wine, they become more fragrant with age. It's good to play new games occasionally and see what new tricks the industry has come up with. Finally, if you have any recommendations for better Xianxia games, please leave a message to share, and I will try something else. After all, these days, there are really fewer and fewer mobile games that can make people calm down and play.