"Bliss Disco" review: pain and reflection beyond thought

When I talk about CRPG, I like to use two examples, Baldur's Gate and Exotic Requiem.

The success of the former brought CRPG into the public eye, and the game mode used in Baldur's Gate still affects CRPG games today; The success of the latter proves the incalculable ceiling of this game model, and "Exotic Requiem" is not only about an adventure story, but also about human nature itself. The relationship between the two, like the "string moon in water", has different properties, but can sublimate the meaning of each other's existence, including the subsequent CRPG works, there will be a bias of "water and moon".

Years later the pool flooded, but the moon was few and far between, until Disco Blissfully appeared.

After playing the prototype in 2017, RPGcodex wrote: "They are fearless, ambitious, and talented to what extent? I haven't seen that since Chris Avalon." After customs clearance and look at this review, you will feel that it is still a little conservative. Because behind this game, we are witnessing the rise of the next legend, ZA/UM's Disco of Bliss, an unrepeatable success.

But before the review begins, it's customary to talk about the "bones" of the game. Disco of Blessedness is its own genre and tightly organized, making this deconstruction a little difficult to begin with.

Prior to the release of Disco Goblica, they had updated several development journals on Indie nova, and that was my first impression of ZA/UM and Disco Goblica. In the development log, ZA/UM tried to build a simple and efficient roleplaying system, just as they had in their early days at offline roleplaying parties, simplifying and improving "D& D "system is the same. After playing "Disco", I have to admit that ZA/UM did a really good job, bold and highly creative success.

"Disco" still retains the identification mechanism, in this game with almost no real-time combat, can be said to be the main gameplay, building skills and then completing choices and advancing the story. However, unlike the traditional attribute system, Disco of Bliss associates basic attributes with corresponding skills and gives these skills a new identity, which is also the core concept of Disco of Bliss - different thoughts and modes of thinking.

In dialogue, thinking patterns will determine the logic of thinking, so you can see that every now and then in the game, new ideas will be generated due to certain skills, and these ideas will occasionally be a debate in your brain, but the good thing is that the decision is still in your hands. In general, these options are all beneficial, and will not result in bad options because the player is too biased in certain attributes. This ensures that the player will not suffer a negative effect because of the increase in stats, ensuring that the increase in stats will benefit the positive feedback of the game.

At the same time, because this role-playing system transforms the traditional and direct external action playing into a role-playing mode in which the internal thinking influences the external action, coupled with the classic setting of the player's free allocation of attribute points, it achieves a very immersive role-playing experience. Because a series of behavior activities of the protagonist in the game are the feedback of the real player's inner thinking in the game, and finally reveal the player's ideological tendency.

The core build of "Disco of Bliss" is simple and efficient with good feedback. They had written in the development log that they wanted to reduce the core of the system to something that could fit on a napkin. Most importantly, the system works well with the detective you play in the game.

I once talked about "detective games" in a weekly article, and at that time I thought that the core of most detective games at present was not to investigate cases but to decrypt them. Players will not affect the final result because of wrong thinking and lack of clues, the game will also set up various hints to tell you where there is not explored, guide you to collect clues. During the investigation process, there will be no interference from various clues, because these information are distinguished by the label of "main line and branch line". So the game is not about finding the truth, it's about solving the puzzle, and the case itself is static, and the player's slow speed doesn't affect the final outcome.

So are there any games that restore the Detective experience? There used to be, but among the detective genre games of recent years, the only one worth mentioning seems to be Disco of the Extreme.

The above talked about the core playing mode of "Bliss Disco", here will not repeat. It should be added that the difficulty of authentication in the game can also be corrected according to the information that the player has mastered, for example, when forcing a confession, the difficulty of authentication will be reduced because the player has mastered enough key information.

This also allows players in the game to quickly find the problem and then take the initiative to investigate according to the problem. For example, if you feel that someone's testimony is problematic, or the skill level is insufficient, and you can't convince the target, then you need to find relevant clues, reduce the difficulty of identification, and in this process, you will be interfered with a lot of information, or there will be errors in judgment, or let go of key characters, and ultimately affect the outcome of the game. The full substitution of the mind allows the player to inhale the morphine called "real".

"Extreme Disco" in the thinking logic, fit the real life investigation process, and because of the different attributes assigned by the player, to ensure that each player can get a unique game experience, such as the body on the tree, until the completion of the customs I can not put down, I do not feel that there is any regret, at least I still opened the attic, saw the egg.

The reason why "Disco" can bring players a very beautiful detective play experience, in addition to the factors in the game, but also because the game itself is an excellent detective novel. The creator of ZA/UM, Robert Kuvitz, released his own novel in 2013 and it was well received. So in the plot, you can feel the integration of personality and professionalism, emotional and rational, and he does a good job as an author.

