Honkai Star Rail Developer Interview: Inside HoYoverse's Turn-Based Game

But yeah, she's one of my favorite characters. And because we have so many characters, the Slg game Cheats is actually filled with, you know - it's a character drama, you'll see a lot of different conversations happening between the characters, their mysteries. And that's how the game is engaging to our players, and you know, I like to hope that as I felt it, our players will as w

The game draws great inspiration from Eastern fantasy in both its silkpunk visuals and unique storytelling, following a protagonist who's been injected with Stellaron - which has been described as seeds of ruin - in a world full of powerful, evil gods called Destructions. Honkai: Star Rail 's combat marks HoYoverse's first foray into turn-based battles, and players can expect a wholly different experience than in previous games from the developer. The protagonist will traverse the world on the Astral Express, the inspiration behind the title's name, as they seek to uncover the mysteries behind the Stella

Michael Lin: Sure. So the game is a space fantasy RPG. So a bunch of the development, consisting of 500 people for the game itself, are big fans of sci-fi, and are big fans of turn-based RPGs. And we felt that the turn-based combat system is something we have not done before in the company yet, in all our previous games. It's still a viable genre to base the game on, and we felt that it's something that we would really like to give it a try, and our players are really feeling for it, and that's why we developed something like t

As a whole, the continuation of the spirit of the Honkai series and its standalone story allows all players to start a galactic adventure together and enjoy the fun of a brand new game. New players can enjoy the game without further knowledge of the previous Honkai games, and old players of the series can share a moment of nostalgia when they reunite with some "old friends" in Honkai: Star

Honkai Star Rail Team: We have built an independent team of more than 400 people for Honkai: Star Rail to carry on the spiritual core of the Honkai franchise while exploring the turn-based gameplay that we have never tried before. The team will face more challenges for sure. But at the same time, the experience we have gained through previous games, including how to efficiently manage and produce resources across different platforms and how to better utilize hardware features of each platform, have been proved very helpful in developing Honkai: Star R

Michael Lin: Yes. So one of the worlds that you get to visit in the game is called the Xianzhou Luofo, which is a battleship or station for one of the alliances of the factions in the game called The Xianzhou Alliance. The whole environment of the game is based on Eastern fantasy, it's really hard for us to show it to you without the screen in front of us. But as soon as you play the game, you immediately see why that is. And we're using fantasy, we want to call it silkpunk, because it really adheres to the fantastic elements that really show in the g

There are some slight changes to the turn-based experience, for the better. Players can use ultimates to interrupt the chain of attack, and can even queue them mid-enemy attack if it looks like a series of abilities are beginning that will threaten a specific party mem

Fish Ling: I do want to add something, when you say why we tried turn-based this time. So our company history for our existing titles, we've had quite successful experiences on producing high-quality, original content, and also action games. So this time, it's like a very new challenge and also an exciting trial for us also to enter this new genre of turn based RPG. And because also, we think in the market, that the turn-based RPG is still a very engaging and also interesting game genre, and it does provide lower entry for newcomers to try the g

Unfortunately, equipment luck remains a thing. I get it - there’s gotta be reasons to grind daily, I guess - but was I ever hoping the equipment system would be more forgiving than Genshin Impact or Epic Seven . At least in the beta, it’s not, really.