Chaos Zero Nightmare Review: 20 Systems in 7 Minutes & players love It

You still didn't say how much money it makes.
Oh yeah. Yeah. That's the most important chart because you uh it was doing half a mill a day and it went on global launch last week with like 800k a day. So it already did in just few
Yeah, it's already peaked. Thank you very much. Next [laughter] game. [music]
Jackas with the two and a half gamers. The midnight crew talking [music] UA adverts and game design too. Mat Felix Shaku bringing the insight. We're rocking [music] those vibes till the early day master eyes on the prize tracking data through the cyber [music] space skies. Felix stacks like a wizard in disguise. Jack's crafting realms to the high. Two and a half gamers talking [music] smack. Slow hockey sick got your back. Ads are beautiful. They light the way. Click it fast. Don't delay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

[music]
No, you don't have few more minutes, Mr. Jakob because we are doing this amazing amazing game which only you like and we don't right.
What do you mean only you like
from this for always from two and a half gamers this is basically your game. We were last week were discussing my type of games now we are in your territory pretty [laughter] much.
Of course
because today
Felix asked this because Felix thirst for waifu games is uncurable it seems. Yeah, this is Felix. I'm not sure
Chaos Zero Nightmare and we can we can say for sure
this is going to be a biggest nightmare for of this week for all like 80% of the [laughter] of the listeners.
Oh, this game is very big. Very very big.
It it doesn't mean anything. My name is

I'm Felix Broberg. I'm preier
and this is by the way horror game. Oo, we are your hosts. We can do ASMR stuff all the time. I don't care. You know what? Before we go there, dear listeners, this episode is brought to you by PVX Partners, the most effective credit line for marketing. If you want to grow your budgets or just scale UA without giving away a piece of your company, go to PVX partners. They can help you with uh getting funding within 30 days. You can get the term sheet in just 24 hours. Just tell them two and a half gamers sent you pvxpartners.com. Go there. They have also PVX lambda which is a game changer for UA. You can get the ROS benchmarks there. So pvxpartners.com/lambda as well. Now we can get back to the episode. There we go. Okay. So for everyone

watching, this will be one of those episode when Yakob will be talking 90% of the time. It will be interesting, historical, and you will learn a lot of new but it will be pretty deep RPG based and waifu. So, those who want to leave,
okay, feel free to go to get lunch. [laughter]
Yeah.
Or something. Yeah. Leave now or [laughter]
don't say anything later.
Don't say anything. Yeah. Anyway, so there's this new game called uh Chaos Zero Nightmare or CZN in the community and it's Yeah, that's literally how it's called.
It's funny, man.
And it looks amazing. And this game is uh I think this will be close to the Mega Bonk episode because this game did exactly what Mega Bonk did which means there were few people in the team who went like why don't we combine this this this and like four games basically into one and works very well in my opinion.

So we'll get to it. I guess it's still a little bit bloaty uh on the system side because it's Asian and like it's Korean and da da da da da. So I would would be really great if the onboarding was a little bit slower and like you wouldn't get thrown into like 20 systems in seventh minute. But uh yeah, we'll get there
anyway. So yeah, there's the gorgeous trailer you can be watching in the meantime. Uh as I'm saying, it's like really really high polished like it's pretty much like one of those like anime games from I think like last three years ago. They went to do stuff that they're literally creating custom anime along the game like that. That's the quality of the animation for last two minutes and I have no idea what just happened there.
It's Lovecraftian horror man like Yeah. Yeah. CN but you see like this is like literally an quality stuff like that's there.
Anyway, let's go to the game itself. Um

