Review of the Netherworld Feeding Box: Being a parent after the apocalypse requires strong luck

Although there are also relatively well-known series such as "World of Warcraft" and "God of Pop", Japan still does more in various independent skit level games. And for some reason, it seems that they always struggle with beautiful girls in their works. For example, the Chinese version of Void tRrLM(), which was released in early 2020 and recently released in Chinese, Japan made a poor young girl in the game grow mushrooms.

The game is set in a post apocalyptic world where toxic fungi are rampant. In the ruins of an automated factory, a home care robot was accidentally activated and miraculously found the daughter of a long extinct race - a human. Although she survived, she was already on the brink of death due to infection and hunger.

As a caretaker intelligent device, the robot played by the player naturally wants to help the young girl, but is helpless in the ruins. On the road wandering with the young girl, the robot discovered a factory AI that was still in operation.

Factory AI introduced the origins of human extinction to robots and admitted to being the culprit, expressing their desire to protect young girls and repay their sins. In order to take care of the young girl named "Toriko" by AI, the robot began its adventure.

Tuoma Gezi+Maze Exploration

Simply put, the gameplay of this game is a combination of Tamagoko (electronic pet) and Maze RPG. It has to be said that this gameplay design really fits perfectly with the game background setting.

After the outbreak of poisonous bacteria, the surface is no longer suitable for survival. Therefore, humans have designed factory AI and various construction robots that can be fully automated for construction. They have developed layer by layer below the surface, building many underground shelters and living areas. But after the extinction of humanity, bacterial contamination began to gradually spread to underground facilities, causing the animals living in them to mutate and the machinery operating to lose control, turning underground facilities into a maze full of threats.

These mazes are actually underground facilities built by human command machinery in their design

And Tori can be placed in a huge but damaged ecological bottle, and players need to pay attention to Tori's status through an electronic pet like interface while controlling the robot to explore the maze, searching for resources that can repair the ecological bottle, feed Tori, and improve Tori's life.

Initially, the ecological bottle was in a damaged state. We need to collect materials from the maze to repair it completely, install ventilation fans, and make furniture to create a better living environment for Tori

The part of the Maze RPG is a turn based gameplay, where both the enemy and the player take turns simultaneously (attacking first), and it features the "Rougelike" element. Robots defeating enemies in the maze not only have the opportunity to receive dropped items, but also gain experience points and upgrade. Upgrading can choose random skill entries to increase the robot's attributes or attach special skills.

Round based maze RPG synchronized by both parties

Upgrade to to learn active and passive skills

If the robot is destroyed by the enemy or explores the maze to the end, its level will be reset to zero, but the key materials carried on it can still be taken home, and the props and equipment will be converted into resources and preserved. In terms of setting, this is the factory's AI assistance in recycling.

In theory, robots in mazes can continue to explore as long as they can obtain battery power from enemies and maintain zero health. However, as the turn in the maze progresses, Tori may gradually become hungry and produce excrement, making the ecological bottle dirty. Therefore, the robot must occasionally "go home" to feed and clean, otherwise Tori may fall ill.

The status monitoring interface of the Tumagozi style allows you to see Toliko's satiety, health status, and hygiene status of the ecological bottle

In addition, there are also specific requirements for feeding Toliko's food. Due to the maze being contaminated by toxins, the food found by the robot may also be contaminated. If the contamination level of the food fed to Tori is too high, Tori may develop various "curiosity diseases" after accumulating toxins, and the treatment methods are also different. Once Torrico falls ill, players have to abandon the main quest and go to the specialized maze to brush the materials needed for healing.

The most curious one is "liquid disease", which gradually dissolves Toledo's body. It requires injection of medication to dissolve Toledo's body protein, injecting liquid Toledo into a pre prepared mold, and then injecting coagulant to fix the body back in place. This is one of the initial focuses of the promotion of this work, which shows the evil taste of Japan.

, I am reluctant to make my daughter sick. I am looking for an official picture of a liquid illness to show you

Fortunately, curiosity sickness is not a random event. Players like me who are reluctant to abuse Toliko, as long as they ensure that they feed low polluting food, will only encounter one tutorial like curiosity sickness until they pass the level. However, this means that players need to spend dedicated time searching for clean food, which will make the already torturous maze adventure even more painful.