The area involved in the game is not large, there are only a few major areas. The good news is that time in the game is dynamic, which gives this small piece of land enough vitality, and this vitality comes from the unity of chapters and playtime in Disco of Bliss. Each day in the game is a chapter in the story and a level in the game. This not only allows the player to see the visual impact of the case, but also clarifies the story and structure of the game, allowing the game to gradually heat up in the ordinary life.

The player takes on the role of a detective who drinks too much and loses his memory, forgetting everything about his past and even the rules of the world. This beginning makes people think of the "undead", and think of each fragmented, but also the mission of the game's protagonists, they like a river in the brain convergence, and finally came to a work and a character, "Exotic Requiem" and "Anonymous". This is why, in addition to its excellent quality, the work is reminiscent of Exotic Requiem, where the painful external confrontations actually mirror the inner struggles of the characters, which is the pain and reflection of Disco of Bliss.

After that, the game doesn't directly focus on the murder, and it's more important to solve your own survival problems, such as paying money and rent, than to look at a bloated corpse.

The unit of currency in the game, which can be accurate to two decimal places, is simply impossible to pay off a debt of 150 yuan. Soon, the player is offered the chance to receive $150 for taking bribes, a deliberate moral trap, but one that most people choose to take in order to survive, even if you represent the police.

After paying off the debt, the player also needs to pay the rent of 20 yuan per day, also to solve the money problem. After creating this dilemma, the game also offers a solution: pick up money and steal a garbage bag to pick up trash. Yeah, cops have to pick up trash just to survive. Would you like to buy a board game in a bookstore? If you want to buy, take bribes, because picking up garbage is just enough to make a living. Fortunately, these problems only exist in the early stage of the game, otherwise the player will surely be scalp numbness in order to survive.

Why mention these two things specifically? Because through this level design, consciously or unconsciously, ZA/UM not only allows the player to advance the story of the game, but also to enjoy a new experience, and most importantly, to bring the player into the game environment. The backdrop to the discussion of Disco Blescens is a topic that became slightly taboo after the Cold War - Conmeism. Also, having the player pick up garbage early in the game is a great setup, it doesn't take too much time, it encourages exploration, and the purpose of picking up garbage is very obvious: to make money and survive.

In the city of the game, there was a Conmeist uprising, but it was eventually suppressed and all the insurgents were physically destroyed. After that, the city, or the country, becomes a slave to capital, foreign forces "temporarily" take over here, the police represented by the player, but also the "henchmen" of the foreign forces, all the people in the city, enjoy the "disco of freedom", like a paradise - even if the walls are full of bullet holes.

This background, as ZA/UM once introduced themselves, "We are Soviet game developers living in the UK", which is why they chose Chinese as their second language for their games.

The plot of Disco Blissfully is very full and natural. To give a simple example, previous RPGS often used a "slide show" to explain the ending, or the changes the player makes to the world -- and most games did. In Disco of Blessedness, at the end of the main storyline, you will see sub-endings that slowly build up to create the ritual that the ending of the story should feel like, guiding the player towards the end. The feeling is similar to having "some behemoth packaged in a box" mailed to you, except that a surprise is a surprise.

In fact, "extreme Disco" has too much content to write can talk, but too detailed plot analysis, it is not convenient to reveal here, summed up words can be said.

"How many books does it take to write a personal detective story?"

"Buy Disco of the Blissful, then record every conversation and choice you make and go through it, take a break, and publish."

Such is the success of this localization effort, and the charm of the work itself

The greatest charm of "Blissdisco" at its core is "pain and reflection". In this game, everything seems so broken, the detective is distracted by all kinds of information, into the plight of everyone, you know them, sympathize with their pain, but can not really save them, for the pain of living in this world, a walk by the sea, perhaps the greatest relief. And when you get through it all and face the truth and liberation, you find that the biggest opponent and the person who should reflect the most is yourself, and for everyone, this is true.

"Disco" is an explosion, a game that has been in the works for 15 years, from the experience of "ZA/UM", from their life experience, from their thinking about the world, from a voice that has been shrouded in dust for many years. The game becomes a vehicle for thought at this point, a firework explosion. Pictures and music are stirring in the cortex, and the spark of thought reaches deep into the brain, where the final spark is ignited with pain and screaming.

It is for this reason that this work makes us believe that it is an unrepeatable and unique success.

The last problem is that there are some technical issues, and the game's interaction and presentation are too simple. When talking about the motivation for the production, ZA/UM once said that no one reads novels anymore, so it's better to make games, but not being able to go deep into the text in Disco of the Extreme will definitely put you to sleep, and you need to read the work like a novel.

"Disco of Bliss" is like a wild and painful string moon in the water, deep but hazy. If I were to write an epilogue to him, I do not know what to write, but perhaps it would be best explained by the Russian futurist poet Kruchenykh, who put together and created the concept "Zaum" in Russian in 1913 - beyond thought.

Back to the game itself, ZA/UM's Disco of Bliss -- pain and reflection beyond thought.

* Some of the sources quoted in this article are related interviews