so or maybe before Oh, okay. Okay, let's go to the game and then then we do the numbers and everything because it's like very important. So the four games that this is pretty much mutating into one giant chimera is slight aspire that's the core honkai sty rail from mihoyo basically the meta games one to one nearly one to one signature meta uh then there's darkest dungeon another steam indie libling already the second one and on top of it I seen some remnants of umamus which is very
I see it everywhere. Anyway,
no, this is the first time I'm saying it. [laughter] Somebody's doing this mechanic. First time. First time, man. Okay, so let's [clears throat] go to the mission. Let's go to the story.
Listen, go to YouTube to see the smile on Yakob's face while he was talking about this because he's very excited. You can see it only on YouTube.
Uh, by the way, one thing that these

guys did amazingly well, I guess you two would really like it. So, they have these like speed up buttons.
You too? Oh, yeah. I listen to
where like you just hold it and like it completely speeds through everything like every dialogue you just like hold it and that's it like whole sections of everything it it's great like this was whole I think the whole scenario will end in like few seconds
can you just watch the ad on the on the right hand side where's the the play button
well the play button was already speeding up the dialogue I just moved it even faster so but yeah you have these like sequences of anime you see there that like like super high quality and everything
did you just speed up your speed up your your like way of talking as well cuz [laughter] okay sorry just go on
yeah so the setting is this kind of craftian horror whatever something something it's by the way very gruesome like even first battle like one of your characters get turns into orange juice like literally first second minute and [snorts] stuff like that uh lots of tutorials lots of stuff there's the commander talking to

you blah blah blah yeah thank you Great. Finally, let's go to a battle mission.
Hello everybody. Thanks for uh joining this episode. Our sponsor, Fast Spring, has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years. They power top mobile publishers around the world and are reliably fast growing, profitable, and very financially secure. So, Fastpring isn't just figuring out D2C on the heels of the recent VC investment. Their developer first platform and deep gaming and payment expertise have helped democratize global commerce for over two decades. As no drama DC partner, the real world experience at scale fast spring is a partner that you can trust with your players. Quickly launch a new web store replace an existing D2C vendor or just add redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

Thank you very much guys for sponsoring this episode. Now let's back get back to the content. Bye-bye.
Okay, so here we have our waifu selected. Already done few battles with those. And here's the the genius genius part. So it's actually a rog light deck builder. So what are deck builders? You see the cards on the bottom looks like Clash Royale or stuff like that. uh like a strategy game, you know, you have mana, these cards have costs, you throw them out like like Clash Royale or whatever. The big difference with deck builders is that you change your deck as you go during your run. So, here is basically my deck and my cards that I have and I change those cards evolve. I can throw away cards to increase the chance of getting the better cards so on so forth. Like those are deck builder games. uh to get a little bit of a intermetso here. This is Slay the Spire, which is the big indie Leing who pretty

much super popularized this mechanic where again it's a turn-based RPG where you have these abilities that you slowly build along the dungeon as you go through these uh corridors like again you choose and like exactly same same is happening here and you slowly build your deck, make it better and better, get rid of the shitty cards, get the better cards in, try to thin it out so like only good cards always comes to your hand and stuff like that. These these are the guys that that did that. The game is still by the way on very very good CCU. It's like 20k or what they 20k cu and it was launched 7 years ago. So you see the chart here that's still rising up. Altogether it did uh 50 million on steam and slay the spire 2 is uh delayed until March next year. And the second
insights for the data.
Exactly. And the second indie bling which is this is the site the despire with 97% 70k reviews rating is darkest

dungeon. Darkest dungeon is again a turn-based RPG. What's very interesting about darkest dungeon that they have these states like fear, shock, mental breakdown or whatever they're having with Felix. Now,
if you if you watch the trailer, you see like they exactly have these things where your characters literally have stress levels. If those stress levels go over some of the things, they literally go mad. So, they added a lot of these darkest dungeon mechanics, which is incredible in my opinion because I never seen another mobile casual game or mobile mainstream game can do there. And then the last part of the puzzle is of course the Hong Kai star rail meta, which we don't need to see. And then we'll I'll get to do Mamus. So, let's let's finish this battle. Uh yeah, you throw stuff. You see, it's kind of gorgeous animated. Everything's done through these abilities. You can also do auto play, which we're going to do because why not, of course.

