Clockwise from the top left: Seokjin, Jeongguk, Taehyung, Hoseok, Namjoon, Yoongi, and Jimin.
BTS Universe Story is a Mobile Phone Game released in September 24th, 2020. Developed by NetMarble along with BigHit Entertainment (who previously teamed up for BTS World), it was first unveiled in BigHit's "Corporate Briefing with the Community" in the second half of 2019, announced as a new entry in the BTS Universe, BTS' multimedia fictional story.
The game - which contains cel-shaded 3d animations, plus some live-action sequences - presents itself as a "sandbox storytelling game", with 2 main aspects:
- The Most Beautiful Moment in Life < I'M FINE >: A new chapter in Seokjin's quest to save his friends by traveling through time, now as an interactive story - giving players the ability to take dialogue choices and cause changes in the story. So far, these stories have been releasednote :
- "Prologue": Seokjin realizes he needs to look deeper into the root issues that affect his friends' lives if he wants to save them.
- "How to Offer a Hand": Seokjin must stop the fight that sends Namjoon to jail.
- "The Boy on the Threshold": Can Seokjin coax the depressed Jungkook into opening up?
- "The End of His Gaze": What can make Yoongi want to keep on living?
- "Stopped Time": Seokjin tries to save Jimin from his predicament in the hospital.
- "Someone Left Behind": Seokjin goes to tackle Hoseok's narcolepsy.
- "Heart's Distance": as Taehyung keeps killing his father in every loop, Seokjin decides to investigate if there's a way to prevent the tragedy.
- "Nightmare: Epilogue": now that he has all the clues, Seokjin makes a new plan to save his friends.
- Story creation: The biggest part of the game. Players have the opportunity to create and share their own Alternate Universe stories using the characters (with some content restrictions). Creators can use a wide selection of NPCs, wardrobes, backgrounds, music, and sound effects for their stories, with the ability to move characters around and use simple camera movements. Creators and readers can get in-game currency from reading other stories or from feedback, to use on more story resources.
The original Concept Art teaser can be found here
. You can watch the 10-minute official trailer here.
The game ended it's service in September 22, 2023
BTS Universe Story provides examples of:
General tropes
- Algorithmic Story Branching: Story branches in user-created stories are determined in 2 different ways - directly through Regular Choices, or indirectly through Automatic Choices (which automatically set a story branch based on the Affinity and Progress Points gained until that point). While Regular Choices can have the players directly influence the story by picking one of different options (so not an example of this trope), they can also increase or decrease character Affinity Points and/or Progress Points (visible for the reader) depending on the option picked by the player. A pre-set amount of points (invisible for the player) set by the author can unlock later choices that have Affinity/Progress points requirements and/or trigger an Automatic Choice into a specific story branch.
- Allegedly Free Game: The game itself is free, but Jewels go a long way for both for a reader (to be able to access certain story choices and stories, including < I'M FINE > stories after the first one) and for a creator. Jewels can be obtained either by free Daily achievements (read 1-3 chapters from a story by a Skilled creator for 2 Jewels each, 1-3 chapters of a story by a Pro creator for 4 Jewels each), by taking up to 2 free Daily Roulette Spins (you watch an ad and get 5-10 Jewels per spin)... or by purchasing them directly from the store. The game also has paid Premium memberships, which give Ticket and Jewels benefits as well as exclusive access to certain stories. Has become more downplayed with the patch that made Jewels much easier to obtain for free.
- Branch-and-Bottleneck Plot Structure: Choice branches in a chapter are set to converge when the chapter ends (if not set to converge earlier by the author). This can be counteracted by placing Automatic Choices later (even the very start of the next chapter), which automatically sets a story branch based on the Affinity and Progress points gained by the player up until that point.
- Cel Shading: The technique used for the animations in general. Aside from giving the visuals a softer feel, it also helps characters blend better with the 2D backgrounds.
