Global Localization

Dislyte is a new hero collector fantasy RPG from Lilith Games (of AFK Arena, Rise of Kingdoms, and Warpath fame) where players assemble squads of mythological characters to fight in turn-based battles in a stylish, cyberpunk setting. Dislyte is also the first game released by a new publishing brand called Farlight Games, which Lilith launched in April and is based in Singapore. This new publishing division is set to release upcoming titles Farlight 84, Boom Party, and an unannounced game under the codename “SAMO”.

Kenny Wang, founder and CEO of Farlight Games, stated that “the launch of Farlight Games represents a significant upgrade to our strategy of 'global localization'. We want to recruit top talent from around the world to provide a more localized service to players around the world.” Dislyte marks the first step for the Chinese developer, Lilith Games, to help support and facilitate global distribution going forward.

Looking back at AFK Arena, Lilith Games was already aiming to broaden the appeal of the hero collector RPG genre and bring it to the West. They managed to succeed in the global market by pursuing accessibility, ease of play, and generously rewarding time invested in AFK Arena, without losing the parts that account for the high LTV of games in the genre. Dislyte is the next step in that direction.

With this goal of creating a more refined and localized product for global players — from hero collector gacha RPGs to AFK Arena and now to Dislyte — the following sections attempt to answer:

• What makes Dislyte stand out in its genre of F2P gacha RPG?
• What do the early numbers predict?
• What makes Dislyte, ‘a game for broader appeal,’ surpass AFK Arena and others in its genre?

Superheroic Gacha RPG

A hero collector RPG is built on three systems working in harmony:

• The Gacha, or lootbox, system that is used to collect heroes/equipment and is at the heart of the monetization strategy
• The battle system and game modes that challenge players to acquire different heroes/equipment and upgrade them
• The upgrade potential of heroes/equipment that provides various growth vectors that require players’ investment over a long period of time across the whole game

These three systems are heavily interdependent on each other and need to be carefully tuned and balanced. Though there are a lot of existing, proven models to borrow from, a skilled team of developers is needed to operate the challenges that arise from running a hero collector RPG. The hero collection, battle, and growth vectors need to create a strong, long-term drive to collect a variety of heroes from an ever growing hero roster, all upgraded to their max potential.

Any imbalance in one of those systems can quickly lead to devaluing players’ participation in the game, causing pain points and increasing the quit rate. For Lilith Games, creating a new hero collector RPG is playing to its strengths and learnings from running a globally successful game in the genre: AFK Arena.

Dislyte’s gacha system is used for hero collection and is reminiscent of the ones seen in popular eastern games like Puzzles & Dragons and Monster Strike, with Raid: Shadow Legends and Summoners War popularizing it worldwide. The turn-based battle system is traditional and familiar — players assemble squads of five heroes to fight primarily in PvE game modes. Heroes and their equipment have several progression vectors that direct activity within the various game systems.

The Early Numbers

Dislyte is a mid-core RPG game sub-categorized as a Squad RPG, similar to Raid: Shadow Legends, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, and Lilith Games’ popular AFK Arena. Though the game has been out for less than a month, this is a veteran team launching a game in a genre that they have previous expertise in. A common trend in this space is to have a smaller audience (when compared to the casual space) but with very high engagement, monetization, and retention, leading to some of the best Average Revenue Per User stats seen in mobile F2P.

Looking at the landscape in the US (unified) three weeks after the global launch, Dislyte has made significant investments in UA to get the top download numbers in its category. Dislyte is also the third highest in revenue, landing between massively popular IPs like Marvel: Strike Force (launched March 2018) by Scopely and Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes (launched November 2015) by EA Mobile.

Three Weeks after Dislyte Global Launch, May 2022, US (Unified):

When comparing launch period numbers, Dislyte is outperforming all its competitors, with $6.58M in revenue and 1.53M downloads in its first 3 weeks. In a similar timeframe, category leader Raid: Shadow Legends made only $0.92M with 0.34M downloads. Lilith Games’ own AFK Arena got almost half the downloads of Dislyte at 0.72M, making $2.56M. Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes got similar downloads back in 2015 but made $2.48M.

This shows that Dislyte is off to a strong start, with a RPD of $4.30. In the comparable time frame, AFK Arena comes second, with a RPD of $3.54, followed by Raid: Shadow Legends at $2.72. Established IP-based games seem to do poorer at launch, with Marvel Strike Force and Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes both going to the bottom of the list, with RPDs of $2.15 and $1.62 respectively, owing to the downloads driven by fans of the IPs who don’t quite resonate with the genre of the games.

