Faced with a net loss of 31.7 billion won (about $24.35 million) in the second quarter of this year, Korean veteran game maker com2us urgently needs a product to regain market confidence, and “Call of Cthulhu: Battle of Cronica” (hereinafter referred to as “Battle of Cronica”) is responsible for this task.
In August, the cross-platform MMORPG based on the classic IP “Call of Cthulhu” was officially launched in Korea, and topped the Korean iOS free chart on the first day, and successfully ranked among the top 10 of the iOS best-seller list, and now remains in the sixth best-seller list.
In 2019, the cumulative revenue of “Call of Cthulhu” has exceeded 10 billion RMB, and last month, the game still maintained an excellent performance of about 100 million RMB in global flow.
As a new derivative of the super IP, “Kronicko Wars” has naturally gained a lot of market attention, but this also means that it is under no less pressure. The game is also the first MMO developed by com2us, which seems a bit out of place for a Korean manufacturer that is known for its MMOs.
But from the results, the performance of “Chronicles of Kronecker” has clearly dispelled any doubts about com2us.
A less “Korean” looking MMO
Perhaps the most impressive thing about “Kronecker” is the art that sets it apart from traditional Korean online games.
Unlike the standard realistic style of Korean MMO online games + European and American page-turning faces, “Battle of Kronecker” maintains a consistent style with the IP series, favoring the Japanese Q cartoon with a large head-to-eye ratio and small face. The body shape of the characters is no longer the traditional Korean “perfect hydra”, but has become a more nerdy three-headed body.
Since the game is switching from a card game to an MMO game, “Kronik War” has more descriptions of the map scenes than previous works, so the game’s scenery art design style is also an important point.
Scene style, “Kronicko Battle” inherited the very popular Japanese celluloid style in recent years, both in the promotional map and the actual game, the scene art shown is basically filled with flat painting style, giving a clean and neat feeling, and the overall picture is bright.
Cyrus style is not uncommon in the industry, especially in Japanese games is a common guest, but in Korean handheld games have become a scarce commodity. Throughout the Korean handheld game market, there are not many products that use the Cyrus style, and the only one that is known to people is “Two Kingdoms”.
The real reason for the rapid spread of the celluloid style in the industry is due to the global explosion of the original gods in recent years. Therefore, when they saw the official promotional image of “Kronicko Battle”, some netizens also flirted with the idea that “Kronicko Battle” was borrowed from “The Original God”, probably because of their preconceived notions.
Of course, although the art style of “Chronicles of Kronecker” seems a little less “Korean”, but in terms of game animation, the game still maintains the traditional strengths of Korean MMOs – exquisite and smoothly articulated. An obvious example is that Odin Rebellion, which is currently at the top of the Korean bestseller list, is generally praised by players for its in-game plot animations.
The same is true of the animations incorporated in “Kronik War”, such as a cool summoning animation when a character summons a magical spirit to fight. Although these animations are not as detailed as the realistic products such as “Odin Rebellion”, they can be seamlessly integrated with the plot and character skills, which increases the players’ sense of immersion when playing.
Under the appearance of Japanese secondary yuan, the core of gameplay is still Korean MMO
At the level of gameplay and worldview, “Battle of Kronecker” does not try to innovate much, but chooses to play steadily, taking the gameplay framework of Korean MMO almost intact on the one hand, and continuing the background of the IP universe on the other.
The story of “The Chronicles of Kronik” takes place after the disappearance of the king of Krakow – Tevor, the kingdom of Lach has returned to peace, and people are carrying the scars left by the war, spending every day in a seemingly peaceful but precarious manner. But suddenly, one day, the news of Tevor’s return shatters this peace once again, and players as summoners will set out on a thrilling adventure to stop Tevor.
Kronecker is essentially a Team RPG, but unlike other Team RPGs where the main character meets other human partners, the main character in Kronecker is not a partner, but a “subordinate” demonic spirit, and the main character himself cannot be replaced.
