Arknights: Endfield key art
Gryphline, Hypergryph
Chinese developer Hypergryph and publisher Gryphline are behind Arknights, a tower-defense tactical mobile RPG that has seen moderate success around the world. Its puzzle-based gameplay, base-building mechanics, and surprisingly lenient gacha features made it stand out among the rest of its contemporaries.
They’re now releasing a spin-off, Arknights: Endfield, an open-world 3D action RPG. It follows the player character, named the “Endministrator,” as a group of colonists rebuild society on the moon Talos-II after becoming stranded.
Endfield looks reminiscent of games like Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves. Despite similar premises and inclusion of gacha mechanics through rolling for characters and weapons, it has plenty of quirks to set itself apart.
“The stories being told in Endfield would be more realistic compared to other anime gacha games,” lead producer Light Zhong tells Forbes. “There’s base building and team combat. These two mechanics are also some of the biggest differences that we have.”
I went hands-on with Endfield for about 4 hours, and I came away impressed by how smoothly it performed. The real-time combat got a few new features, including your party members being able to activate follow-up attacks. It made the gameplay feel more varied compared to the last beta I played at Anime Expo this past summer.
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I was also awed by its art direction. Its 3D models are crisp and expressive, and the use of yellow as the game’s main color was strikingly eye-catching. In Arknights, the color blue was used to signify healing and medicinal themes. But Endfield was different.
“We took yellow because it’s like a warning color that you usually see in construction sites industries. It’s the vibe that we tried to convey, which was a combination of industry and science,” Zhong explains.
Ahead of Arknights: Endfield’s upcoming second beta, I sat down with Zhong and lead designer Ryan to talk about the game’s base building mechanics, how it stands to differentiate itself from its contemporaries, and how they implemented feedback from past beta tests.
The female Endministrator in Arknights: Endfield.
Gryphline, Hypergryph
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
George Yang: What were some of the biggest takeaways and changes you had from prior feedback?
Light Zhong: There were a lot of conventions that we collected feedback from, performed in China itself, as well as our global technical test. There are two major points. One of them is the optimization of our combat. Another would be making our base building a lot easier by implementing quality of life changes.
There were also players who said that battles should be more tactical and have additional difficulty levels. We’re not making changes that would alienate most of the players or fix something that they feel that’s already good enough. So we’re doing a few nuanced and clever changes that are capable of satisfying a great majority of our players while keeping players who are already satisfied.
Yang: The base-building mechanic from Arknights has transitioned to Endfield. Why did you decide to include base building in this spin off and what are the inspirations behind it?
Ryan: It allows players to more actively seek out the world and create things on their own. Unlike some of these other exploration games, where players are more or less on a passive path, they now have more initiatives to seek out their own adventure. By adding base-building, we hope to bring some more immersion to players.
Zhong: Plenty of players want to see more similarities between Arknights and Endfield. Of course, the design principles of base building in Arknights and design base building in Endfield are entirely different because these two games are in very separate genres. However, we do want players to have this sense of familiarity.
Yang: What are some of the inspirations you had for Endfield’s art direction?
Wuling in Arknights: Endfield
Gryphline, Hypergryph
Zhong: A lot of our inspirations are actually based on cinemas and movies. In our earliest PVs, we showcased a desert scene because back then, our inspirations were from things like space operas such as Mad Max as well as games like Homeworld: Deserts of Kharaak. These games would involve a lot of exploration and development in the desolate frontier. A wasteland type of vibe. And Dune!
Ryan: We made several adjustments later down the road, with a lot of our visual elements actually inherited from Arknights itself. For example, when players see the city of Wuling, they’ll recognize that many of these elements are actually from a place that was featured in the original Arknights. Now we took these elements and we tried a different approach to render it in 3D, by combining Eastern designs with future technology and massive scale industry.
Yang: How are you looking to support Endfield in the future and ensure its success?
Zhong: We’ve been operating Arknights for six years, so we do have some experience in sustaining the game for extended periods of time. We’re trying to establish a long term goal in terms of art and storytelling. So that means we have to keep expanding the stage of our narrative delivery. We have to go to places that players don’t expect and beyond their expectations for the characters.
We have to constantly release new characters that are tied to the theme of the story so that they would have lasting impressions amongst the players. The gameplay itself also has to be constantly expanded upon by creating more challenging battles with enemies. We’re looking to enrich gameplay and come up with systems that surprise players, so that the experience continues to improve over time.
Arknights: Endfield will launch on mobile, PC, and PS5 in 2026.
