Tencent game press conference "Dragon Stone War" has sparked heated discussion: reduce burden with "light" and create change with "new"

Apr 29 2025

In the perception of most players, "strategy" has always been the most distinctive label of SLG games. However, with the wild growth of the market, the development of SLG is becoming more and more intriguing. Paving roads have become a fixed opening, urban construction upgrades require regular "check-in", and the military development has become a speed competition, and the final battle is simplified into a battle report animation, this standardized process is gradually swallowing SLG's strategic soul bit by bit.

When traditional tower defense encounters a 3D three-dimensional war sandbox, and when urban construction and operations collide with epic dragon battles, the emergence of "Dragon Stone War" may reconstruct the boundaries of the strategy game and reawaken everyone's enthusiasm for gaming.

This innovative work that integrates the construction of the main city, the cultivation of dragons, and three-dimensional offense and defense was stunningly unveiled at SPARK on April 22nd 2025 Tencent Game Launch Conference! This debut not only marks that the game will be launched after the "Dragon Teng Test" in March, but also indicates that the strategic frenzy of the era of "city" for the whole nation is about to start.

In "Dragon Stone War", you can feel the strategic content throughout the whole process, from resource allocation in urban construction layout to path selection for military cultivation; from the vertical and horizontal alliance diplomacy to the temporary decision on the battlefield. Every decision is full of variables, every development demonstrates wisdom, completely breaking the traditional dilemma of "left behind, eliminated".

The game uses the "light" mode with short cultivation cycle and automatic accumulation of offline revenue, combined with the "main city offensive and defense" strategy gameplay, and the "new" content of the three-dimensional military battlefield, creating a "light" + a "new" "Dragon Stone Like" concept. An SLG that is easy to get started without losing its strategic depth is the category innovation concept brought by "Dragon Stone War".

A thought experiment on the future of SLG

At the moment when the SLG category is trapped in industrial replication, "Dragon Stone War" brings more of a gameplay innovation than a thought experiment on the "essence of strategy games". When the industry generally believes that SLG's innovation space has dried up, this game proves with actual design that the root cause of the problem is not the category potential. As long as it is full of imagination, SLG can still have infinite possibilities.

How does "Dragon Stone War" reflect this imagination? The answer is hidden in the main city system that every SLG player is familiar with. The main city of the game is not a numerical warehouse without any strategy, but a strategy interface for players to interact with. The gameplay of "Tower Defense + City Construction" allows players to freely arrange bricks and tiles in the city. City walls and arrow towers are no longer cold numerical modules, but tactical choices that require careful consideration - should we concentrate firepower to build a death corridor, or disperse and form cross firepower? This design has transformed urban construction from a "must-do homework" into a real strategic sandbox, making the main city a canvas for strategic expression, which is very consistent with the characteristics of SLG itself.

In addition, "Dragon Stone War" has innovative free-layout tower defense gameplay, which is naturally adapted to the UGC ecosystem. Players can not only design their own defensive formations, but also share strategies and challenge others' layouts, greatly stimulating creativity and communication. This design not only enriches the depth of the game, but also cleverly reserves the "interface" of the content ecosystem, providing infinite possibilities for future players to create together.

At the same time, "Dragon Stone War" also has a detailed content presentation. Whether it is the main castle style, hero design, or the scenery outside the city, "Dragon Stone War" has added a lot of details. Relying on the support of this entire set of content, the game creates a strong sense of subtlety and enriches the player's game experience in the subtleties. With the blessing of "3D visual battle", players can experience the large-scale and immersive epic battle in the battle, making "Dragon Stone War" more distinctive.

When it comes to combat, we have to talk about the real fair combat experience of "Dragon Stone War". "Dragon Stone War" truly realizes strategy as king. Unlike traditional SLG, there is no absolute "krypton gold crush" here. Even when facing opponents with stronger combat power, players can still use precise military restraint and flexible tactics to surround the back, and even cut directly into the back row to dissolve the enemy's core. The design of the free battlefield makes "weak defeat the strong" ordinary. Every battle is a contest of wisdom and tactics, not a simple numerical competition. In "Dragon Stone War", the best solution to victory is to diversify wisdom.

Under the fair combat mechanism, the strategic depth of the multi-dimensional battlefield is completely released. When traditional SLG was still playing "Stone Scissors" on the floor map, the three-dimensional battlefield of "Dragon Stone War" created a real tactical depth. The troops are not only complementary, but also have corresponding restraint cycles. The Air Force can bypass the ground defense line and take the key points, but it will be exposed to air defense firepower. Although the resolute stone man is extremely hard in the face of the single, it will appear vulnerable when facing groups of electromagnetic ant soldiers. This multi-dimensional game makes every battle feel like the next three-dimensional chess game.

However, even though the content of "Dragon Stone War" is perfect enough, after several rounds of tests, we can still clearly feel the production team's attitude of listening to advice and being willing to change. They respond to players' problems in a timely manner, and each adjustment can satisfy players. They actively and frequently optimize themselves, constantly check for shortcomings and fill in leaks, and continuously improve game content. This deep resonance between developers and players has injected lasting vitality into the game and also made the future development of "Dragon Stone War" full of anticipated possibilities.

When talking about the future, we have to talk about the new gameplay that will be added in the future. For example, let the dragon tamed by the player's main city join the battle of the big map, allowing everyone to become a dragon trainer, launch a dynamic season script and a season theme rotation. Through these measures, the game will be continuously fun.

