🎮 ARKNIGHTS: ENDFIELD - Gacha meets factory automation

If you look into the current revenue, yeah, it's doing something like 3 million spike during the start of it because this was released January 20th. So, it's just 15 days in and in 15 days they already did 22 mil.
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Hello. Hello. This is another one of those solo episode by two and a half gamers and today we're talking Ark Knights Enfield. Yes, another giant anime game released last month. So, let's get to it. It's going to be, I guess, a little bit of a longer episode, but uh it's quite interesting like how this game works. Um, I was surprised myself like what's behind it and like what's the crux of it. So, let me just break it down and let's get to it because it's on the main monitor. It will be a little bit more harder. But yeah, let's go. Okay, so here we are in the game. This is pretty much in style of like Genshin Impact like a giant open world game even though it's not really open world because we have these kind of connected say zones together. It's not one connected world. So for instance, now I'm in belly pass. Then there's this the hub map. I can go here and like do stuff here on this kind of map with objectives and stuff. So it's kind of

like semi semi-open world I would say. But still on the scale of Genshin there's like 80 gig download file. This is a PC client of course. It's all crossplatform. It's coming from the company named Hyper sorry Hypergri which originally released Ark Knights the tower defense game where this game's already grossed more than 1 136 million which was released April 2019 and still as you see here does whatever like 20 mil a month easily but yeah let's be honest this is mainly done in China Japan US is like less than 10% of the revenue so it's a heavy heavy Asian game but yeah this is pretty much in their universe the characters are quite the same even though this is on the tower defense this is like an openw world I would say factory building game and yeah I'll get to it closely as I said. So, we have an open semi-openw world uh action RPG. There's combat in it. I'll show you later as like a this

is I guess not a good time to kind of do it now. But yeah, so let's get actually to my factory here. It's actually in the other region because building factories is one of the primary things that you do in this game. And how do I get to the Yeah, this. No, this one. Region overview. There we go. So, the main factory area that I have here, let me teleport there. Factory know how. Yep. And this starts somewhere kind of quite early in the game. And it's literally in a sense similar to games like Factorio or Satisfactory. For those who don't know, these are giant Steam indie games pretty much. The Satisfactory is not maybe that much indie, but they are. So maybe let's do a little bit of intermetso here and I'll show you. So this is Factorio released in 2020. 98% posit overwhelming positive reviews 112K positive reviews. It's pretty much a game about automation. So what you do here, you literally build factories and

you automate them. Let me just play it again because the can play trailer got stuck. So it's a 2D like isometric game basically where you start very small. You literally start with this kind of like basic kind of a harvest operation that you need to build resources and do stuff here and there and you know as you see lots of conveyor belts lots and lots and lots of them and you actually need to defend against some bugs or whatever some you know base story but you see here it's all about automating factories and resource conversion. So you convert ore into planks into whatever something something. And the beauty of it that it's all automated. You don't do it manually. Of course, that's why these games have like giant appeal to some kind of a niche of a players. Both of these games sport something like 30k CCU just on Steam. Yeah, it's not that small to be honest. And this has been some kind of like a cult classic uh after all those years. That's that's pretty much what it is. And you see how like

extremely complex this can get with this whole factory building things. Again, we are back again at the same spot that we've been there for last year where we see a lot of mechanics, a lot of proven concepts coming from Steam Bing to mobile and in other games. Yeah, here is the bug invasion I was talking about that they're pretty much at some point going to attack you. So, it's a little bit FNZ, but as you see here, like it's not priority of the game. And yeah, the train just splashes over the box here and goes into like a much much larger and you see like stuff like drones and all these other things like giant complex factories can be built in this game. Those are all systems like this is pretty much like the system design as it is as a game. So that's the beauty of it. The other game is Satisfactory that was released actually two years ago in 2024. And this is much closer because this is in 3D. And if I move somewhere here, you see that again very very similar setup