These are still very early numbers, but being able to get Dislyte to perform stronger than Lilith’s previous successful hero collector RPG, AFK Arena, is a great win. Since the veteran team has experience operating a game in this genre, the live ops and growth potential of Dislyte is almost a given.

Age of Mythology

One aspect that makes Dislyte stand out in the genre is its presentation and setting — the game is set in an urban cyberpunk future with a stylish, pop aesthetic and a catchy EDM soundscape. Players collect and assemble squads of heroes called Espers, who are people that have received the divine power of mythological deities from around the world. This dual nature of the heroes — the gods from worldwide mythologies and the humans they live in — gives them strikingly diverse appearances and personalities.

Players will find familiar favorite deities like Loki and Odin from Norse mythology, Anubis and Ra from Egyptian mythology, Medusa and Poseidon from Greek mythology, plus the mighty Sun Wukong (The Monkey King) and Nezha from Chinese mythology. The humans they embody bring another layer of charm and personality to these gods, like Odin being embodied by a 39-year-old motorcycle enthusiast named Raven, or Helen of Troy from the Greek myths being embodied by a 23-year-old podcaster named Helena.

These heroes are the star attraction for players of the genre, and Dislyte does a great job of elevating their collectable quality by basing them on familiar, powerful mythologies with a twist for modern appeal. The regions from which the myths are chosen showcase a truly worldwide allure and are heavily leaned on in the game’s UA campaigns, showcasing characters like Hades, Artemis, and Loki.

Dislyte’s ‘most badass gods ever’ tagline captures its essence, which greatly relates to its audience’s calling — players motivated by Power, seeking growth and progression of their heroes, mirrored in the universal themes of myth. The messages inherent in mythology effortlessly permeate our memories and artfully capture the human experience. Dislyte drawing from what one might consider ‘universal fiction’ and remixing it for modern times makes it stand out in the most familiar way.

DJ Summons

In Dislyte, players pull new heroes (Espers) from the gacha machine (Record Player) using Gold Records that can be acquired by engaging with various game systems or bought with the game’s premium currency. Each spin of a Gold Record has a chance of pulling a Rare (start with 3 stars), Epic (start with 4 stars), or Legendary (start with 5 stars) hero. A Legendary hero is also guaranteed in 120 pulls, which resets whenever one such hero is pulled.

Heroes belong to 4 elemental classes — Shimmer, Wind, Flow, and Inferno — that have a rock-paper-scissors relationship. Wind has an advantage over Flow, Flow over Inferno, and Inferno over Wind, with Shimmer being the rarest and neutral against all. Elemental advantage usually causes bonus damage, whereas elemental disadvantage reduces damage dealt.

Each pull from the gacha machine effectively calculates twice:

• First, determining Rarity: 90% Rare, 9% Epic, and 1% Legendary.
• Second, determining the Elemental Class: Inferno/Flow/Wind at 31% each, and Shimmer at 7%.

So to pull a Legendary Shimmer hero like Odin/Raven, players have a 1% x 7% = 0.07% chance per pull.

This is a proven gacha system used by successful games in the hero collector RPG genre, like Raid: Shadow Legends and Summoners War, making it hard but engaging to collect the best heroes and upgrade them to their limits. Rotating, timed, or seasonal hero drops keep this system evergreen. All pulls, including duplicates, are useful to hero progress, create depth, and support a strong monetization potential.

A Hero’s Journey

Each hero comes with some base stats — a set of three skills as per their Rarity, Element Class, as well as their role in battle. They have three main tracks of progression:

• Hero Level: this is reflective of the hero’s base stats and increased by gaining XP, either through participating in battles or using XP items. Increasing a hero’s level permanently increases its base stats. Each hero starts with a level cap proportional to its level, with 3-star heroes capping at level 30 and 5-star heroes capping at level 50. Once a hero has reached its maximum level, it can be promoted using items (other heroes of the same star value) to raise its own star value, and hence its level cap, by 10 to a maximum of 6 stars and level 60. Hero Rarity affects the starting base stats and skills, which are independent of the star values.
• Hero Resonance: this is the game system that handles duplicates drawn from the gacha. Each hero can resonate with its duplicates to acquire resonance energy that can be allocated to increase Atk, HP, or Def by 1% per energy point. Players are free to allocate resonance energy as per their strategies and acquire more energy points depending on their hero Rarity; Rare, Epic, and Legendary heroes get 4, 5, and 6 energy points to allocate per resonance triggered with a duplicate.
• Hero Ascension: this is another way to maximize a hero’s potential. There are six levels of Ascension that are unlocked by collecting special items called Elemental Waves, which are won by defeating a daily dungeon boss. This mode is called Sonic Miracle. Ascending a hero generally provides bonuses to the hero’s base stats, with the exception of Level 3 Ascension which boosts 1 of the hero’s 3 abilities. Since Ascension adds a +% modifier to any base stats, a hero feels incomplete unless they are fully Ascended.