Reduce liver and krypton, "Dragon Stone War" will bring you back the fun of strategy

From the game experience in the test stage, "Dragon Stone War" not only achieved content innovation, but also formed a game content with "lightness" as the core by reducing liver and burden. While optimizing the player experience, it innovated traditional SLG from multiple angles.

Compared with the time-consuming and labor-intensive traditional SLG, the "light" of "Dragon Stone War" is mainly reflected in the short cultivation cycle and easy development. Players do not need to occupy land and renovate land, upgrade urban construction to meet all needs. All upgrades of base city construction can be "upgraded in one click" to make players say goodbye and wait.

At the same time, "Legend of Dragon Stone" has greatly reduced the burden, and can play as you play, and players can use fragmented time to experience the complete strategic content.

For example, the cumbersome role training and upgrading process for the traditional SLG process. In "The Legend of Dragon Stone", it becomes "automatic". When players want to obtain upgraded resources, they only need to use one-click sweep, and the team will automatically sweep according to the specified number of times to obtain resources. Then you only need to use one-click upgrade, and a team will be quickly cultivated, greatly alleviating the pressure of repeated cultivation.

In addition, the character growth of "Dragon Stone War" is not a single increase in value. There is also a character growth trajectory like a skill tree during the growth process, allowing players to choose their character positioning and development direction. Not only does it enhance the strategic attributes of the game, but it also makes the cultivation process no longer boring.

The design that can liberate players is also reflected in the alliance action. "Dragon Stone War" uses a series of content such as appointment siege to make the PVP experience lighter. Players can complete all the combat content with just a little bit, achieving a reduction in burden but not reducing the depth of strategy. Very friendly to players.

From "stand-alone strategy" to "common creation for all people", "Dragon Stone War" leads the co-creation craze!

In addition to improving the game content through one "new" and one "light", Dragon Stone War also built a SLG content ecosystem that allows all players to participate in co-creation through live broadcast, UGC creation, community operation and other multi-dimensional content output, breaking the single game experience mode of traditional SLG and expanding the fun of strategy games from a single player experience to co-creation of the whole people.

The successful operation of this ecological system has shown significant results in the testing phase. The anchor "city" plan launched by the game during the three tests continues to stimulate players' creative enthusiasm through rich incentive plans, and has received platform-level support from Douyin games, achieving a win-win situation in content dissemination and user growth. Driven by these incentives and creative activities, the player group has transformed from simple content consumers to active co-creation participants, injecting continuous vitality into the healthy development of the game ecosystem, which also provides strong support for the production of high-quality content.

In addition, at the just-concluded Tencent Games press conference, "Dragon Stone War" made a surprise debut as "2025 Tencent Games Recommended Tower Defense SLG". With its innovative gameplay design, the game became the highly-watched new product that night. For a product, this is not only a simple product exposure, but also represents the game's firmness to the "high-quality SLG" route. The innovative gameplay displayed at the press conference, including the main city offensive and defense system and three-dimensional war mechanism, have become the focus of industry discussion.

It is not difficult to see that the ecological construction model of "Dragon Stone War" is setting new standards for the SLG category. When game content, community operations and platform resources form a virtuous cycle, SLG games can completely break through the existing market boundaries. Dragon Stone Battle��》This model may become a replicable and boutique methodology, bringing help to the development of the industry.

The Dragon Stone War and its "Dragon Stone Like" that are worth looking forward to

For players who are keen on strategy games, the "Dragon Stone Like" experience brought by "Dragon Stone War" is refreshing. It cleverly breaks the long-standing audience barriers of the SLG category, and through its unique game design, all kinds of players can gain exclusive game fun.

For traditional SLG core players, while retaining the depth of strategy, the game completely changed the SLG experience mode through intelligent burden reduction design. The free acceleration mechanism and resource recovery system allow players to no longer be troubled by "explosion". What's even more rare is that these convenience designs do not weaken the strategic nature of the game at all. You still need to carefully plan the urban construction layout, study military restraint in depth, and plan in alliance wars. You can now focus more on real strategic fun.

But tower defense and urban construction enthusiasts will discover a creative strategic paradise in "Dragon Stone War". The game's original concept of "the main city is the battlefield" has transformed urban construction from passive defense to active strategy expression. The direction of each city wall and the layout of each defense tower directly affect the situation of the battle. This in-depth interaction makes urban construction truly part of the strategic game. The multi-dimensional three-dimensional combat system adds more dimensions of tactical possibilities to the battlefield, making every battle full of variables.

For a wider range of game enthusiasts, Dragon Stone War offers much more than a strategic experience. The magical worldview and unique dragon training system built by the game bring rich fun of cultivation, and the carefully designed scenes and unique worldview make the game world more vivid. Moreover, in the future, the game will also integrate richer content update routes, including dynamic season gameplay and cross-border IP linkage to ensure that the game can continue to bring a fresh experience.

In this era of pursuing market segmentation, "Dragon Stone War" successfully achieved a perfect balance between strategic depth and entry-level threshold through the innovative design of "Dragon Stone Like", and the organic unity of competitive fun and leisure experience. This inclusion not only broadens the audience boundaries of SLG, but also provides new ideas for the development of the entire category.

Conclusion

At the moment when SLG games are gradually falling into the dilemma of homogeneity, "Dragon Stone War" has brought refreshing changes with its unique "Dragon Stone Like" concept. This game uses a "light" design to make the strategic experience no longer dragged down by the heavy burden of cultivation, and uses "new" gameplay to make tactical games shine with unprecedented vitality.

Here, every piece of wisdom will get the rewards it deserves, and every decision may change the situation. In "Dragon Stone War", you can witness the infinite possibilities of SLG's future!