用戶:人間百態/Ziggurat

Ziggurat
File:Ziggurat cover art.jpg
類型	射擊遊戲
平台	iOS
開發商	Action Button Entertainment
發行商	Action Button Entertainment
模式	單人
發行日	2012年2月17日 (2012-02-17)

《Ziggurat》，是由Action Button Entertainment開發，上架於iOS平台的一款復古風格的街機射擊遊戲。該作為Action Button遊戲工作室開發的第一款遊戲，玩家在該作中將扮演世界上最後一個人類，站在通靈塔的頂端與來襲的外星怪獸作戰。玩家可通過觸摸控制操縱角色射殺敵人，但角色若被敵人擊中也會死亡。該作採用16bit繪圖和8bit音樂風格的背景音樂。Action Button遊戲工作室的設計師蒂姆·羅傑斯（Tim Rogers）從《憤怒的小鳥》中想到了該作的創作靈感，並在成立Action Button遊戲工作室後於2012年2月17日發佈該作。

該作在評論聚合網站Metacritic上獲得了「普遍好評」的評價。評論者們稱讚了該作順滑的操作和簡潔的界面風格。《時代雜誌》將該作評為在第三代iPad上最適合遊玩的遊戲之一。

玩法

File:Ziggurat screenshot.jpg

玩家正準備攻擊從屏幕兩側出現的敵人

玩家操縱的角色作為「地球上最後一個人類」，站在位於世界之巔和時間盡頭的山峰上，消滅不斷來襲的單眼外星人。玩家可以用激光步槍攻擊敵人，但角色若被敵人擊中也會死亡。外星人的體型和外形各不相同，有像《塞爾達》中的玻石蟲一樣跳來跳去的藍色外星人，可以隱身的黃色外星人，會突然撲向角色的紅色外星人，以及可以反彈角色攻擊的巨型外星人。

玩家可以切換精準射擊模式或是彈弓射擊模式：前者需要玩家用手指在屏幕底部滑動來控制射擊， 從而決定角色的射擊方向；後者則和《憤怒的小鳥》的射擊方式類似，玩家需要用類似使用彈弓的方式拉弓射擊。玩家按屏幕的時間越長，角色射擊的力度就會越大，當玩家鬆手時角色就會攻擊。該作沒有增強道具，也沒有內置收費和暫停遊戲功能，但有成就系統。該作還添加了親社會功能，玩家可以在GameCenter或Twitter等平台遊玩該作。

該作採用16bit風格的繪圖和8bit音樂風格的背景音樂。玩家操縱的角色被設計成一名身着紅色連體服的金髮女郎。背景里飄動的雲朵使用了運動視差，而太陽的位置則會隨着遊戲時間的累計而變化。背景音樂的音調會隨着遊戲難度的增加而逐漸升高。玩家死亡後遊戲會出現「令人不寒而慄的電子尖叫聲」和「一片血紅的屏幕」。

背景及發行

Action Button Entertainment was founded by Tim Rogers. The studio consists of Rogers, Brent Porter, Michael Kerwin, and Nicholas Wasilewski, who have built all of the studio's four games from Ziggurat through Videoball. Their games are consistently simple in their aesthetics and controls. Rogers cited Angry Birds as the inspiration for Ziggurat. He found the former "an incredible collision of game design concepts" that worked, though he wanted the game to be more of a "driving range" where he could throw birds at falling stuff, an idea which he refined into a Raiders of the Lost Ark-themed game of slowly hurling projectiles that push back bats in a corridor with no limit of projectiles. When riding the Bay Area Rapid Transit from Oakland to San Francisco a year later, Rogers watched a man play Angry Birds as he perfected a level, whereupon Rogers decided to make his game idea. He asked his friend and indie developer Adam Saltsman for advice, who confirmed and encouraged Rogers's interest in trying Flixel, the Adobe Flash tools used to make Saltsman's Canabalt. Upon deciding that he lacked the expertise, he tweeted to recruit others on the project and received some responses that later fell through. Action Button Entertainment是由蒂姆·羅傑斯（Tim Rogers）創立的遊戲工作室，由蒂姆·羅傑斯、布倫特·波特（Brent Porter）、米高·克爾溫（Michael Kerwin）和尼古拉斯·瓦西萊夫斯基（Nicholas Wasilewski）四人組成。羅傑斯稱該作的創作靈感來自於《憤怒的小鳥》。他認為《憤怒的小鳥》是一次不可思議的遊戲設計觀念碰撞後的產物，不過他更希望《憤怒的小鳥》能像高爾夫球練習場那樣可以向不斷來襲的生物發射小鳥。他以這個想法為基礎創作了一個為主題的遊戲，即在一條沒有彈丸限制的走廊中緩慢投擲彈丸，將蝙蝠擊退。[10] 一年後，當羅傑斯乘坐灣區捷運從奧克蘭前往三藩市時，他看到一個人在玩 "憤怒的小鳥"，並完善了一個關卡。他向自己的朋友、獨立開發者亞當-薩爾茨曼（Adam Saltsman）尋求建議，薩爾茨曼肯定並鼓勵羅傑斯有興趣嘗試Flixel快速編輯，即用於製作薩爾茨曼的Canabalt快速編輯的Adobe Flash工具。在確定自己缺乏專業知識後，他在推特上招募其他人參與該項目，並收到了一些回應，但後來都不了了之。 Rogers continued to work as a video game design consultant and met Bob Pelloni (of Bob's Game) at the 2010 Game Developers Conference. The two worked on games (including Ziggurat) together. Rogers put out a call for artists on Twitter with a submissions request of "fan art of the Japanese box art of Phantasy Star II", and Action Button artist Brent Porter replied in under an hour with an entry Rogers called "incredible". In mid 2011, Rogers decided to work on an iPhone game for a few weeks as a break from a larger project. While Pelloni was against the buttonless iPhone as a platform, Rogers said the team was convinced by his design document. He contacted an Internet acquaintance who had previously mocked up a design idea from Rogers's Kotaku column, programmer Michael Kerwin, who came through in a week with a version without graphics or sound, which was later added. Rogers recorded "some insane and rough music" with his band, Large Prime Numbers, that Andrew Toups converted into an 8-bit soundtrack in the "original Nintendo sound format" that Rogers found "breathtaking". His friend, QWOP creator Bennett Foddy, deemed the game "sort of interesting".