Uh and then we have our girls fight it out with the monsters and so on. But it's very important to keep the order of the cards to like be able to do combos to do like specific card after the other card and so on so forth. After each end of the turn, you get new cards again from the deck and you need to do these things. Then you have these three characters here on the left which are the auxiliary like like the secondary weapons. Each one of these girls assigned like one more girl which gives them again chargeable abilities. You go on have this whole turnbased battle and then you win basically if if you're good enough. But yeah, also notice that this gives them a lot more production capacity because the whole game was like super anime style visuals and everything like super 3D everything but this is like what like 2D crap. So it saves a lot of time I think uh and production space. So yeah that's how the like the whole mission system work the battle system works. It's basically slight despire which is great because again I

don't think so we have a very big deck build a free-to-play game on the market yet. I don't think so. And this has been waiting as I said for seven years there was slight like many I' I've seen many games attempted. No one was successful yet
tried. Yeah. Many many games tried many companies.
So we have that of course um our waifuss are literally waifuss. Like I don't really need to to to go here like
these guys don't pull any punches like they don't really care. For instance, this is the 2 million registration waifu that that was given to everybody or like the usual stuff. Then you have the typical gacha setup. Uh they call it rescue as you're rescuing characters. So if you for instance go here. Yeah, we can do some pools. Uh typical stuff. First 50 pools that are guaranteeing uh fivear character. Then like the current banner, which is like the one that's been on the increased chance. Then some usual stuff like these are like the feeler three

star characters which you get all the time because they're complete as is usual. And then if you're lucky we can get at least something which we probably want. Oh, there we go. Yeah, of course. Another war today. Uh yeah, so you go and roll these and and so on so forth. So usual stuff. Yeah, there we go. Five star, which is Yeah, another waifu. There we go. Uh, tier by the way. Not not a really good one. Uh, yeah. So, this this is very very typical for Hong Kong style. Like even this home menu like this one like if I if if I would open you now Hong Kong like this literally looks exactly the same. Even the orange colors on the button are like completely the same. This is the this is the energy system basically. So, this is completely the same. If I go into characters actually uh let me get uh which one? Where's my guy? Here is this. So the

progression layers of the characters you have like his cards which you can modify and check and like do stuff with it. This is this is the this is the difference between Hai Star and these guys because the core is different. Then you have partners which are these like secondary weapons that you assign to these characters. Each one of them is like better than the other. They also get upgraded and manifest their ego which means you need to consume their duplicates and so on so forth potential which is again just another skill tree typical honesty style stuff manifest ego the duplicates which unlock other skills again one to one hai style same thing interesting part where is it here is it let's go to so you have this safe data thing and this is the umamusuma part because what's happening here that your previous runs where you thin out your cards and change them and evolve of them or whatever. And also get three slots for inventory items where saved. It's literally called save data. And you can go here and change it and pick the one that's the best one for you. You see how

different things and different cards are there. So those are pretty much your previous runs that you can use within the game, which is exactly the same thing what Umamus is doing. Your previous rogide runs of girls that you use within the team PVP da da da da da da everywhere. That's there. And then there's ton of usual like basic game mode. Simulation is literally called in Hawkeye Starl, which are these like other modes that you get for other currencies that you need to train and do. Then you have stuff like uh what's chaos again like how? Yeah, basically another progression layers. Everything the game play is always the same. It's just like different setups, different teams, different whatever. Uh giant uh event system like immediately you see like it just showers you with rewards. So, there's like gacha pools here. Another gacha pools here. Another gacha pool here. Some missions. Yep. I don't even know what. Uh, yeah. Girl in pajamas. Uh, yeah. Don't know what. Then