These progress vectors for heroes — Levels, Resonance, and Ascension — set goals for the players and provide choice and depth while constantly improving. They also create varied pinches for particular resources that encourage and direct activity within the following game modes and systems.

PvE Adventure

Dislyte starts all players in the saga-like Story mode with a predefined initial squad of heroes. This mode introduces players to the game’s battle system and sets the stage for the good vs evil conflict at its narrative core. "No one knows where these portal-like sites called miracles come from. They appeared out of nowhere and turned the world upside down." Players learn to configure their squads as per recommendations, as well as upgrade their strength to keep up with the increasing difficulty. Each chapter also comes with a practice stage to grind and power up for the main saga progression.

The main story is told through dialogue-heavy cutscenes as players progress through the saga map and across the game’s 12 chapters. There is a Story On/Off toggle button that can be used to entirely skip all story dialogues in lieu of battling and upgrading. Once players finish all 12 chapters, the game unlocks the Hard difficulty option to replay the Story mode with increased rewards. Similarly, there’s a Purgatory difficulty waiting to be unlocked after that.

When choosing a squad of heroes to participate in battle, the game nudges players to increasingly exploit enemy elemental weaknesses. Players can also use Friend Assist in most battles, which allows for the borrowing of one hero from other players as part of their squad. This rewards the player of the borrowed hero, setting an aspiration amongst players to allocate their best hero to help out other players as well.

The next major PvE zone is Trials, which contains multiple game modes that function as time-sensitive events:

• Cube Miracle is a challenging dungeon with increasing rewards that resets every two days, where heroes that are killed in battle can’t be used for the remainder of that cycle. It has supporting rogue-like elements that make repeating it feel different, with various perks and random heroes for aid in that dungeon run.
• Infinite Miracle is a 100-floor dungeon that rewards players with a Legendary Inferno hero Apollo/Lucas. Every 10th floor spikes up the difficulty but also increases the rewards. Each floor can only be won once, and Friend Assist cannot be used in this mode.
• Ritual Miracle is a battle against three different bosses with increasing difficulty that rewards the player with equipment (Relics) for their heroes.
• Sonic Miracle is a time-sensitive event with four bosses and element-specific items that can be used for hero Ascension. Only 2 of the 4 elements are available each day, Sunday being the only day when all are available to battle.
• Ripple Dimension is a player-triggered raid where the worldwide community can participate to battle a powerful boss (hero). Defeating the boss rewards players with fragments to summon the boss (hero). When an instance of this raid is created, a message is dropped on the team and global chat to join. Only 20 players can join an instance of a Ripple Dimension raid.

Expeditions are a dispatch mode where players can send out squads of heroes on missions that require a set amount of time to complete passively and claim their rewards. A hero can be allocated to only one of the dispatch missions at a time, and each mission has some prerequisites on hero Level/Element that grant bonus rewards. Players get three warrants to access Expeditions on a daily basis and can hold a maximum of four at any given time.

All the above PvE zones are themed with the mythological aesthetic prevalent throughout the game. The ‘rituals’ are inspired from mythological beings like Kronos, the king of the Titans from Greek mythology, and Apep, the demon of chaos from Egyptian mythology, represented as a large demonic snake.

One thing to note about PvE battles is they require energy (stamina) to start. This is a standard energy mechanic that regenerates over time or can be bought with premium currency. There is a trend in this genre of hero collection RPGs that battles which are started but lost return most (90%) of the energy cost back to players - ensuring that if energy is consumed in the game, it most likely has resulted in winning and gaining resources.

These diverse PvE activities complement the demand for different growth vectors of heroes, engaging players with a variety of battles to participate in. Most of these PvE zones require an initial investment from players to unlock, motivating new players to play further. Using timed dungeons and randomly triggered raids, players are encouraged to play more frequently every day.

