Named "Heimanbo", they have created "Basketball Girls" that fit the physical constitution of domestic players | Play something good.
Text by Ju Hao
Edited by Guopu
Basketball has once again proven its influence as a mass national sport, but this time it appears in the form of a 2D gacha game.
Avoiding several highly anticipated "blockbuster" titles set to launch at the end of the year, *Basketball Girls: Leap to the Peak* (hereafter referred to as *Basketball Girls*) from Lingxi Interactive Entertainment seized the window of opportunity and became a dark horse at the end of October. This basketball-themed nurturing 2D game was once compared to a "domestic version of Uma Musume Pretty Derby". After its public launch, it immediately climbed to 4th place on the iOS bestseller list and earned a score of 8.2 on TapTap.
Official promotional image from Bilibili
For Lingxi, creating breakout hits is nothing new. Works such as *Three Kingdoms: Strategic Edition* and *Ruan Jian* are all under its banner. But after Lingxi split off from Alibaba, there were hardly any major moves except for the shutdown of *Travel Frog: China Trip*. Moreover, both the nurturing genre and the 2D anime style are game types that Lingxi has rarely dabbled in before. This foray into the campus sports theme is, from every perspective, a work that marks Lingxi stepping out of its comfort zone.
With no existing IP, no prior experience in this field, and positioned as a comeback title, logically speaking, this studio stacked with all these "debuffs" should have faced enormous development pressure. However, the actual gameplay experience of *Basketball Girls* is surprisingly pleasant. The game not only has a soft and cute art style, but is also packed with countless internet memes. It's fair to say that while the development team stayed up late working overnight and wore out their glasses, they presented the story of "dreams" and "growth" to players in the gentlest way possible.
In-game screenshot
01 Game? It's a Meme Blind Box!
When playing *Basketball Girls*, you never know when the next meme will pop up. It could be from a random trigger event, a daily conversation with a character, or even the first time you find out what the game's development studio is called —
For a basketball-themed game, naming the studio Black Mamba Studio makes perfect sense, right? For a gameplay style similar to Uma Musume, naming it "Mambo" Studio also sounds quite reasonable. But the encounter between basketball and nurturing in *Basketball Girls* unexpectedly combined "Mamba" and "Mambo" together, resulting in the name "Heimanbo Studio", which once again proves that a fun game should start showing its meme density right from the naming stage.
And when you try to "invite a master" for the development team, you will find they have already stayed one step ahead! *Basketball Girls* not only invited a well-known "master" that everyone is familiar with, but also directly turned "Yao Ming" into a game character. However, *Basketball Girls* needs both basketball elements and girlish elements. Big Yao's basketball skills alone are not enough to "adapt to the local customs", he has to go through a "gijinka (girlification)" process to perfectly integrate into the game world.
AI fan-made art by Bilibili players
The in-game counterpart of Yao Ming is a high school girl named Ming Yao. With a height of 184cm and an impressive body proportion, players can easily spot the connection between the two. Although the character name makes people a bit caught off guard, the character design of *Basketball Girls* is absolutely no slouch.
Every interactive content in the game can deepen your understanding of the players. For example, Ming Yao is a player where "natural talent outweighs hard work". Relying solely on her height advantage, she is a heavy tank-like presence on the women's basketball court. Contrary to this impression, she devotes more energy to developing her own games rather than playing basketball. As a game otaku, you can't win her heart with a plush teddy bear or strawberry cake — an RTX 8090 graphics card is the real "magic weapon" for winning over Yao, and creating a breakout hit game to achieve a "lay-flat" lifestyle is Ming Yao's real dream.
AI fan-made art by Bilibili players
In the world of *Basketball Girls*, all basketball stars are equal, none of them escaped the fate of being turned into cute girls. Besides Ming Yao, you can also share hamburgers and french fries with the blonde ponytail "LeBron James" after training, and hear her classic line: "Anyone who checks the game stats will know that my performance in this match is absolutely perfect". "Rocket James Harden" becomes a white-haired heterochromatic chuuni girl, saying creepy lines like "observer" and "evil spirit" while making a three-point shot with the "Final Step Back" to reverse the whole game.
Apart from on-court performance, players can also increase character affection levels and dress the girls in new outfits... While the nostalgia for basketball is solid, it's really hard not to develop extra affection for the "other side" of these familiar old friends. Adaptations shouldn't be altered randomly, except when the alterations are extremely fun.
In-game screenshot
The practice of turning real prototypes into cute girl characters has achieved great results before. In the second half of this year, the blue whale girl meme flooded Bilibili comment sections, and the girlified versions of Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter fed global netizens with CP content. The cuteness from the contrast is the key reason why netizens keep choosing these characters.