another free currency and some like other stuff. So, there will be very massive liveop system similar to Hong Kong style, I guess, because they have like amazing liveop system. So, it's just like super good. And then uh yeah, the shop itself is kind of low like they don't really do stuff with offers and everything like again similar Hongkey star pattern like not really big kind of 20 passes or whatever because the main thing that everybody cares about is just the banner in the gacha like 5 days until this girl goes out. She's great because I don't know what and yeah that's it. And they have uh I think somewhere here they have I think a little bit more astera because they have like 50% of chance after like a pity timer kicks in to get the banner character. If it doesn't kicks in there's 100% chance for another like 70 or something. I think it's like one to one to Hankai honestly. So yeah, but this is still pretty strict. Like takes a ton of money to actually get the

character because you not only need to get the character, you you fully unlock it, you need like six copies of it, which is like super hard. Uh wish list feature. Again, you go and select one of the characters that you want to have priority. But again, this is more of a like wishy-washy setup like so you hope for it, not not really. That's there. And uh yeah, there's lots of like other systems that I don't even know like what to do. Achievement system, growth system, like again like literally Hongkey Style one to one. But it's it's very interesting when you play the combat and it's actually super tactical because again I was playing this on um auto play but actually if I would be progressing and the enemies like for instance I had a boss battle before like pretty pretty big one and yeah you really need to turn off the auto combat and think like think a lot like the strategic depth is very very strong because each time uh the cards are different your run is different there's

probability these there's stuff in this kind of a tree, I think. Let let me show you the tree. Uh not here. We need to escape this one. Let's go to the campaign. Yeah. Okay. Campaign. Campaign because the Where was it? Okay. We need to clear the missions. Maybe let's repeat the mission. That would be maybe good. This one. Not watch again. Watch again. I can just watch again. Can repeat.
Yeah, you can just watch again. Can I repeat?
You can. Yeah. Okay. I can replay it.
Oh, I can I can uh because it's like literally like the same one as here in the slight despire like you are choosing rooms to go and pick and based on that again probability and like all these other things kicks in. So that's there. I don't know if we can get to it or it's just uh but it's pretty grim like people die, people go mad, people go like um completely mind destroyed and stuff like

that. Yeah, horror based like that's there. But again, it works. Let's talk a little bit more about numbers because yes,
that's the interesting
that's the interesting that's the interesting part.
Not not that long. I just 15 minutes.
I mean it's it's okay. It's like for the complexity of the game. I mean that's you you were quite quick.
Yeah. So
I think Felix fell asleep twice.
Not really.
Yeah. So
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
This is currently the fifth biggest turnbased RPG already. So Fate Grand Order still unopposed Hongkey Star the second one. This is the one that's taking the meta from Ra Shadow Legends with their current Ninja Turtles crossover.
Du for this category out of curiosity. No. No sort no sort by sort by sort by dau
3 million.
Okay. So let's say
3 million du
5 mil 5 mil
just first two games are 4 mil so I guess more

but turn RPG man like it's turnbased RPG like it's
true
it's kind of there. I mean like feelings like what's your what's your latest kind of idea to always talk a this
I'm just curious because we never talk about it right and it's just kind of interesting to see how big the markets are right and I don't think we've been talking enough about it but I think it's kind of interesting to see right
you mean the last time you said Blockbust is the biggest game on the market
by DAU it is
do we want to have this conversation again
no let's not go there again come on guys
let's not go there
let's not let's not go there again
anyway so actually this is done by smilegate for those who don't Uh, Smilegate is a giant Korean company that's, uh, done Epic 7, but also that's doing Crossfire. If you literally go on Wikipedia, Smilegate is the third biggest Korean gaming conglomerate. Uh, it's still owned by its founder by 100%.
Wow.
Just saying. Founded in 2002.
And they have games giants like Crossfire, which has reached more than 8