Initially entering the game, players will have three summoner career options, respectively: mage, support, warrior. Like traditional MMORPGs, different types of summoners have different growth attributes and training directions, for example, support is more inclined to recovery and strengthening, while warriors place more emphasis on versatile positioning, except for the agility attribute the rest of the attributes are more average.
Although the summoner has its own skills, but the real protagonist of the battle is the summoned magic spirit. As with the IP series, the game’s magical spirits can also be divided into fire, water, wind, light, darkness 5 attributes, attributes between each other, and different magical spirits have unique skills, the correct team will largely reduce the player’s combat difficulties.
In addition, the game also introduces a wealth of MMO gameplay, such as team copies, PvP real-time battles, and party mini-games like cooking, gathering, mining, and fishing. Of course, the most important of them is naturally the team copies that require numerical values. At the press conference held in early August, Lee Eun-jae, General Manager of com2us, said, “MMO-based multiplayer co-op content is the core of Battle for Kronik.”
The numerical system of the characters in “Chronicles of Kronecker” basically cannot escape from the framework of Korean MMO, with “probability enhancement” required for defensive gear, weapons, levels, skills, etc. The signature “character awakening” in Korean RPGs is also introduced, and when The deeper the character’s awakening, the greater the change in appearance and the more skills they can acquire.
It is worth mentioning that “Kronik War” does not copy all of the Korean MMO framework, on the basis of which the game also has a certain degree of integration with Japanese games, such as the payment system to include “card draw”, players can spend a certain amount of money to probable extraction of specific magic spirit.
Perhaps for the sake of innovation, “Chronicles of Kronik” has created a new job in the card draw system, one of its biggest features is the addition of Resemara, which is a reset card draw. When the player is summoned, if the desired magic spirit does not appear 30 times, the result can be reset and redrawn until the desired magic spirit appears. I have to say, compared to other card draw games on the market, this setting is really quite bold.
On the whole, “Kronik War” does not have too many bright places in gameplay, and the reason why it can get a good market performance in Korea, perhaps the IP sentiment to occupy a large part of the reason.
It’s not easy for a product to grow into an IP, but as a rare long-line card game that has existed for more than 8 years and survived numerous contemporaries, “Call of Cthulhu” has made a name for itself in the mainstream markets around the world, and is one of the few representative products under com2us that can stir the nerves of players around the world.
In April 2014, the turn-based card RPG was officially launched in Korea, and soon gained widespread attention in the industry. in mid-June, the number of downloads of Call of Cthulhu reached 1 million, and the best-seller list also stabilized in the top 10, and the game then began to turn to the international market, and achieved unexpected success, with excellent results in China, Singapore, the Philippines and other Asian regions.
Even at a time when new products are coming out frequently, the IP influence of “Call of Cthulhu” has not weakened much. Multiple data show that the U.S. market is still the main driver of the game’s revenue, and has been contributing one-third of its revenue. This is followed by the Japanese market, which accounts for about one-fifth of the game’s total revenue.
In China, after the lifting of the Korean restriction, a rare appearance of Call of Cthulhu: Battle in the Sky, a derivative work of the Call of Cthulhu IP, was included in the list of imported games released by the Department in December 2020, making it the first Korean-made game to receive an import approval number in mainland China since the beginning of 2017.
The influence of the Call of Cthulhu IP has a lot to do with its landmark gameplay framework design. It can be said that the card game “Magic Spirit Summoning” basically absorbed the essence of the design of Japanese card games such as SSR, and on the basis of this optimization and gameplay stereotypes, thus helping the industry to lay the framework of card games, the prototype of many subsequent card games, including domestic and international, mostly came from this representative game.
It is not difficult to guess that, relying on the global influence of “Call of Cthulhu” IP, “Chronicle of Kronik” has successfully entered the market at least in terms of popularity, combined with the integration of innovation in gameplay and kryptonite points, perhaps there is still a lot of room for progress in the future.
