Can "Roco Kingdom: World", which has been in development for six years, outshine its former self? | Product Observation

Text by | Dried Fruit

On March 26th, "Roco Kingdom: World", produced by Tencent's Magic Square Studio, was finally launched. As of the time of writing, this product has exceeded 60 million pre - orders and entered the top ten of the iOS best - selling list, which is a good start.

Official pre - order celebration KV

In the past few years, the question "How long do we have to wait for the Roco Kingdom mobile game?" has been repeatedly mentioned by players. This product was first exposed in 2021. If counted from the project's inception, it has been in development for nearly six years, during which it has been overhauled and postponed several times.

This kind of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" story continued until Q4 last year when they announced the launch time again. Even then, players once suspected "Is this really it this time?"

During this long development cycle, the market's understanding of the "pet - catching" gameplay has changed dramatically due to the emergence of several products. Now, "Roco Kingdom: World" not only has to face the expectations and scrutiny that come with launching a new work of a classic IP but also has to consider the misalignment and conflicts between the early concepts and market iterations. It's either outpace the era or be left behind by it.

After all, in the game industry, there is no such thing as "the ancestral laws cannot be changed" in product development.

Interestingly, judging from the final launched version of the game, Magic Square Studio's choice is quite greedy yet ingenious - they choose "to have it all". Relying on their own advantages, they have achieved what other similar sentiment - based products cannot: they have neither given up many design elements of "Roco Kingdom" and have restored the childhood memories of a generation as much as possible, while also building a mature and era - compliant content gameplay framework based on technological and market changes.

Cover of "Roco Kingdom: World"

This is not easy.

You know, shortly after the first exposure of "Roco Kingdom: World" in 2021, there was a wave of "childhood memory revival" in the market. At that time, mobile games based on classic childhood web games like "Moore Manor" by Taomi and "Obby Island" by Baitian were launched, pushing the public's sentiment to almost the peak.

In contrast, "Roco Kingdom: World" hadn't even started testing at that time and didn't return to the public view until the first test in 2024. During the same period, the IP mobile game "Sailor Plan" based on "Sailor" by Taomi might have already started thinking about shutting down.

In terms of game content, Magic Square, backed by Tencent, certainly has enough technology, capital, and channels to create a "Roco Kingdom" that can reignite players' enthusiasm. However, if they ignore the new gameplay brought by products like "Phantom Animals Palu" and insist on exploring the design exclusive to their own IP, it still requires great confidence and courage. After all, from the market trend, 2026 is destined to be the most competitive moment in the "pet - catching - like" track.

Now thinking about it, before the game was launched, the pressure and indecision that Magic Square faced both internally and externally were probably unimaginable to everyone. Then why on earth did Magic Square spend six years doing something that seems to be "wanting it all"?

The most fundamental reason may be that Magic Square doesn't want to just treat "Roco Kingdom: World" as a pure "sentiment - based product". After all, "Roco Kingdom" is not only the childhood of a generation but also the white moonlight of Magic Square itself.

Roco Kingdom

Among Tencent's four major game studio groups, Magic Square currently gives the impression of being relatively low - key, and its game concept is also quite different from other studios, making it a bit hard to figure out. And Zhang Hanjin (Enzo), the president of Magic Square, although he participated in projects like "QQ Tang" and "QQ Speed" after joining Tencent, his personal thinking and decision - making are more reflected in another project - QQ Pet.

If strictly defined, QQ Pet, like many desktop pet - raising products, is of course also a game. But just like when people mention the vegetable - harvesting and stealing in "QQ Farm", people's memories and impressions of QQ Pet are more focused on the huge community Internet ecosystem built by Tencent QQ at that time. It's about the emotional interaction between people and virtual products, that is, a gamified community.

QQ Pet

Back then, many people might have been willing to spend 10 yuan to open a one - month "Yellow Diamond" just to change the BGM of their QQ space; and they insisted on logging in every day just to upgrade their QQ and accumulate stars into suns and moons.

What really turned QQ Pet from a "virtual pet" into a "gameplay" was "QQ Pet Big Fight" developed by Zhang Hanjin's team. This Flash - based fighting web game's materials are basically from QQ Pet. Each person's QQ Pet will automatically fight based on its cultivation, giving a more definite numerical feedback on the significance of QQ Pet's cultivation.

As soon as it was launched, "QQ Pet Big Fight" was loved by a large number of netizens. At that time, the monthly revenue of "QQ Pet Big Fight" once approached 30 million yuan and even entered the top ten of Tencent Games' monthly revenue.

During the same period, the QQ Pet product department was also incubating another project, that is, "Roco Kingdom" which was launched along with the establishment of Magic Square. The design story related to this product almost always involves Zhang Hanjin.

For example, in the earliest stage, Zhang Hanjin's goal was to create a Chinese children's SNS, and based on this idea, the framework of an "online theme park" was derived; during the Spring Festival in 2010, Zhang Hanjin spent five days at home writing a 40,000 - word worldview and a 40,000 - word level design document for this idea. Thus, the magical world named "Roco Kingdom" was officially born.

