Dream back to 13 years ago! Is the mobile game “Obi Island” that topped the App Store on its first day fun?

On July 12, the mobile game "Obi Island: Dreamland" was officially launched, and it topped the App Store free game list on the first day. It was another childhood memory killing after the mobile game "Moore Manor".

The page game "Obi Island" was launched in September 2008, and it has been almost 14 years now. It has more than 300 million registered users, and the highest monthly active users exceed 11 million.

Asked a circle of editorial colleagues, but no one knew about this game, presumably because I was a few years younger than them.

Children who landed on Obi Island 13 years ago have grown up, graduated, and worked. Can the mobile game version bring them back to their childhood?

Casual mobile game, a little tired to play

The official positioning of this mobile game is "a casual community development game with simple gameplay", suitable for users aged 12 and above.

The first thing to enter is to create a character interface. Obi's inverted triangle bangs are still there, and the style of the page game is no longer, there is no original "bear" look. However, the page game version also turns bears into people, and the traditional image of Little Obi is already the tears of the times.

Then enter the main line of the simulation business game, and start various tasks around factors such as decoration, dressing, farming, and socializing.

After some experience, I feel that it is not "leisure" enough, and it is much more purposeful than playing page games when I was a child.

What players have to do during the wasteland reclamation period is to farm and livestock in their homes, collect materials and fish in specific locations, and then use these things to make cooking, furniture, and clothes, and constantly upgrade their levels, unlock open spaces, expand islands, upgrade buildings, and decorate their homes. , and then do similar tasks, and so on.

There is no difficulty, and the liver is not even considered. I feel that I am numbly completing the task, and there is no emotional "stimulus".

The intuitive feeling is that the task process is a constant wait.

There is a task to milk a cow 5 times, the cow can be milked once every 5 minutes, and the level is only enough to raise 2 cows, so it takes 15 minutes to complete the task.

In addition, it took 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute, and 20 seconds to wait for the cherry tree, bear melon, blueberry, and quinoa to ripen, respectively.

Don't forget that more than one material is often used when making an item or fulfilling an order, which means it takes a lot of time, repeatedly planting crops and waiting for them to mature.

In addition to the time it takes to plant, basic materials such as "cedar wood" are used very frequently. Although they can be quickly transmitted to the collection point, there are always unhappy loading screens that appear.

Some materials can be bought directly with money in the market, but you can only buy them once within a certain period of time, and then enter the "skill cooldown".

At the same time, gathering materials, harvesting crops, etc. requires physical energy (called "fatigue value" in the game).

Upgrading can increase the upper limit of fatigue value, and the fatigue value of the next day will be restored to full, but the fatigue value of the day can only be eliminated by eating, sleeping, krypton gold, and in-game items, and it will not automatically recover offline.

Krypton gold is naturally the most trouble-free. If you choose to eat, you can’t rely on your own hard-working hands. You must go to someone else’s house to eat. If you choose to sleep, you must stare at your character and lie on the bed to slowly eliminate the fatigue value, and nothing else. can not do this.

Krypton Gold solves not only the fatigue value, but all tasks can be skipped with one key of "Crystal Drill". When players are doing novice tasks, the system gives crystal diamonds very generously, but some players report that after the tenth level, crystal diamonds earn very little, and it takes krypton gold to take shortcuts.

There are no shortcuts in the world, and neither can casual games, which either cost you your time or earn your money.

In addition to the main line, there are still some details.

In 2022, there are only two orientations for placing furniture, plants, and animals, that is, a 90-degree turn.

Some tasks require the participation of 2 or more people, such as two-person repeated emoticons and small games of shaking soda, which are not very friendly to social terror players/lone wolf players.

The krypton gold orientation is also quite obvious. The clothing store has gold coin clothes, but the entrance is not direct. The most conspicuous department store on the main interface has a row of pink diamond clothes.

In addition, there are different types of easter egg raffles, similar to the ten consecutive SSR draws, which are divided into gold coin clothing, love clothing, crystal diamond clothing, and a limited number of free opportunities. Crystal diamond eggs are once every 48 hours, and gold coin eggs are three times a day. Large clothes and furniture have a relatively low drop rate, and are basically accessories such as shoes and floor tiles, which are very consistent with the profit routine of mobile games.

More experiences require level unlocking, such as unlocking the pet function around level sixteen.

The best memories, stay in childhood

One thing to say, in the emotional part, "Obi Island: Dreamland" can do well.

It retains the original Obi Plaza, Taobao Street, Aoki Forest, Orbis Snow Mountain and other scenes in the map.

In Orbis Snow Mountain, take a cable car to the top of the mountain; in Taobao Street, play seesaw with strangers; in Friendship Manor, make a wish in the pool; in Aoki Forest, click on the turtle statue three times a day, and you will get 5 "Lost Crystals".

Friends visit each other, irrigate the friendship tree, and remove insects from the apple tree.