where you go, you harvest resources on planets and then you build your factories and factory lines. And of course, it's much more complex. But again, as you see here, like this kind of image, yeah, lots of conveyor belts. Again, from scratch, again, you can like build a lot of stuff there. So again, both games have kind of similar review scale, ek reviews, both for satisfactory. Again, 97% positive. So there's definitely some kind of an audience that this kind of gameplay is appealing to, which uh I guess this game is heavily betting on because the factory building thing, I thought it was some kind of like a gimmick or like you know there will be something. No, like all the systems in this game are adjusted so that factory building is like the core of it. So let me go through the like some some of the basics. So you start with this hub and you literally need to plug like cables into the pylon. So let's say you do this like start transmission. You see how I'm dragging a cable with this plug and for instance I would need to plug it here

into like a relay tower that it's already plugged. So not there but for instance I had to drag it there to power the bridge to kind of take it down. Or for instance there's this pylon that's pretty much giving me energy that Yeah. this one electric pylon that is powering these two units, refining unit and shredding unit. Again, you can build also conveyor belts here like you see. I'll show you later. There's for instance these like uh portable mining rigs that are again doing like automated harvest of resources. Again, another one so on so forth. So like what's happening with all these resources and like what's what's there? I guess let's let's move to the conveyor belt area where I have the outpost because outposts this is similar to something like a Far Cry or whatever where you clear these outposts and you build like more factories there in them. So for instance here you see I have the conveyor belt where I'm just refining stuff and I think I can even

put it how do I put the stuff into it? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's not in the storage area here. Still like it's quite complex honestly to first even understand like how to operate some of these things because there's like immense amount of tutorials and immense amount of stuff that you need to learn and like it's not that intuitive sometimes because all the like even the puzzles and like stuff in the game like you need to plug in cable here, plug in cable there. So yeah, that's there. Uh maybe I can just directly throw it into it. Yeah. So it should start spewing these boxes as you see. So it's being automated. As I said, I don't know like where's the storage area, but again lots of automation it can be done here. So what do we do with automation and all these other things? So let's get to the characters. This is your typical kind of genin style thing where you are having team of four characters. Actually they're visible at all times. You can even switch between them. So if I'm here, yeah, I can just seamlessly

hop between those. See? So it's it's quite easy. And these characters are great. They assist also with like other things. The whole thing is like based on combo system. I'll show you later. But for instance, if I'm harvesting something, these guys will also try to harvest it out and like help me with like digging resources or whatever. So that's good. Let me get back to my main panda. Yeah. So what do we do with all these things? Not the acquisition store. See lots and lots of items. Not on the weapons. Actually, I want to go to characters. Yeah. So, here we have our hungry panda. So, this is typical RPG character progression. So, we have the level which again is increased I mean max level here but increased by some materials or XP by killing mobs. And then we have the ability matrix which is some kind of a skill tree. Again, another progression layer. Then we have the weapon itself, which again we can fine-tune and level up again. Again, very similar to something like a Hongkey Genshin and all these other open world

RPGs. Then we have the gear and this is this is the one where it differs from Genshin because normally within like all these other things, gear and armor would also come from gacha, not here. How it's done here? It's done through recipes and gear gear assembly. So, if I go here and there's this gear assembly thing, you see that I pretty much can craft these things. So, if I have, for instance, these minor gear packs or or this gear pack. Yeah, this one. So, let me craft it. And that's it. And just takes like these regions. And the more you progress, the more of these different things you get to level up. So, let me again equip that on my panda here. Yeah. See? So, it's just better. And then my stats increase basically. So yeah, the gear is being crafted. Also, the health potions and all these other things are being crafted. So lots of things are being crafted. That's why like this whole like factory element is so crucial. But yeah, that's a big big difference and big shift because again,

I guess not everybody's not everyone will be keen on like doing these conveyor beds and automation gameplay. But if you don't like that, this game is not for you most probably because it's literally engraved into every single aspect of it. The other interesting thing is also this kind of a little bit of tower defense element which the game I guess tries to put as a legacy for it for the previous game where again for instance here there was a scenario where I built these towers again the pylon I have to plug in and cable from there it's powering them like we can literally check like if I turn them off or turn them on on the electricity uh and these are just destroying enemies again there are some tower defense scenarios there was this like enemy outpost that I cleaned [snorts] out and now the refugees He's from this guy kind of moved in and out. Now I can like uh trade with them actually and do some stuff around that. So again, leader of the shelter. Uh I really want to know not the tutorial. Yeah, so many menus. I'm sorry. Not here. Where we are?