There is also an interesting little story: in the worldview document, Zhang Hanjin named the great devil "Ron". But later, the team members unanimously decided to change it to his English name "Enzo". On the one hand, this name sounds more cool, and on the other hand, the members hoped that Chinese children would "all fight against him". Each member of the team actually has their corresponding NPC character in the Roco world.

Enzo in "Roco Kingdom: World"

So, how popular was "Roco Kingdom" after its launch?

Regarding this, everyone has more or less a sense. It seems that they unknowingly got hooked on this game back then. From an objective data perspective, in July 2010, on the first day of the public beta of "Roco Kingdom", it gained 1 million new users. Although the initial retention rate was not ideal due to problems in the economic system and other aspects at that time, after several iterations by Zhang Hanjin and the team members, the game's data began to "soar" after September, and the maximum number of online users on weekends would increase by 50,000 to 60,000.

Most importantly, "Roco Kingdom", with its low threshold and high sense of freshness, became a topic and bond for children's offline social interaction. They would exchange experiences with each other in class and share their various new discoveries. And when the product forms social fission, it's only a matter of time before it is completely successful.

In December 2010, the maximum number of online users of "Roco Kingdom" exceeded 1 million. During the same period, Tencent's management approved the application to establish Magic Square.

After 16 years, Magic Square has now completed the technological transformation from web games to mobile games and has produced successful products such as "Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm" and "Dark Zone Breakout". The in - development "Under One Person" has also been continuously attracting players' attention.

It's just that even until today, no one can be sure whether "Roco Kingdom: World" can surpass that white moonlight of the past.

In terms of design, "Roco Kingdom: World" not only restores various contents of the first - generation game in 3D but also spends a lot of effort and cost on the modeling and detail refinement of the elves. According to the official, they want to make each type of elf as "alive" as possible.

Needless to say, there are common - sense designs like "knowing to take shelter from the rain when it rains", "basking in the sun on sunny days", and "dark - attribute creatures only appearing at night". In the game, each elf also has a different personality. When they are all placed in the home, lively elves like to jump around and play, lazy elves often lie in bed and sleep, enthusiastic elves will go out to greet Roco when he comes home, and cold - aloof elves will pretend to be proud...

Pet interaction in "Roco Kingdom: World"

Specifically for different types of elves, they also have their own behavior patterns that conform to the settings. For example, the friendly Haoyuer will actively spit out musical notes to play and attract attention. If you pretend to ignore it, you will be knocked flying by its powerful musical notes.

Even for the elf calls that are most easily ignored by players, they use the sounds of hundreds of real - world environments and creatures for repeated fusion and debugging to ensure that the elf sounds can convey enough emotions and details.

Behind - the - scenes short film released by the official

On this basis, the official has made a lot of designs around elf interaction, and the most direct and obvious one is the "riding system".

To ensure that the interaction with each elf is intuitive, Magic Square has designed a corresponding set of riding actions for each type of elf. For example, you ride the griffin, while for the chubby Magic Cat, you carry it with one hand.

A holding method that suits the image well

For small elves that cannot be ridden, due to the ingenious idea of "elves riding Roco", a series of strange combinations have emerged.

This kind of delicate "detail - oriented" design undoubtedly gives "Roco Kingdom: World" a strong single - player game feel and makes the entire fantasy world come alive as players expect. After all, which player who liked "pet - catching" games since childhood hasn't fantasized about traveling to a world where they can really interact with pets?

However, as a long - term operation product, looking to the future, this series of designs of "Roco Kingdom: World" actually involves a bit of a "gamble".

Long before the public beta, the official emphasized more than once that the game will never sell elves, numerical values, or draw cards. This means that in long - term operation, the refined elf design cannot form a strong and effective positive business cycle like other common games on the market. Instead, it will increase the game's iteration cost. Moreover, if the detail design of elves is reduced in the future, it may make players feel perfunctory and damage their good impression of the game.

And the current "selling fashion" commercialization model of the product relies more on a large enough active user base. In other words, only when the number of active users continuously exceeds a certain threshold can "Roco Kingdom: World" ensure continuous positive operation.

Basis from the game's official WeChat public account

Therefore, another core of "Roco Kingdom: World" is "social interaction". Many designs of the game revolve around this element. For example, an asynchronous online system is introduced to record one's own actions, magic, and interactions with elves in various places. Even with the asynchronous online system, the game still chooses to enhance the multi - player co - screen online experience. Players in the world can go shopping, fight monsters together, or hundreds of people can wait together for rare "heterochromatic" elves. Even two players can hold hands and explore the world together.

In addition, players can also share their elf eggs, team formations, and other content with other users with one click. Compared with "Roco Kingdom", there are obviously more things that friends can do for each other in "Roco Kingdom: World", and there are more things worth sharing and communicating about.

However, social interaction in "Roco Kingdom: World" is not mandatory. Before the public beta, the official specifically cancelled the unique