NPCs are also familiar faces. Auntie W, editor-in-chief of "Obi Weekly", fashion designer Xiaoye, furniture designer Pan Pan, bearded uncle, navigator Longwa… But chatting with them in order to gain goodwill is still a bit boring. "Skip" the expressionless location is the best option.

On the whole, "Obi Island: Dreamland" is a decent casual game. The task is not difficult, but it is slightly cumbersome and repetitive, especially the constant collection of the same materials. The experience of krypton gold will be much better, but there is no need for krypton, it is somewhat related to feelings, but it is also expected, suitable for Buddhist players with childlike innocence.

"Obi Island: Dreamland" plays a clear emotional card, and it may not serve the current children. After all, minor users can only play on Friday or Saturday. The users it wants to attract should be the Obi Islanders in the page tour era.

The best time for Obi Island was when I was a kid.

Before playing web games, I rarely stayed at "home", and I didn't even have the impression of farming and decorating.

Breed mutant animals in the zoo, make a wish to the drifting bottle in Dingdong Creek, throw out the hook and wait for the big fish, serve the plate in the restaurant, and play the endless Obi Picking Star (my favorite little game back then) ), a happy half day passed.

I don't think about what purpose I can achieve, I just drill wherever it's fun, just like playing a collection of 4399 or 7K7K games.

I don't just play Obi Island, I also play Rock Kingdom, Moore Manor, and Purcell. Rooted in web games, business simulation, virtual social networking, entertainment activities do not know whether it is rich or lacking. To put it in a more fashionable way, they are metaverse societies.

After saying goodbye to the page game " Obi Island" for about ten years, I paid attention to the current situation of the page game because of the mobile game. I heard that it was changed beyond recognition. The wind is becoming more and more exaggerated, and the means of attracting gold are becoming more and more abundant.

The nostalgic factor of the mobile game "Obi Island" has not yet allowed me to really return. Just to compare the fun of the gameplay, there are also many options for business games.

The so-called "enjoying simple happiness" is also about the right time and place. The era is no longer that era, the game is no longer that game, and I am no longer that me.

"Guyu Lab" once reported a story that two young people who had never met before met in the form of two bears on Obi Island more than ten years ago, and then they had no contact until one of them found a piece of each other. Contributed to Weibo, and then the two added friends on Tieba and contacted WeChat.

This Weibo, which happened to be related to childhood, contributed to an Internet-style romance. The story is almost over here, there is no more dramatic development, they run their own lives as always, this is the normal state of life.

Can the page games that have been eliminated by the times go upstream with mobile games?

In recent years, there have been many nostalgic games of "Page Tour to Mobile Tour". Last year's Children's Day, the mobile game "Moore Manor" was launched; the 2021 Tencent Games annual conference officially announced the mobile game "Rock Kingdom", which will be built by the original IP team, and the launch time is still far away.

What’s interesting is that the publishers of the mobile game “Moore Manor” and the mobile game “Obi Island” are Thunder Games. Back then, the page game versions of these two games were very powerful . One was a forest fantasy and the other was an island style. in the same way.

In 2009, "Moore Manor" ranked first in the number of children in junior high school and below in the community dating website; than 29.5% .

At that time, game resources and Internet access were limited . I still remember that in the computer class in elementary school, we were all racing against time to play these web games.

Within a few years, the situation took a turn for the worse. "Hedgehog Commune" reported that after 2015, the Baidu Index of major children's web games has fallen sharply, and almost no products can exceed 100,000, most of which are less than one-tenth of the peak period.

At the same time, in 2014, the number of users of mobile games in China increased by 62.3% compared with 2013, and the total number reached 504 million . "Daily Cool Running" was the most popular mobile game of the year.

The decline of children's page games is not only related to the change of media technology and the advent of the mobile wave, but also because of the homogeneity and lack of competitiveness of children's page games. "Entertainment Capital" makes an interesting point:

The reason why young players are willing to play is not because of the game mechanics, but because, in the era when everyone competed with whoever had more QQ sun, the social relationship in reality continued in the network, and even a shallow experience of society in the game The composition of the division of labor is indeed a cool thing.

But social relationships have already changed with age. In an increasingly atomized society, we no longer gather together like elementary school students. There are new ways to play and socialize. Competitive mass games meet to open black, buyout games are mowing alone. Cut to the cool, role-playing games play the plot flow, the only thing in childhood has become the indispensable thing now.

Losing the social advantages of primary school players in those days means that mobile games based on childhood IP have to deal with two problems at the same time. One is to have nostalgic factors and not destroy childhood; the other is that the gameplay must be sustainable, and it is best to innovate. These two points are even somewhat contradictory.

But from the current point of view, on the one hand, the plot is younger, on the other hand, it is a task that is more purposeful but not more interesting, coupled with krypton gold means such as card drawing, "Obi Island: Dreamland" and other mobile games do not have too different.

"Moore Manor", which was launched on Children's Day last year, became popular for a while. Because of "too many bugs" and "monotonous and boring gameplay" , it has now disappeared from the crowd. The attention of the mobile game of Obi Island is not as good as that of Moore Manor.

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