【Game-Time News】
Many people may still remember “Double Helix” which debuted in October last year. With super high art quality, impressive character modeling, and gorgeous combat special effects, the first PV of “Double Helix” has been played more than 3.3 million times on Bilibili so far, and the number of TapTap reservations and followers have exceeded 24 10,000, Haoyou Kuaibao players’ expectation value is more than 9.0 points.
It is not difficult to understand why players pay so much attention to “Double Helix”. On the one hand, born out of the art team of “The Book of Fantasy”, the art quality of “Double Spiral” is indeed very impressive (as rumors say, the main artist of “The Story of the Book of Fantasy” is the Tenfold Bear). people); on the other hand, looking at such a large two-dimensional category, there are few products that focus on the action mowing experience.
On March 27, this two-dimensional combat adventure game developed by Pan Shen Studio, a subsidiary of Hero Games, released a technical test PV and started its first test. With curiosity about “two-dimensional lawn mowing”, Game Top experienced this game for the first time.
After playing the game for a few hours, I had a vague feeling: “Double Helix” may have found a completely different idea from most new second-game products today. Its biggest revelation to the industry is that there is really no need to roll in only one direction for second games.
Experiencing each character is like tasting chocolate
To be honest, like many players, I was attracted by the art style of “Double Helix” at the first sight when I saw it last year. As for this technical test, the actual footage of “Double Helix” did show an art quality that is not inferior to that of the PV.
First of all, whether it is the magnificent city or the two villains encountered in the prologue, “Double Helix” not only maximizes the artistic power, but also renders a strong Western fantasy style and the overall style of the “Atlasia” continent. Then came the attack.
Secondly, as the top priority of the second game, “Double Helix” has created multiple self-contained characters with full stylization and different combat experiences. For example, the first character that players get started with is “Berenica”, who has a heroic appearance, and her usual weapon is a relatively common single sword.
“Berenica” is also the poster girl of this game
The petite Lolita character “Truffle” can ride a piggy after casting her ultimate move.
The royal sister character “Lynn” is good at attacking with two guns, and the passive mechanism is also related to the revolver.
“Psyche”, who appeared in the first PV, can use her ultimate move to continue flying and hit targets from the air.
Not only is the fighting style “Eight Immortals crossing the sea, each showing its magical powers”, but each character’s ultimate move performance is also unique. For example, the ultimate move animation of “Tabitha”, a girl who is good at using explosive long-range weapons, is to summon a group of tentacles; the ultimate move of “Yu Ming”, a handsome thunder-type adult, can call down thunder and lightning.
In addition, summoning and auxiliary characters are both played in the game, so I won’t go into details here. It is not difficult to see that “Double Helix” has created many male and female characters that players love to see through appearance and personality on the one hand, and on the other hand it has created a combat system that fits the character’s style, making the battle more exciting. The experience is more interesting and fresh.
There is a famous line in the movie “Forrest Gump”: “You never know what the next chocolate will taste like.” The “Double Helix” project team told us that Pan Shen Studio also hopes that the player’s experience is like A-Gump tasting chocolate. After players experience one character, they can’t wait to know what kind of combat experience the next character will have.
Easy-to-use, in-depth two-dimensional lawn mowing
While enhancing the experience of diverse characters, “Double Helix” obviously also intentionally lowers the threshold for getting started with the game.
Although it has two combat systems, melee and long-range, “Double Helix” is not very difficult to operate. Taking the PC version as an example, regardless of left-clicking to perform melee attacks, right-clicking can be used to perform long-range shooting without the need to aim and open the scope – even for an elderly shooter like me who has a poor hand in action games and a reflex arc longer than the equator. Players can operate it with ease.
Not only that, wall climbing, sliding shoveling, double jumping, and spiral leaping without physical limitations not only greatly increase the mobility of the character, but also make the combat experience more smooth, coherent, and hearty.
Even if players occasionally die due to mistakes, they can be reborn on the spot and rejoin the battle with the resurrection mechanism (limited to 3 times in a single battle), thus greatly reducing the cost of fighting again.
However, the simple and easy-to-understand combat system does not mean that “Double Helix” lacks depth at the operational level.
Due to combos (that is, accumulating combo points through continuous attacks, improving the combo level, and then performing charged attacks through heavy attacks, and increasing the combo level can further increase the damage of charged attacks), floating long-range shooting (shooting while jumping It can appropriately slow down the falling speed), falling attack and other mechanisms. The three-dimensional combat experience of “Double Helix” is quite exciting.
