What is an effective national style? Global revenue exceeding $500 million in miHoYo's "Crash: Starry Railroad" bold exploration

On August 30th, the new 1.3 version of "Sky Mirror Reflecting the Dust" of "Collapse: Starry Sky Railway" under MiHoYo will be officially launched. With the update of the main storyline mission, the bustling commercial district mayor Lotte "Jinren Lane" in the Chinese style map "Luofu" will be showcased in front of players, and the long-awaited new character Danheng Yinyue will also be launched simultaneously. From August 29th to September 4th, the figure of Danheng Yinyue will flash on the commercial landmark screens of eight cities: Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chongqing, and Wuhan.

The new character Dan Heng Yin Yue from "Collapse: Starry Sky Railroad" will appear on commercial landmark screens in eight cities across the country

In the nearly week since the new version is about to be released, "Crash: The Railway" has been frequently featured, not only appearing at the Cologne exhibition in Germany, but also releasing multiple storyline videos around the upcoming new character "Danheng Yinyue". The plot video "Immortal Boat Mirror: Five Dragons Moving Far", which was launched on August 27th, adopts the Chinese ink painting style throughout, exploring the meaning of "immortality" of dragon worship around the history of "Immortal Boat and Five Dragons". "In endless reincarnation, any endpoint will become a new starting point.".

The storyline video of ink painting style, "Immortal Boat Mirror - Five Dragons Moving Far Away"

The character video "Returning Home" released on August 25th showcases the storyline and animation transitions of the ancient Chinese book binding form of dragon scale decoration, which is characterized by the accumulation of scales, making this intangible cultural heritage technique a success. Many players are reminded of another character video "Fairy Boat: Seven Day Generals of the Emperor's Bow" released by the "Collapse: Star Dome Railway" a few months ago. At that time, this video used the "riding lantern" process to show the fairy boat legend, and used Paper Cuttings animation with narration in the style of Beijing Opera storytelling to stereoscopically present the Chinese "Fairy Boat World".

Introduce the story background using intangible cultural heritage techniques such as "dragon scale decoration" and "horse lantern walking"

The Collapse: Star Dome Railway is a new work launched by Shanghai enterprise Mihayou this year. On the day of pre download, it topped the list of free apps in Apple Store in 113 countries and regions around the world. The second month after its launch, it surpassed Genshin Impact and topped the list of revenue. It is considered to be the most successful anime game this year. According to Sensor Tower, a mobile application data analysis company, since its release, the cumulative revenue of "Crash: Stardome Railroad" has exceeded $500 million, with over 19 million global downloads. After the release of "Crash: Starry Railroad", MiHoYo rose from fifth place to second place on the global mobile game publisher sales rankings.

In the game, the inspiration for the immortal boat "Luofu" comes from the pre Qin mythology of "seeking immortality", and the fleet sets sail towards "overseas". In the game, it is adapted as heading towards "beyond the sky". The creative team of "Collapse: Starry Sky Railway" introduced that even with highly developed technology, the streets and alleys of the immortal boat "Luofu" are not devoid of smoke and fire. At the beginning of the project proposal, the team hoped to incorporate elements of Chinese civilization into the story. From music, architecture, to humanities, from clothing, food, housing, and transportation to advertising design at street corners, the young creative team has fragmented traditional Chinese cultural elements into games, creating a brand new story that combines traditional aesthetic elements with modern cultural connotations, such as Yuzhao, Happy Tea, Dongtian, electronic potted plants, stone lions, paper kites, flying swords, and star skewers.

Taking the transportation vehicle "Xingcha" as an example, this word originated from an article called "August Cha" in Zhang Hua's "Museum Records" during the Jin Dynasty, which described the old "connection between the Tianhe and the Sea". People traveled on floating Cha and even saw "ox pulling people" in the sky. Floating rafters may have been a form of ancient people's fantasy of space exploration. In the world of fairy boats, mythological floating rafters have become ubiquitous means of transportation.

The transportation vehicle "Star Cha" in the game

In addition, traditional Chinese folk arts and entertainment activities such as Qiong Yu Pai, which originated from mahjong, storytelling, acrobatics, Xianzhou Zhuizi based on Henan Zhuizi, and Hu Ren Da Gu inspired by Da Gu have created a down-to-earth Xianzhou folk life.

A grounded fairy boat life

The Huizhou style architecture is the foundation of the Xianzhou World. The creative team introduced that the reason for choosing Huizhou style architecture is because it is the most prominent among the six major architectural styles in China, and also a representative of ancient architecture in Jiangnan. The high walls are enclosed, the horse heads are raised, the wall lines are arranged in an orderly manner, and the black tiles and white walls are not only unique in style, but also have strong extensibility, which helps to blend imagination about technology in subsequent scene production.

The Huizhou architectural style presented in the game

The game music full of ethnic style is another highlight of "Collapse: Starry Railroad". The passionate war song "Water Dragon Song", sung only in Chinese, depicts the plot of the game character Dan Heng transforming into a dragon and splitting the sea. The lyrics only use a few strokes to outline the magnificent waves of Dan Heng's opening sea: "The blood on my chest is boiling hot, and my claws and teeth are sharpened. I will be draped in starlight and face the abyss again.". A Chilean player covered the video of "Water Dragon Song" in Spanish and created a hand drawn image, which received 350000 views overseas. Additionally, a Brazilian player created a fan song about Dan Heng's past life, Yin Yue Jun. From the lyrics, it can be seen that foreign players can fully understand Dan Heng's past and present life, as well as the meaning behind it.

In the view of the music team HOYO-MiX, Chinese style music is inclusive. It can be in a modern style or played with Western instruments. As long as the core of Chinese culture is grasped, it is an effective form of "composing better Chinese melodies". When creating the music for "Collapse: Starry Sky Railway", they incorporated modern music elements into traditional Chinese pentatonic rhythms, combined with the sci-fi nature of the game using electronic synthesizers, and used flexible and varied music to create exciting tricks in the player's ears. For example, in the storyline of the battle "Annihilation of the Great Lord Huan Mo", there is a vocal choir that uses elements of Dong ethnic songs, which appears in the key plot of the game and leaves a deep impression on players.

Boldly blending ethnic style and electronic music in music, and using intangible cultural heritage techniques and Chinese ink painting style in animation to tell science fiction stories, expanding global users' understanding and cognition of Chinese philosophy... "Collapse: Starry Sky Railway" perfectly embeds traditional Chinese cultural elements into science fiction themes, opening up a vibrant Chinese style science fiction world in front of global players. The "two-way rush" of games and players is the best annotation of the cultural influence of high-quality Internet IP.