million CCU around the world. Like that's the Asian version of Counter Strike for those who don't know.
They have Lost Arc. They have Epic 7.
I think it's I think Lost Arc is way more popular than Epic 7.
Of course, Lost Arc is like, man, nothing's compared to Crossfire. That's the first thing. But for sure, but when you said Epic 7, I was like,
"Yeah,
sure."
Yeah. Epic still pretty popular. Like it's Don't get me wrong. Where where is it?
Where?
Epic 7.
Like it's
uh Let me see. plays all like all 10 of 10 of your friends is playing this
20 million half a billion revenue six years I think pretty okay
yeah 17 million people installed this live
37% US revenue man there you go
sure that's fine million people how many what is it like 3 million yeah 3 million downloads [laughter] it's amazing [gasps]
that's okay this is how RPG works man like it's a money printer

I know like Yeah, 100K CCU. There we go. Anyway, so Smile G is a big conglomerate. Don't be fooled by this like small graph that you see here like a few games. No, it's it's giant. Basically, it's giant.
A few games are fine.
Yeah. Yeah. And I really like the combination. Like as I said, uh it's combining pretty bold uh indie games, which is Slay Despire and Darkest Dungeon and putting it into proven Hongkey Style meta. So that's there. You still didn't say how much money it makes.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's the most important chart because you uh
what what you you start you start talking about seven things.
Yeah. You start talking about seven things at the same time.
Oh my god. That's massive.
What did you expect?
So it's doing half a meal a day and it went on global launch last week with like 800k a day. So it already did in just few what?
Yeah, it's already peaked. Thank you

very much. Next game, next game.
No, like you know, you know how these games goes.
I know. There's going to be a Yeah, there's going to be a huge spike as soon as
So it's out basically for two weeks and in two weeks they already did 8 mil. So if we approximate it, that means what? Like something like six, I don't know, 20 mil a month. Uh launcher. Yeah. Counter filter. US 25%.
I mean, I'm sure I know if I just wanted everybody to see the same.
Yeah, of course. Yeah. But still, don't get me wrong, South Korea second, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Asia, Asia, Asia heavy. Yeah. Yeah. Asia Asia heavy.
But yeah, it's uh what I'm really was uh surprised was that this kind of download slope didn't really went that bad because it's usually like dead completely and still 50k downloads a day. So yeah, that's not that bad. And active users are steady, but 200

is a beautiful game, huh?
Yeah, it's it's amazing game. Like I I'm I'm guessing I'll be playing this game even after the podcast just because they have autoplay features, so I can leave it on the second emulator.
You just leave it open for seven days straight.
I just want to see how they will like tackle some of the problems that Hongai has and like some of the other things like if they can do that.
But yeah. Okay, let's let's compare Hong Kai revenue and this
uncomparable [laughter]
then. Yeah, this this this thing here. Oh, this is active users. Wait a second. This is not revenue. This is revenue.
It's still
Yeah.
Okay. But then yeah, just look the last 30 days.
130 mil launch month and then October 23 mil. I wonder I wonder how these these guys are going to tackle the problems of Hong Kai style. Let's see. [laughter]
Oh man, we'll see.
That that was a good one. Yeah, but

still of course.
But the whole game that's my point.
I know. Yeah. Yeah, of course.
Like the whole whole Mihoyo portfolio is basically like giant exercising diminishing returns. So we'll see.
Yeah, for sure. It's better to exercise this on like 200 million revenues like [laughter] 2 million
one and a half billion
which is [laughter] only mobile which we don't see on PC.
Yeah, exactly.
By the way, this is going also on Steam soon and and PC the CZ
I'll increase.
Yeah. Oh, ad revenue zero.
Thank you very much for Thank you very much for listening. I'm not sure what what to think about. But I mean it's it's not a Chinese company, but it's Asian company.
It's a Korean one. Yeah. [gasps]
All the lot of lot of YouTube.
Half of it will be anime. Yep.
Well, you can see it right here. I mean, it's exactly what you would just expect. This is the 36 seconds kind of Yeah.

