Wait, where did this take me? Is this still the continent of Promilia?
Before officially experiencing the third test version of Azur Promilia, I thought I would continue promoting traditional culture in the game—farming in my home base, catching Chibos in the open world (to serve as my farming laborers), and occasionally stepping in as a Star Visitor to save the world... Such a comfortable and leisurely life sounded delightful.
Unexpectedly, just as I finished the first chapter of the main story and was about to start my farming empire, the game pulled out a brand-new gameplay mode. With a "let's give it a try" attitude, I clicked in, only to go "astray" and spend an hour or two intensely playing it.
Especially after clearing the first ending of the new gameplay mode, I couldn't help but ask the development team: "How much more content are you planning to cram into this game?"
The reason for this thought is that Azur Promilia already packed in plenty of content during the second test—open-world exploration, action-oriented combat interactions, Chibo cultivation and collection, home building, and more were all present, with a reasonable resource loop established between gameplay systems. In other words, the "gameplay" foundation was already built during the second test; all the development team needed to do afterwards was tweak and polish it to make it better.
But I clearly underestimated the development team's ambition.
They probably felt that mere tweaks weren't enough, so between the second and third tests, they basically built an entirely new structure from scratch.
Yes, this towering addition is what led my farming endeavors astray: "Flower Festival: Bond of Fate."
"Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" focuses on simulation and cultivation gameplay. Players need to cultivate alongside the version-limited character "Tushan Xiaoyu," helping people form bonds through various random events, and striving to pass the final trial to become a Fox Immortal. During this process, players decide Tushan Xiaoyu's daily activities, each of which boosts her different stats. At the trial checkpoint, the game triggers different story endings based on the character's cultivation status.
After reading the above, you might think "Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" isn't worth discussing in such detail—in other games, this would typically just be a "mini-game" attached to a version update.
This type of "mini-game" is usually not well-received by gacha game players. The reason is simple—it's often filler content for version updates, typically produced with lower specifications, resulting in an overall "presentation" that falls short of the main storyline. When consuming such content, players usually adopt a "rush through to get resources" mindset. Even if some "mini-games" have fun gameplay or excellent scripts, players often miss the design ingenuity because they default to skipping through them.
Initially, I approached "Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" with the intention of "speedrunning for resources," but upon entering, I realized it truly couldn't be considered just a "mini-game."
The exaggerated amount of art resources poured into "Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" is something I've never seen elsewhere. For instance, different levels of UI interfaces feature distinct, exquisite background illustrations.
For example, in the simulation and cultivation segment, characters have corresponding 3D animations for different scenarios. Tushan Xiaoyu has four cultivatable stats: "Mana," "Courage," "Bonding," and "Insight." Each stat comes with at least four types of 3D animations: "Preparation," "Success," "Great Success," and "Failure."
When the game flow reaches key nodes or endings, it provides high-quality narrative cutscenes with "animation + character voice acting." You can see several such segments just by completing a single ending.
With all this, players are visually delighted, while the artists are exhausted from the workload. The sheer luxury of the art resources is visible to the naked eye. Within the context of personal character content in gacha games, this level of quality is quite outstanding.
Even setting aside its strongest suit—art quality—and focusing solely on gameplay, "Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" can hardly be called a "mini-game" anymore. A single run lasts under an hour, but the game features multiple endings, encouraging players to tackle multiple playthroughs. Random in-game events, out-of-game progression, and different starting configurations ensure that each run feels fresh.
For players who just want rewards, they can still take the speedrun route, quickly claim their rewards, and leave. But for players interested in the gameplay, wanting to unlock all endings, or even achieve "full collection," the depth of "Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" is substantial enough to support the playtime of a small-scale indie game.
How did Azur Promilia manage to develop a "mini-game" to this extent?
I believe the answer circles back to Manjuu's greatest strength: "character portrayal."
Players familiar with Manjuu know that "anime-style beautiful girls" have always been their specialty. Whether it's the constantly evolving character 2D artwork or the character 3D technology demonstrated through several tests of Azur Promilia, the quality is consistently "big and good."
"Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" is the culmination of Manjuu's accumulated artistic expertise and represents Azur Promilia's new attempt at taking "beautiful girl portrayal" to the next level.
"Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" is entirely dedicated to the character "Tushan Xiaoyu." Unlike main or side quests that need to consider story progression and world-building, the art resources and story scripts in "Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" are custom-made to showcase Tushan Xiaoyu's character arc.