Database arrive. Yeah, you see like how many different things there are here pretty much. Operation manual. No, where was it? But I know there's a trading menu somewhere that I was kind of trying to very best. Yeah, here it is. So you see um an outpost with zero stock bers can no longer trade. Wait for the outpost to deposit more stock bills to trade. Yeah, you even need to select an operator. My god, that's great. Oh, that's a great collection mechanic where characters are actually responsible for some factories. But again here you see that you literally trade with the factory and then you get this kind of outpost prosperity which means again the outpost can grow. It gives you soft currency and all these other things. So this whole factory economy is kind of extremely engraved into it and it's as I said it's literally following the factorial satisfactory kind of setup much more simpler of course like you cannot do stuff that you can do in Satisfactory but it's still very interesting and I'm quite surprised that

this is this is happening on that big of a scale because it's a big bet I would say for this kind of a game with this kind of a giant production budget to just go after this kind of a nichy group of people that are going into these factory automations and they like them. Yeah, we'll see if it will be successful or not. As for gacha itself, we have the typical stuff. So, we have the, you know, new event where they give you 10 pools pretty much again like lots of these like sign in. This is typical mihoyo stuff. So, as you level up, we give you more pools on the character gacha, more resources, some giveaways, new character, sign in, combat drills again, test the character. Again, this is 101 Kai and Genshin really the same. More activities unlock later. Again, don't have that because I'm level seven. But yeah, let me just show you at least the summoning animation. I got this ticket. So, is this kind of a really nice It's actually looks like Hell Divers. This is really interesting because literally it looks like Hell Divers animation when you start the game where this kind of pod slams into the

ground and then based on the color of the pot, you know if it's like rare or super rare or whatever. Yeah. So we got like a four star here. Nothing really to it. There's actually six star characters in this game like you see here. So the top are six stars. Five stars are occasion. Four stars are the father for I guess yeah you don't really do some put them to management of factories or whatever. Uh yeah. So this is the normal gacha. As usual after 300 PS you get the selection of like one of the base units that you get the sixstar ones. This is the current unit on the banner. Uh and this is the early gacha that will I guess disappear once I kind of finish it. And interesting part is that these uh arnaments which is the weapons for the characters are if I understand correct locked behind the character itself. So in order to even have that you need to have let me get rid of it summon. Yeah. So great I got two five star. But again, if I understand

correctly, to get the to get the actual weapon of the character, I need to first get the character itself, which means that the game is actually locking the second gacha behind the acquisition of the first character, which is quite interesting. But yeah, again, I haven't seen it before. So yeah, we'll see how that works out. Maybe let's get to some combat, I guess. Not here, but in the other map, there was some kind of enemy camps here just kind of moving around the place. Let's go here. Combat is again quite interesting. I would say it's much more focused on team play than single character because again you see you have all these like points of interest that you can interact with. These are for instance the some craftables, some hidden stuff in the game. This is Wait a second. Wait. Uh run away. Anyway, uh anomaly suspended in the air. No time to investigate. There are these zip lines, by the way, which are quite interesting because again, you can zip through them and like move through the environment even though

you can teleport them. See, there we have our enemy camp. Teach these guys what's what's there for it. And then what's that? I don't even know. So, we can go into combat now. So, we have the combo abilities and the bar at the bottom as you see. But now again, you see how I'm kind of pushing more characters into it as I'm kind of fighting and then they pretty much join me in if I use the utility. Yeah. See how pretty much the combos pretty much goes around there. So, it's pretty neat combat system. As I said, it's much less focused on the single character that you're playing. It's much more focused on team play and like combo of specific characters that uh you have in your party. Yeah, this panda is just awesome. There we go. And then yeah, you just complete missions. There's this kind of a I would say story about colonization of this moon called Talos 2 by this kind of Endfield Corporation where for instance if you don't see the main character it's because I kick him out of

