Vortex Gaming

Garena, a game developer and publisher from Singapore, participated in AGF 2024 held at KINTEX in Ilsan, and unveiled Sinwoldongheng, 4GROUND9 (hereinafter 4G9), and two new titles for the first time.

The on-site booth consisted of a demo zone where you can play two games, a stage where various events are held, and a photo zone where cosplay models appear.

Sinwoldongheng, developed by FireWick Network, and 4G9, developed by Nerdystar, were revealed for the first time through this AGF. Both games will be published by Garena.

Sinwoldongheng is a classic turn-based collectible RPG with outstanding 2D artwork. In this demo version, you could experience a short story, movement, puzzles, and battles.

The game basically proceeds in a side-scrolling manner. You can move by scrolling in the desired direction by pressing the screen, and you can interact with objects you encounter in the middle according to the markings.

What's interesting is the timing of specifying battle commands. Only at this timing does the viewpoint change to a shoulder view, and you can set skills, etc. to determine what attacks to make on the enemies along with the back view of the designated character. After the battle proceeds, it changes back to the side view.

The battle proceeds more strategically than expected. In the demo version, you could experience a tanker role character and three other dealer role characters. Each character has distinctive attack and defense skills, and it was possible to perform offense and defense including stronger stats than normal defense or attack.

Support characters also exist, and these characters can use skills by using some of the support points accumulated during normal battle progress. In this way, you had to examine the characters' skills and characteristics, and the enemy's characteristics, in order to properly proceed with the battle.

The graphics are clean. In the case of in-game graphics, there is not much difference from the illustrations, and you can check special cutscenes when using ultimate skills. In particular, the graphics themselves are very detailed, and even in the limited field of view of the side view, more dynamic effects were produced by utilizing zoom-out or zoom-in, etc.

4G9 is a collectible RPG developed by Nerdystar, which was established with the core developers of Exos Heroes as the mainstay. In this demo, it was played on the PC version, and the game itself is being developed as a mobile and PC cross-platform.

As expected of the developers of Exos Heroes, the most noticeable thing is the characters. The appearance of the characters is generally beautiful, and the expressions and movements in the cutscenes are also very attractive.

However, unlike the atmosphere where some action-like manipulation will come out, the game itself is focused on the viewing part. There is no direct manipulation in battle, such as the player directly moving, attacking, and dodging characters.

In the case of manipulation, only auxiliary parts are possible. When a sign that a character is down appears, if you repeatedly press it, the down is quickly released, or when the gauge is accumulated, you can press and use a special skill, or just press when a linked skill sign appears.

Of course, it's like that because it's the first demo version, but it was also disappointing that you couldn't even check the quest, so you naturally press automatic movement. Automatic movement and automatic battle are characteristic parts of idle games, but somehow, it's disappointing.

Perhaps the impression of the game is similar to the action multi-platform games that have been released recently, and since the demo platform is also a PC, I naturally thought it was an action game, so there is some sense of incongruity coming from there. In fact, not only me, but also the user playing next to me naturally grabbed the keyboard and mouse with both hands, but when the battle started, I could see them slightly letting go of one hand.

Overall, the atmosphere of the game is cheerful. It is full of cartoonish elements, and the story progression method, including cutscenes, is expressed as if it were taken from animation or cartoon cuts, especially tones. Strong chroma to the point of feeling bright is a characteristic, and full voice was supported in cutscenes.

Anyone visiting the Garena booth during AGF 2024 can play Sinwoldongheng and 4G9, and you can also experience various events such as mini-games.

A Garena official said, "We plan to deliver the user feedback received at AGF 2024 to the development team to improve the completeness of the game," and added, "We will look at the game from the user's perspective and listen to opinions to do our best to provide games that meet the level expected by Korean gamers."

웹진 인벤김수진 기자
2024-12-07