More importantly, based on the “multi-dimensional weapon combination”, each melee weapon has a separate attack module and other features. The character is equipped with halberds, sickles, two-handed swords, tachi, explosive weapons, shotguns, assault rifles, etc. With different types of melee and long-range weapons, the character’s combat style and tactical strategies will inevitably change accordingly.
It is conceivable that by properly using dodge, level A, heavy attacks, combat skills, and finishing moves, as well as using falling attacks and long-range shooting, more skilled players can perform dazzling operations and inflict tons of damage to the enemy.
Especially with the “Devil’s Wedge” system linked to the development of characters and weapons, players can build a combat style as they wish, and easily gain a grass-cutting experience on the battlefield.
All in all, the experience of “Double Helix” to me is very much like an unparalleled game that is not difficult to get started, but requires some effort to ponder. And if you are willing to spend time studying the game mechanics and honing the operations, the dopamine it brings will be overwhelming.
Some little surprises outside of the battle in the small garden
After talking about the combat part, you may have an uncontrollable question in your heart: apart from mowing grass, what else can you play in “Double Helix”?
But these contents are obviously not enough to support the entire gameplay of the game. Therefore, in addition to this, “Double Helix” seems to focus more on filling player time through copies of different modes such as exploration, danger avoidance, exploration, pursuit, guarding, and Boss challenges. .
Pan Shen Studio stated that in addition to the AI teammate system that is being balanced and tuned, the project team is also developing a multiplayer online mode. It is foreseeable that through character teaming, weapon matching, and genre combination, players are bound to have many chemical reactions in the online game.
Apart from the combat part, what impressed me the most during my short experience was an “impression system” that is somewhat similar to the team-running gameplay. To put it simply, some NPCs in the main city will provide several options when you meet them, and the players’ choices will initially determine their initial impression of you: “chaos”, “utility”, “morality”, “empathy”, “intelligence”, all kinds of NPCs This will ultimately form the overall impression of the town on the player.
Subsequently, these NPCs will provide a number of options that require dice decisions. Once the dice test is successful, they will explain some humanistic features and story background to the players, and at the same time, they can also unlock in-depth information about the NPC to the players.
Frankly speaking, due to limited experience time, I don’t have a deep enough understanding of the current actual function of the “Impression System”. However, according to the project team, the impression system will be a very important subsystem in “Double Helix”. Players’ choices will not only affect the acquisition of some resources, but may even influence the direction of some side plots.
Another example is the forging system, which can not only create tactical props and weapons and equipment common in combat games.
You can also make a variety of accessories that can change the appearance of the character – this is rare in second games where providing skins to change the appearance of the character is the mainstream method.
Be an “alien” in the two-dimensional game
As we all know, the domestic two-dimensional circuit has been too busy in recent years. All manufacturers that have accumulated a certain amount of experience in the secondary game category are doing their best to develop and focus on 3D action, big worlds, open worlds, and free exploration. There is no way, the market competition is too fierce, and major manufacturers have a lot of new products in reserve. Everyone is afraid that their products will fall behind in the competition for the next generation of second-tier products, so they put all their efforts into benchmarking leading products and aspire to be the best in the category.
But the question is, can today’s second-game market still carry so many similar products? Or to put it bluntly, do players still need so many competing products that are of high quality but show signs of homogeneity in their categories?
I think a player’s message under the PV released today for “Double Helix” can somewhat reflect the current dilemma of the two-dimensional category: We really need second games with different tracks and different gameplay.
From this point of view, compared with traditional second-game manufacturers, Pan Shen Studio, which started from scratch, does not have too much baggage – as a combat adventure game, it does not blindly pursue bigness and volume, and rush into the big world/ Instead of opening the door to the world, it is relatively wise to choose a subdivided track with more obvious differences and that few people have set foot on – box garden battle.
I guess Pan Shen Studio should know very well what kind of product they want to make, and also know their strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, they will be better able to control the path of fighting in the small garden. Allocate your own development resources.
I dare not say how outstanding the results “Double Helix” will be in the future, but at least for now, Pan Shen Studio should be able to go further along this road. As for how high it can reach in the future, it depends on the subsequent progress of the product.