Six months passed as Rogers worked on a social game before he chose to make a few more changes: more enemy types and progression, graphics in the background, and so emailed people to continue development. Rogers described his own critical list of video games as having minimalist aesthetics with no overt story to tell other than through its game mechanics, and wanted the game to live up to those expectations. He fine-tuned the game with gut-driven decisions. For example, he applied a concept he called "sticky friction" from Super Mario Bros. 3 to the game's controls. One of the final features was the "scream sound effect" Rogers made with his guitar and "crushed" for a distorted and quasi-digital sound that he compared to those made by eccentric Japanese musicians whose records he owned.

Rogers explained that they did not add a pause option because he did not want non-game icons in the screen and because (like in Contra) players would die too soon after resuming. He saw the game as simultaneously a "snow globe of an electric toy" and a "gosh darn airtight hardcore video game" homage to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis, and called Ziggurat a descendant of his hobbies: Ibara: Black Label and the Rubik's Cube. Rogers added that the game contained nine hours of scripted events and that the Archenemy alien "is only the beginning". Rogers produced a trailer for the game. It was released for iOS platforms on February 17, 2012. Two months later, Freshuu, then the game's publisher, signed Ziggurat as the first client for Gimme, an in-game achievement to "real-life rewards" incentive program. The game received two spikes in sales following positive reviews from journalists, and from a mock infomercial's release on YouTube, all postrelease and not at the time of launch. Brandon Sheffield, writing for Game Developer, thought that Rogers handled the postrelease well since leaking details to the press before the game was available may have impacted sales. Action Button later became the game's publisher.

Reception

評價
匯總得分 匯總媒體 得分 Metacritic 83/100 評論得分 媒體 得分 Edge 9/10 Eurogamer 8/10 TouchArcade Paste 9.0/10

The game received "generally favorable" reviews, according to video game review score aggregator Metacritic. It won a Destructoid Editors' Choice Award, and Time magazine picked the game as one of the best for the then new high-resolution third generation iPad.

Edge compared the game to a more pleasurable version of Halo: Reach's final scene. The magazine also compared the feeling of prioritization as a swarm of enemies appear to the feeling of clutter when stacking Tetris blocks haphazardly. Edge also called the red screen and sound effect that flashes upon the player's death "brash and lo-fi and unexpectedly poignant", for which they noted Rogers's interest in noise rock and credited the effect as "a beguiling personal signature". Alternatively, Paste's Joe Bernardi thought the sound did not accomplish what it intended. Joseph Leray of TouchArcade noticed how the guitar sound in Gears of War was reaffirming but the opposite in Ziggurat. Edge noted that nuances such as gravity's influence on the arc of uncharged shots make Ziggurat more of a basketball or golf-like sport skill than a "2D Halo". Edge awarded the game a 9 of 10, adding that it "prized immediacy" in a manner that matched the iOS platform.

Eurogamer's Martin Robinson said the game made him nostalgic for a score attack game from the early 90s that does not exist, and as such called Ziggurat "one of the finer simple score-attack shooters ... on the App Store" and an expression of the golden age of the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. He called the game's mechanics "fine-tuned" and the gun's abilities collated from the best elements of other video games. Danny Cowan of IndieGames.com likewise found the controls "very well suited" for touchscreens. He also praised the chained explosions and shot charging as "satisfying", and compared the game to Missile Command in its allure. Robinson of Eurogamer said the game's deserving peers were Geometry Wars and Robotron for their refined play styles that make players predict what enemies are about to act. TouchArcade's Leray praised the game design and never reached a place where his skills plateaued. He advised against using the Slingshot mode controls.

Joe Bernardi of Paste put Ziggurat in a lineage of iOS games where the player tries to do a fun thing as much as possible before dying, including Canabalt, Bit Pilot, and Super Crate Box. He connected Ziggurat's mechanics to Rogers's longstanding interest in "infinite mode" without external rewards, and praised the charge time mechanics as "excellent" and the perfect awkward length to confuse muscle memory. Leray of TouchArcade praised its attention to detail, especially in the character sprites. Paste's Bernardi called Action Button's design restraint "admirable" and lauded the game's balance. He noted its "extremely focused shallowness" as defining, like a Dorito, and called it "one of the best iOS games [he had] ever played". Reviewing for ActionButton.net, indie developer Adam Saltsman called Ziggurat "French New Wave action videogame fan art".

Notes and references

Notes

References

External links

• 官方網站
• Official soundtrack