PvP Future

Dislyte is light on PvP modes at launch, with the main mode, Point War, being an asynchronous PvP mode where players battle other players’ pre-setup defense squads that are controlled by the game’s AI. Players win rewards that scale as they rank up in the weekly tournament tiers. Once the week’s tournament is over, the game calibrates the starting tiers based on the performance from the previous week.

Battling in PvP Point War costs a special currency, Admission Certificates, instead of Stamina, the energy mechanic used in PvE modes. The Admission Certificates have an inventory limit of 20 and can be purchased, and 1 regenerates every 2 hours. This difference in resources ensures players do not choose between PvP or PvE modes but instead are nudged to maximize on participating in both. There is a daily first win reward to get players to start participating in Point Wars every day.

Winning in PvP requires a different strategy in squad compositions compared to PvE, with the biggest difference being the heavy reliance on maximizing on the Speed stat of heroes. The Speed stat determines which heroes will act first in battle and can easily affect the results. Since squads are made up of the most powerful heroes available, with equivalent power, the heroes who act first have a severe advantage to damage and debuff the enemy squads.

Dislyte also has a real-time PvP mode called Casual Match. Technically sound, the mode enables players to send invites for battling other players in real time, albeit without any substantial rewards. It’s currently implemented as a fun mode to try out, and it works (technically) very smoothly, forming a strong foundation to build a synchronous PvP ladder/tournament mode in the future.

A Note on Hero Equipment

One additional growth vector for heroes is the equipment called Relics. Each hero has 6 equipment slots divided into 4- and 2-piece sets. Equipping heroes with appropriate sets of relics that synergize well with them improves their potential. Relics affect a variety of different attributes, need to be equipped in specific hero equipment slots, and have their own rarities. Relics can be upgraded to Level 15 by using gold won from battles.

Shopping at the Plaza

When making purchases in the in-game store, The Plaza, an important metric to consider is premium currency (Nexus Crystals) per dollar. This currency can be used to purchase resources like Stamina but is primarily used to purchase spins (Gold Records) in order to pull heroes from the gacha. The base value of Crystals per dollar, without discounts and offers, is around 66, which makes 1 pull of the gacha, requiring 200 crystals, cost $3 (or $2.99, to be accurate).

Since most offers can be converted to an approximate Crystal cost, the value per dollar prioritizes the following in Dislyte:

• The Monthly Season Passes provide the best value per dollar but also require investment from players to progress and unlock all the rewards. Dislyte’s season pass implementation has an additional tier on top of the general Free and Premium tiers that unlocks additional rewards.
• The Welcome Pack offers come next, having the second best value per dollar, instantly granted when purchased (unlike the season pass) but also being purchasable only once. This offer comes in three increasing tiers in price and rewards and requires the previous tier to be purchased to unlock access to the next one. This functions as the first purchase option for all players, irrespective of their individual spending capacity.
• The Limited Time rotating offers come next, incentivizing players to often check the Plaza to avoid FOMO. These offers ensure that players get prompted with the right offers at the right time and rotate on a calendar basis.

Apart from these, Dislyte offers static bundles and packs, some with daily or monthly purchase limits. Most in-game resources can be bought directly for Crystals. The game also introduces events which bring their own sales and offers to the mix for a certain duration. The game is also introducing purchasable cosmetic skins for heroes, starting with the hero Artemis/Mona that all players start the game with, for about $25.

Dislyte has launched with 71 collectable heroes (in contrast, AFK Arena launched with about 40), and more to come with every update (with AFK Arena settling at a cadence of 1 new hero per 2 weeks). Of these heroes, 19 are Legendary, having a 1% pull probability from the gacha. With the various progression vectors and needs to form diverse squads of heroes, Dislyte’s monetization is built on supercharging strong collection drivers for a long time.

Clubbing with Friends

Dislyte’s social features are built upon its own network, not needing players to log into Facebook/Apple/Google, though that option does exist. Players can participate in a global chat, where the aforementioned dungeon raids are announced, and they can befriend any players they come across. Passively assisting others with helper heroes is rewarded, and players are encouraged to connect with up to 50 players as friends in order to give and receive daily gifts.

Players can also start or join teams called Clubs, with daily and weekly tasks culminating in an Activeness score that rewards all members with increasing rewards every week. A Club Help system encourages players to ask for certain stickers and help other players complete their sticker set - a resource that is won through performing social activities in the game. Being part of a Club and participating in earning Activeness together creates a shared progression experience. The Activeness score for Clubs is borrowed from AFK Arena with the same goal: the best Clubs are those that have the most active players in the game.

