Chapter 139 - Wuxia Game Design Document (1/2)

Chen Mo wrote down the title of his new design document.

Wulin Legend design concept document.

There were many classic Wuxia games in Chen Mo’s previous life. Although Wulin Legend wasn’t the best, it was the most creative, starkly different from the Wuxia games that were based on Western RPG games.

Although Wulin Legend wasn’t extremely popular, its predecessor Heroes of Jin Yong was.

In Heroes of Jin Yong, the main character was transmigrated into a world formed from fourteen of Jin Yong’s novels. The main character was constantly interacting with the characters from Jin Yong’s novels, collecting items, learning Wugong, and recruiting swordsmen before completing the fourteen main quests lines, gathering fourteen holy books and returning to his world.

This game was shocking at the time of release, as players could train Wugong from Jin Yong’s novels, recruit warrios such as Duan Yu and Yang Guo to fight alongside them, and even complete quests that were relevant to the original novel.

Moreover, Heroes of Jin Yong had a good/evil system, which would increase or decrease depending on the choices of the player.

When the player finally was about to leave the world after gathering all fourteen holy books, if they were nice, the ten evil masters would attack the player, if they were evil, the ten good masters would attack the player.

The player would need to beat the ten masters before beating the game, giving the player an immense amount of satisfaction.

Jin Yong’s novels weren’t in this world, and Heroes of Jin Yong wasn’t as rich in content as Wu Lin Legend. The art wasn’t good enough to satisfy the needs of players nowadays either.

After considerations, Wulin Legend would better fit what Chen Mo was looking for.

There wasn’t much content from Jin Yong’s novels in Wulin Legend. Although it descended from Heroes of Jin Yong, the different factions, characters, and styles of Wugong were basically all made from scratch, making it easy for the people of this world to understand.

In terms of artwork, although Wulin Legend was an old game, it was remade in 2015 (as Tale of Wuxia). The artwork, character models were all remastered. Moreover, as Chen Mo’s art skills were relatively high, it should satisfy the demands of the players.

Chen Mo felt that Wulin Legend would match the content in this game better as opposed to Tale of Wuxia.

Of course the most important part was that the playstyle and the story fit Chen Mo’s needs very well. The innovative playstyle of the game was unique among Wuxia games.

There was also a story regarding the remake of the game.

Wulin Legend was released in 2001, although it was well received, it didn’t become a classic like ‘Chinese Paladin’ or ‘Xuan-Yuan Sword’.

Other than the fact that it had a small audience, its difficulty, unbalanced combat system, and incomplete story contributed to its downfall.

Of course, these were due to limits in funding.

In the end, in an environment plagued with piracy, Heluo Studio disbanded. The new studio Oriental Calculations weren’t able to make anything noteworthy either, disappearing like fireworks in the night sky.

In 2006, someone posted a question on the Wulin Legend forums :”Is Oriental Calculations still a thing?”

The players replied, “Haven’t seen them in a long time. It’ll be too bad if they disbanded.”

In 2009, the post was received with a reply by Heluo Studio’s founder and Wulin Legend’s producer Xu Changlong.

“Oriental Calculations ceased all operations three years ago, but everyone on that team is still in the videogame industry. All the key players are also in a certain videogame company. As long as we are still here, there is a chance of us making better products.”

Xu Changlong was shocked.