Author：Gold miner Ziming Wang

Contents

1. Highlights Design

1.1 Gathering and Battle in the Dark

Gathering and fighting, both gameplays individually evaluated are just ordinary gameplay designs. But the combination of the two, coupled with the low visibility environmental conditions, a tight and slow alternating mind flow experience is the greatest fun of this game. Players need to find the vein in the dark mines, there will be a small number of monsters interfering on the way, after finding the vein there will be many monsters attacking, and players need to cooperate to fend off the enemy, repeated several times to complete the task, players need to kill out of the siege in a limited time to board the return ship.

In the dark environment, players can use glowing bottles to briefly illuminate the area to observe the exact location of the target vein or the enemy, feeding information to players from the visual layer. Monsters in the darkness make small sounds, which is information gathered from the auditory layer. Players can only pass the game if they continue to collect valid information and work together as a team.

1.2 Occupational Division of Role

The character profession design of excellent games will make players have the feeling of “if only there were XX roles” in the process of playing.

In this game, the player needs the following four kinds of abilities: gathering, drilling, lighting, and fighting, which also correspond to the four roles in this game. Each role has its direction of expertise and performs much better in that direction than the others.

Many games with excellent role design, such as League of Legends, APEX, Rainbow Six, etc., their games examine the player’s ability of much more than four kinds, and each ability also has its tendency (for example, the portal of Waith in APEX, although there are risks in the release process, once the portal is established successfully, the players can transfer in both directions, while ASH’s portal is one-way, once the attack fails. (it means there is no return)

1.3 Season Pass Optional Rewards

Complete the season task can get season tokens, players can choose a route of their main playing profession to choose the desired accessories (similar to the experience of self-selected gifts), and the nodes of the route can get the materials to train the equipment and improve the combat power of the role.

2. Improvement Scenarios

2.1 Guidance

2.1.1 Newbie Guidance

This game has poor newbie guidance: players land in a dark mine, and the first thing they are instructed to do is move, throw light bottles, and jump, these are the right guidance, and soon the problem arises: mining gold.

Players who have played this game know that in the dark cave, the material of the minerals will be ambient light “coloring”, sometimes it is not easy to identify, not to mention the ore is not even seen to look like the newbie period. Therefore, I was stuck in the “collect gold” guidance task for a long time and therefore failed to complete a “deposit the collected minerals into the mine mule”, which is a design mistake of the newbie guidance, and should be designed to put the gold in the player’s path after all (such as after cutting through the wall) The gold should be designed in the player’s path after all (for example, directly in front of the wall after cutting it), and the ore should be described with pictures and words.

2.1.2 Game Quest Guidance

Some of the ores (such as alien eggs and gems) are hidden in the depths of certain areas. If a description of the ore (e.g. appearance, collection method, usage) can be popped up when the player first encounters it, it will greatly improve the game experience.

2.2 Return Journey

I agree with the designer’s goal for the return journey: to create a “race against time to get back home” experience. They did, but it is undeniable that the terrain design of many maps is too complex, making it difficult for many players to return to the original path while killing their way out, resulting in some players being forced to use a rigger to drill a path to the ship, which is not what the designers expected to see.

I think we can tell players the specific location of the return point at the beginning of the game, the mine mule in every effective displacement of 50m to place a lightable road marker when the player chooses to return, the road marker automatically glows, showing the direction of return. Instead of waiting for the mine mule to place the road marker step by step like now, which is too slow, players have limited time to retreat, and killing the way back is an excellent experience.