style like this. I mean, like,
do people download this from UA, you think, or do people just kind of know in forums and communities and like
the community knows it for well?
Yeah. These games don't get launched just by because we said so.
Yeah, exactly.
You've seen it like no soft launch. Like these games don't have even soft launches. They have closed betas to test stuff.
Yeah. And also like this like the UA is not as important and it's going to be super expensive and and as we discussed before, I mean it's not going to be driven by so much UA.
Yeah. They they won't do the fake UA trick or you know any other conventional conventional setup. Yeah.
I don't think they can. I mean, the the community would eat them alive.
Yeah. Like, but again, we're talking hardcore people. Like, these are guys with 500 RPU or LTV per player and and they just go and like
buy everything.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. And like just imagine like what would this guy do

if they like, oh, these guys are using fake.
They care about the brand.
Yeah, exactly. They care about the brand. And I've been working with some some like games with a very vocal communities and I was like guys like it does matter like oh it does it does matter for a lot of people for like the from the community side obviously they would just they would just also go you know crazy for like any types of AI they would go crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah. I can you bet. But I mean like this I mean this is pretty much it.
I mean we can finish like it's cool. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it's cool. Here we go. All the stuff like we just saw like 10 times just different lengths. I mean, I can go and actually go to to Facebook which is basically a lot of static images.
Discord is 50k people. Reddit is 120k people.
That's like 100 like Reddit is going to be the main kind of driver.
I think look I mean this is not even the

like the English. I don't think they care that much. But I can I can do US only. Yeah. 30 creatives in US. Yeah. I think like that's the that's the main market.
Yeah.
Or just whatever. So I think like Yeah. It's
uh you know what
I don't even have like nothing to say here.
Yeah. You know what will happen probably? Um let me put one more game there cuz I think that's the
that's the best trajectory we can get.
Share the screen.
Yeah. Yeah. So you remember when we covered solo leveling with John?
Yeah. That was based on one of the most popular Korean mana, which is the manga version of their comics. And this is basically it where there's like launch month of like 2 million a day and then it just goes into like 100k or whatever.
Yeah. But like it's like it's stable as
Yeah, exactly. So like some fumes uh you know 142 mil from like last year's April
and users see as basically.

Yeah
like that that's it. new downloads. Not really,
but these
but even more by the way like some update probably happened here because you see the pump
but like yeah 800k DAU and that's it like like one last chart and you'll see uh yeah this one this one revenue per download $4. There we go. It's not that big. I think they over overact over overwent a little like if I would put here um
let's go US or just Japan or something and then you will get you will see.
Yeah, exactly.
Hong Kai is 23. [laughter]
Jesus.
It's another category. It's just mindboggling.
But like if you if you compare royal match and coin master, they're also like 27 30 something as well.
I mean you can you can do it. Yeah. They're all match and then you go coin master and then monopoly go even look
what 14 and 11 still not

should be it should be more
Asian games have the highest IP not questionable
like uh
I mean yeah you do US and then we will see [laughter] it's still not translated it [laughter] want to put in Dragon Quest war
yeah sure just go and then check us You was only
Yeah, you was. And then they will see
only
see.
Wow. 44 royal match against 28 Hankai.
See?
Okay. Oh, let the difference. Let me put my superpower there.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. [laughter] Sure.
96 in Japan. Now we're [laughter] talking, baby.
Now we're talking. Yeah. Yeah. Now we're talking. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter]
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. $26 per download. There we go.
Oh man. Yeah, I know. That's it. Yeah. Okay. Fair.
It's cool.
Okay. So, thank you very much again for

for listening to this amazing episode. All five of you that finished this one. Thank you very much. You're a core
very hardcore RPG players most probably from Asia and all of them are working at Smilegate. So, thank you very much. sending best regards to the team.
Yeah, best regards team. Well done. Very well done. Thank you very much again. So, join the Slack channel,
send
and uh send w Yeah. All right. Thank you. See you next time.
So, byebye. Heat. Heat.