Taking one ending's story as an example: In the early stage, Tushan Xiaoyu neglects her training and her powers are shallow; she can't even maintain her human form, seeking the player's help in cultivation merely to cope with the Fox Immortal trial. In the middle stage, she experiences various events and, with the help of the Star Visitor, gradually comprehends the concept of "Fate" and recognizes her duties. Finally, to shoulder her responsibilities as a Fox Immortal, she voluntarily gives up the trial and chooses to protect the good bonds formed by everyone in the past. Within a relatively compact playthrough, players can quickly understand Tushan Xiaoyu's personality traits and inner transformation, establishing an intimate emotional connection with her.
The overwhelming amount of art resources makes this process even more efficient. Compared to text, the direct visual representation of expressions and actions allows players to empathize more easily with the subtle emotions characters experience when dealing with different events. Thanks to the artistic presentation and script pacing, the climaxes of the stories are highly expressive and impactful.
As for the specific effect of "Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" on character portrayal, from my personal experience, Tushan Xiaoyu didn't immediately hit my preferences during the second test, as I favored the "motherly" type characters more. However, after clearing the first ending of "Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" in the third test, Tushan Xiaoyu jumped to become my favorite character.
The performance of "Flower Festival: Bond of Fate" brought me plenty of surprises during the third test. I hope Azur Promilia will continue to follow this model in the future, adding more similar gameplay features to character-exclusive events.
Of course, achieving excellence in character portrayal doesn't mean Azur Promilia only focuses on "making characters." During the second test, players could already experience the richness of composite gameplay: open-world exploration + combat, Chibo collection and cultivation, and home building were all present, with a high level of overall completion. By the third test, the game had further optimized these gameplay elements.
Take the most significantly changed "Chibo Duel" gameplay as an example. After the update in the third test, it was essentially rebuilt from the ground up in terms of rules. Previously, both sides deploying too many Chibos simultaneously made the battlefield information overly chaotic, making it difficult for players to read the situation and make quick decisions. Under the new rules, each side can deploy a maximum of three Chibos at once, allowing mechanics like attribute counters to play a greater strategic role. With the rule change from "tower pushing" to "point deduction for Chibo defeats," these strategic mechanics have become more impactful, significantly improving the match experience.
On the other hand, the open-world exploration experience has also seen significant improvements.
Character movement in the open world has been enhanced in various ways. Sprint cooldowns are shorter, characters can cling to wall edges, and mounts with Z-axis movement and flight capabilities can be unlocked earlier in the progression.
Chibo collection and cultivation content has been further expanded, adding new Chibos and a special Chibo type called "Stellar." The experience of Star-Knot Chibos has also been optimized—after optimization, Star-Knot Chibos no longer enter a time-stop state, making player operations more convenient when large numbers of them appear.
In addition to the above content, the third test also optimized many other parts, including the "Home System." Due to the large number of items involved, we won't list them all here. Looking at the overall changes from the second to the third test, Azur Promilia is not only adding new strengths but also working hard to address its weaknesses.
Such massive amounts of content and optimization inevitably require higher R&D costs. Does this mean players need to spend more effort planning their gacha pulls?
In fact, Azur Promilia's business model is quite restrained.
Regarding the most important aspect—the gacha system—Azur Promilia features mechanisms like "no off-banner pulls" and "pity inheritance." Additionally, monetization points are scattered across voluntary purchases such as character cosmetics and Chibo skins. This also shows Manjuu's confidence in their character portrayal skills, believing players will pay for extra content derived from the characters.
From the content of the third test, Azur Promilia has already demonstrated a fairly high level of completion. However, the current version still has many pain points to address—the most obvious being the game's optimization issues.
The "Pet Catching" and "Home Building" tracks have natural bottlenecks in optimization. In many scenarios, the issue of "too many units on screen" cannot be avoided. Personally, during my experience with Star-Knot Chibos in the open world and home building, frame rate drops in certain scenes did impact the experience somewhat.
Of course, the game is still in development. The development team will certainly continue to optimize performance issues, such as those occurring when there are many units on screen. Comparing the experiences from the second to the third test, there has already been progress in this area. More importantly, the significant improvement in game content within just a few months—from the April second test to the September third test—shows that the team's iteration efficiency is high, giving us more confidence in the final release.
According to current information, Azur Promilia may launch its open beta within 2026. In the coming months, the game should be able to take another big step forward, similar to the progress made between the second and third tests. You can trust Manjuu's production capacity and look forward to it.