the party because he was not that good honestly. So I can show you later. Just let me finish these guys. Yeah, there we go. If I go here and into the characters the party here this is the main character that's either boy or girl. again exact same setup that Hankai has. It's nice like he has some kind of rocks, lava, whatever utility ability or attack ability. Yeah, I don't care. Not really in the tier list. So yeah, uh that's I guess for the main main part of it. As I said, everything is like so entwined into the like factory building thing and all these other like plugging cables, currents or whatever. Uh you can craft a lot of stuff as you see like this is an openw world corridor semi-open world so I can still go and like farm resources these guys or whatever I I can even imagine what will happen at the end of the story like if there will be some kind of hunts because as I as I heard and I was like researching some stuff about this lots

of it is about automation about building those specific factories other players can actually share the blueprints of those factories which is really good because again it kind of crosses the complexity of like you building it and they just share you the blueprint. You build it on blueprint. So like getting a net deck from like meta deck from the internet which is great. Other players can visit each other on their ships and help the harvesting process. So that's also good. I haven't seen that many people online like or in the world. I don't know if it's a starting location or somehow like I'm just missed something. But uh yeah, as you see here, there's like lots of these like points of interest and stuff that you can do or whatever like kind of turn around the game. I'll be watching this quite closely. But um even though I really like the factory automation gameplay because it's like again system design in its purity, so you like building stuff, it's it's can be extremely engaging. But I'm guessing that because of the complexity, especially complexity doing

on boarding, this can be problematic for the game because again, if you look into the current revenue, yeah, it's doing something like 3 million spike during the start of it because this was released January 20th. So, it's just 15 days in and in 15 days, they already did 22 mil, which uh yeah, they won't do another 22 mil. in another 15 days I guess approximating something like 700k per day more than 700k per day just on mobile can imagine how much revenue this is doing also on other platforms I'm guessing maybe like 2 million a day so yeah this could do pretty well even though mobile I guess we don't see the the full revenue here downloads wise uh again this is now like 100k a day like giant giant spike because again this game was quite anticipated like one of the biggest anime gacha games being released this year already. If you look at the charts, it's already grossing number two after wooding waves and where winds meet and infinity niki. So, it's

kind of trying to get back trying to get on Genshin, which it actually can honestly because Genshin is just 50 mil a month on mobile, which if this would blow up and like keep up like probably first month they won't catch them. These games are heavily dependent on the gacha. So, we'll see like if like another character comes in if there will be a spike like the the banner I just showed you with the fire girl is ending basically today. So, that's there. But yeah, um because these cores and these game plays of these like factories, they are very very engaging, but they are quite niche because this is not mainstream and not everybody likes to like build on automation. People usually like to smash stuff and run around stuff and collect stuff rather than just think about automating stuff and like making very sophisticated factories. I don't know. Yeah, just for the revenue filter as usual. Let me just finish this here. This is still heavily heavily Asian. US is over 10%. Now, as for the revenue, Ark Knight's base tower defense game was less than 10%. So, here is like 11.6%. Japan 30%, China 30%. Yeah, this is

heavy Asia. South Korea 11%, Taiwan 5%, Hong Kong like Germany with like 1%. So, yeah, this this is the usual kind of mihoyo, I guess, even more Asian than the mihoyo playbook. We'll see what what happens there. But nonetheless, we got another example of a game that's been using Steam or PC based mechanics to kind of push them through. I guess like crossplatform, but it's quite unique. So, we'll be clo watching this closely like how this goes and moves. I guess I'll include it into review radar. For anybody that is building these factory satisfactory or how do you call it factory building games, this is like a must one to kind of check because the RPG systems that they integrated into game, I think they're pretty well. As I said, it's just a kind of complexity overload in the beginning that's I guess hindering them, which I'm afraid will bear a detrimental effect on the scale of this game. But yeah, let's see. Anyway, um yeah, that was it. Ark Nights and Field out now less than a month. Go check it out. And as I said, if you're

really into factory building, you can go check out the other two games. Factorio is like a legend of a game. I think everybody, especially you game designers listening, you should go play it at least just for knowing about it and tinkering with you like it because it's pure system design. It's pure joy. I remember I had to literally uninstall it because I was like completely addicted to it once you can get it rolling. But yeah, we'll see how this one goes. See you on the next one. Have a nice day and if any questions join the Slack channel or write us there if you, you know, like this or no.