Musicology

Dislyte is a must play experience with the sound ON and even better with headphones. The development team has prioritized the soundscape as an important pillar for the game and synchronized the gameplay with the audio rhythm extremely well. It also helps that a lot of the heroes carry musical instruments as weapons, and some bosses are covered with waveforms from their battle themes.

The game also contains a Guitar-Hero-esque mini-game to play and unlock music tracks inspired by heroes and their stories in-game. Each mini-game features a signature hero track with short micro narratives. Though it's a well-polished experience and a good break from the core action loop of the game, this feature does not offer any substantial rewards to direct strong engagement.

The game launched with a musical community event, the XHz Music Festival, organized by XHz Studio. This event was held on the Dislyte YouTube channel in the form of an interactive virtual club for players, featuring 3 hours of live music from 8 DJs. Players could interact during certain moments in the concert to participate in lotteries and win exclusive rewards redeemable in-game. Since music is aimed to be one of the most memorable things about the game, Dislyte is expected to continue with these events and further engage its community.

Dislyte: AFK Arena Made Active & Accessible

Throughout its various in-game systems, Dislyte shows a strong commitment to making the user experience as seamless as possible. Hero collector RPGs require a lot of grinding/farming of repeated battles to gain resources for progression, and Dislyte has an auto-farming feature to help players continue battling in the background while they engage in other activities in the game. This feature does require players to spend time in-game, and no progress is made if players quit and return at a later time.

This is in stark contrast to AFK Arena’s central ‘idle chest’ mechanic, where battles don’t stop when players log off. While players are away, their parties of heroes continue to battle and collect rewards which players can collect the next time they log in. This system works as an appointment mechanic as well, with the idle chest being filled to a maximum of 12 hours. Given how core this automated idle progression is, lending the ‘AFK’ feel to AFK Arena, Dislyte has opted to be more active and hence feels different to its predecessor while keeping other systems intact.

Dislyte is filled with hints from the community about the best squad formations for certain battles, where to spend hero resonance points, and even a Reddit-style weighted comment system to review individual heroes, ranking the most useful comments by the community. This information is generally delegated to forums and guides outside of games, but Dislyte has done a great job at making it accessible to all players within the game without overburdening the information for players or the in-game UI.

The game uses Missions, a quests and achievements system, to nudge players into playing, learning, and mastering the different aspects of the game: from managing the growth of their heroes to participating in the assortment of events and activities. The game has contextual notifications that smoothly nudge players to priority actions that require their attention, yet leaving players feeling autonomous and powerful in their own journeys. A newcomer to the genre can get all the information they need at a glance, while at the same time veteran players with deeper knowledge can dive straight into wide-ranging activities with the community.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Dislyte is a game that is consistent and confident in its unique personality and charm exuded by the in-game navigation, heroes, and battle choreography. Its stylish, sci-fi, cyberpunk, mythology-inspired aesthetic makes it stand out in its genre of hero collector RPGs. Its high-quality and production value, with a keen attention to the audio, makes a great first impression.

Following the AFK Arena playbook, Dislyte can be expected to have a similar cadence of a new hero every 2 weeks (with possible expansions to the 4 base elements, AFK Arena having 6), a team wars feature that requires multiple squads of maxed out heroes per team, and player and brand collaborations to further grow the game (with AFK Arena collaborating with IPs like Assassin’s Creed, Persona 5, and Prince of Persia).

At the same time, the genre is proven to be niche in the F2P mobile market today, having passionate small audiences driving the business with high retention and monetization. These mid-core games have a higher barrier to entry compared to their casual counterparts and are greatly challenged to scale up effectively in an environment of constantly evolving privacy changes.

AFK Arena and Dislyte feel the same in terms of systems but different in terms of gameplay and presentation. With AFK championing effortless progression and Dislyte asking for more active participation, they are unlikely to cannibalize each other but rather grow in their lanes — Dislyte competing with Raid: Shadow Legends and Summoners War, having the learnings and expertise from operating AFK Arena.

Dislyte is looking to disrupt the genre and aiming to be an outlier with a wide appeal and in the process become the next evolution in the direction set by the success of AFK Arena. With real world mythologies presented in a friendly, digestible pop aesthetic, Dislyte is an experiment to measure the resonance players have with stories they have grown up with, containing some of the strongest collective archetypal narratives. With Dislyte’s best-of-genre early performance, it’s off to a great start in line with being the outlier it wants to be — an active, accessible, and more successful AFK Arena.

A big thanks to Harshal Karvande for writing this essay! If Naavik can be of help as you build or fund games, please reach out.