DeepSeek used to be just an emotionless AI tool, but after being dressed in a maid outfit, it gained personality traits of being clingy and lazy, which not only makes the image more vivid, but also allows it to take on more emotional interactions with users. Malfoy was originally a villain in the Harry Potter series, his girlified image strips away the dark side of the character, only retaining the shining points of tsundere and cool charm, making it much easier for the audience to accept the character. As the old saying goes, "gentlemen all adore fair ladies", the girl image always carries people's many visions for beauty, and "basketball girls" proves that this also applies to sports nurturing themed games.
Online fan-made art
The real NBA court is full of confrontational elements, just like the classic saying "being bad at the game is the original sin", players without championships are often deprived of everything. When basketball stars are converted into beautiful girl images, the originally heavy professional tournaments get entertainment treatment. Players who know basketball can spot the fun points at a glance, and players who are not very familiar with basketball can also understand the content without a high threshold. The game background shifts from the competitive stage where you advance or you fall back, to a relaxed and lively campus life, which not only shortens the distance with 2D game players, but also makes it easier for the plot to trigger resonance and emotional impact on players' memories.
The main storyline of *Basketball Girls* follows a very classic narrative framework: the team fails to qualify for the league, the risk of key players quitting the team follows closely behind, and the shadow of the team disbanding hangs over everyone, while "I" as the ace coach steps in to turn the tide.
Meme fan art by Bilibili players
This kind of "player quitting the team" trope, which we have seen from the story of Sun Wukong fighting the White Bone Demon three times, to the iconic kneeling scene of Nagasaki Soyo in *MyGO!!!!!*, has been appreciated countless times but never feels too cliché. It can even be said that this plot of separation and rupture has become an indispensable part of hot-blooded competitive stories. Team members love each other but also hurt each other, and every moment attracts the audience to grab their youth memories and patch up their past regrets. Real-life goodbyes are very painful, and people don't really want to face this harsh reality. *Basketball Girls* adds rich meme elements to season the story, making it really easy for players to enjoy.
02 From "awkwardly funny" to "addicted" in less than half a day
Good meme culture can give players the motivation to download the game, but relying on that alone is hardly enough to retain players. *Basketball Girls* strikes a perfect balance. The development team did not make this game a "beautiful girl illustration collection" under the guise of basketball. You can feel that the characters in it truly love playing basketball, and there are objective talent gaps between different players. Although the characters running around on the court are Q-version "big head dolls", players can feel not only laughter, but also the sweat and tears of the characters.
In-game story screenshot
The gameplay of *Basketball Girls* is not the most outstanding among its peers, but it has extremely clear game goals: try every means to raise your character stats, then take your well-raised "own kids" to the basketball court to test the results. The game is roughly divided into two sections: "nurturing" and "competing".
As a nurturing game, some common industry pain points are the most noticeable parts for players. Traditional nurturing games have very high repetition rates. While stats keep rising, players' sensitivity to stat changes also decreases. When stats reach a certain level, there will be a long plateau period, which greatly reduces the smoothness of the player experience.
In-game outfit screenshot
*Basketball Girls* made a very smart innovation: the development team integrated roguelike loop elements into the nurturing system. The training cycle is one week: train from Monday to Friday, and you can go out for activities on Saturday and Sunday. The events and items you encounter during this period are completely random, and every time you draw stat rewards it feels like a high-stakes bet. This blind box-style experience gives players frequent bursts of pleasure.
As the coach of the girls, you can give rewards to players who perform well, or give them comfort after a failed training. The process of grinding stats doesn't feel mechanical at all, it feels like you are witnessing the growth track of a friend. Apart from the stat growth of the characters, players can also get fun from collecting a large variety of different events.
In-game outfit screenshot
The nurturing system of *Basketball Girls* is mainly divided into three playstyles. The training build is currently the most popular one: players need to make team members perform more synchronized training actions, spin the slot machine to get team members with the same expression, and earn extra bonus stats. Combined with character skills, you can raise the bonus multiplier to 5x or even 6x, popping out higher numbers with more gorgeous special effects.
The shop build and gacha build are much simpler: players only need to work part-time at the restaurant on weekends to earn funds, then clear out the shopping cart all at once with the accumulated money, and the team members' stats will skyrocket. In the nurturing section, "Basketball Girls" uses the simplest gameplay to bring out the purest sense of refreshment for players.
In-game screenshot
In the competition section, *Basketball Girls* builds a pyramid-style tournament system. The ace coach played by the player starts coaching from the wildcard team, crosses the Eastern Tournament full of strong teams, and finally achieves the goal of qualifying for the national tournament. All tests of the nurturing results are carried out through matches. Players can choose PVE "tower climbing" to get rewards, or join the arena and special tournaments like the "Start of Winter Cup" to PK with players across the whole server