Collapsing randomness

For me, the maze exploration experience of "The Netherworld Incubator" was quite painful. The story progression of the game is as follows: the main quests will require players to find materials that appear on specific floors, take them home, and create the products required by the quests, which can trigger the development of the plot.

The mission will require going to specific mazes and floors to search for specific materials

The curiosity disease mentioned above is one of the reasons that makes me feel painful. The food found in the maze has a shelf life ranging from 3 to 6. Every time the robot goes out to explore the maze, the shelf life of the food stored in the storage room will be reduced by 1. In addition, due to the varying probabilities of finding clean food in different mazes, I had to explore mazes unrelated to the main mission multiple times to find clean food storage.

and the initial storage warehouse only had two compartments, making it difficult to prepare inventory and focus on the main line

Even worse, the maze in this game was filled with a high degree of randomness that was enough to make my mind collapse: the position of the maze's endpoint, the items that appeared, and the configuration of enemies were completely random. You may encounter the following situations on your way to the mission target, or even at the entrance of the target location:

• The little monster with theft skills stole your mission materials and disappeared without a trace
• A particularly powerful mutant big brother accidentally passed by and slapped you to death
• The enemy duo of teleportation and summoning will surround you with thousands of troops and horses in one round

In the middle of the game, the task targets often require going to more than ten levels of the maze. If you are unlucky and cannot randomly obtain a particularly powerful skill combination along the way, or have not obtained or used the items that can escape and save your life, then the player's half hour exploration in the front step by step is likely to be in vain.

is really desperate in this situation

After returning home, it was time for Toriko to eat again, and players often gave up carrying food that was not very helpful for exploration when navigating the maze. Repeatedly, players will fall into an awkward situation of having to specifically brush food.

The breakdown of mentality is certainly related to my need to complete the game and write reviews as soon as possible, but the key point is that this kind of "unexpected surprise" in this game cannot be solved by players using strategy or tactics. It's a bit like flipping a coin, guessing wrong and losing. I once failed to achieve any effective progress in the process throughout the entire workday, which is also very frustrating in most games.

In theory, even if the player fails to explore, they can convert the props they carry into resources and bring them home. By consuming resources, players can create ecological ball furniture to increase the robot's permanent attributes, develop different types of robot specialization to increase the probability of specific skills appearing, and have different ways for the robot to achieve permanent growth. Indeed, these projects can reduce the despicable randomness and make player exploration smoother.

can reduce the randomness of hatred, but the prerequisite is that you first randomly obtain these formulas

But the problem is, most of these production formulas are also randomly dropped from the maze. I'm not lucky. In the middle of the process, I was randomly sent back home multiple times without dropping many recipes, which can be said to be helpless and delayed a lot of time.

On the other hand, the battles in this game are not interesting enough. In my opinion, a major charm of various fun outfits in "meat pigeon" games. From my experience, the upgraded entry combinations in this game do not have enough "clich é s". Most of the entries are more conventional, such as adding attributes, and the chance of randomly creating fun combinations is also very low, which makes it difficult to play.

The number of interesting skills in is too small and the occurrence rate is too low

Japanese sci-fi skits with a unique flavor

Through Toliko's background, the character development of two AI players in the game, and the details revealed in various clues, Japan has shown us what the development team imagined would happen before and after the extinction of humanity. Like many previous works in Japan, the development team did not express too many viewpoints through the plot and narrative, but only made statements, allowing players to evaluate and make their own choices.

The plot of "The Netherworld Chest" is actually very simple. It cannot be said to be very profound or thought-provoking, but after understanding the complete plot, I do have some thoughts on rationality and sensibility, as well as individual and collective.

Of course, there is no need to expect to think of anything particularly valuable, so that the lovely daughter can live as happily as possible, which may be what most players truly expect. After all, "The Netherworld Chest" is just a somewhat clich é d post apocalyptic sci-fi sketch, adding the poorly polished "meat pigeon" maze RPG gameplay as a supplement and seasoning with Japanese style knife techniques.

The taste of players is naturally hard to match, but the Japanese flavor of "Void Nurture Box" is strong enough. For players who are already fans of Japan One and are not in a hurry to finish the game, this game is still very worth playing.