- Cut and Paste Environments: The game provides a wide but still limited amount of 2D backgrounds for stories (with additional ones unlock-able with Jewels or Creator achievements, including day and nighttime versions), so you'll be bound to see certain backgrounds making recurring appearances in different stories. Several of these are also very obviously created for the < I'M FINE > story (such as Seokjin's room or Yoongi's workroom), increasing the recognizability.
- Event Flag: Creators can set up choices in such a way that a specific amount of Affinity Choices up to certain point in the story will set an Automatic Choice, leading to a different story branch.
- Freemium: The game has the option to get a Premium membership, which aside from benefits such as receiving daily Jewels, it allows exclusive access to certain community-created stories.
- Going Through the Motions: How animations work in stories. The game gives creators a limited selection for character animations ("Speaking - No expression", "Standing - Slightly Surprised", "Funny - Giving a Wedgie", etc.) for all characters to use, with limitations on what a character can do at a time. Having your character's animations feel natural and flow well when everyone does near the exact same poses while "Thinking", for example, can be somewhat of a challenge.
- Limited Animation: Other than Pre-Rendered Graphics in some select cutscenes from the I'M FINE story (see Animation Bump in the folder below), the game gives authors an (admittedly long and varied) selection of character animations and expressions, with a list of preset 2D backgrounds. The result is that stories become akin to visual novel cutscenes with moving camera and CGI characters.
- Microtransactions: Downplayed with the patch that made Jewels easier to obtain for free, but new < I'M FINE > chapters and additional creator resources will keep being made available from time to time - with both being obtainable with Jewels or, in the case of certain resource packs, through purchase in the store.
- Multiple Endings: Stories can have these if the author chooses to have them.
- Relationship Values: Affinity Points with the characters in a story can be used as this to determine story branches or unlock choices with Affinity Points requirements. While the player can see how many Affinity Points they have, they cannot see the requirements for story branches or un-lockable choices.
- Repeatable Quest: You can earn money or daily Jewels by reading chapters of stories by community creators. Nothing is stopping you however from re-reading the same chapter over and over again to get the same rewards.
- Rewatch Bonus: Can be achieved by users in their created stories, particularly with choices that lead to story branches, with the possibility of exploring different routes and/or endings. Encouraged by the game's mechanic that allows to fast-forward until a choice appears.
- Scrolling Text: Dialogue and narration. Its speed can be controlled by the author for each text bubble - though readers can read them more quickly by tapping the screen.
- Sprite/Polygon Mix: Characters are 3D while backgrounds are 2D. The creator has the ability to give the illusion of perspective by moving characters in the space, turning them around, and choosing which characters appear on the foreground (if there's more than one), but backgrounds can't be edited other than moving the camera and picking where to focus it (making close-ups and such). Not positioning characters the right way can make them look like they're floating.
- You All Look Familiar: Like with backgrounds and music, creators get a selection of NPCs to use as supporting characters (or main characters if you so choose), with the possibility of purchasing more. NPCs therefore work as a limited cast of animated actors to play various roles - which also means that you can have NPCs used for major supporting characters in < I'M FINE > such as Seokjin's father and Jimin's mother play a random or even heroic businessman or lady, respectively.
The Most Beautiful Moment in Life < I'M FINE > -specific tropes
- Abusive Parents:
- Jungkook's biological mother and stepfather ignore him. In this story, we find out a reason he starts wandering around at night is that he can't enter his house, because his mother is hosting a get-together with family that he's not welcome to. From what we get from Jungkook's thoughts, his mother is all too happy to send him away to a boarding school.
- Seokjin's father cares only about reputation and success and believes the only relationships necessary are those for networking, which he tries to instill on his son whether Seokjin wants it or not. This goes from handing over Seokjin's classmate to suspicious men (who Seokjin and that classmate were running away from) when Seokjin was a child, to having Jungkook be sent away to a boarding school with no way for Seokjin to contact him, only because Seokjin missed the inauguration ceremony to spend time with him.
- Jimin's mother had him locked up in a hospital for 2 years due to his seizures with no interest in letting him out to secure her husband's career. She's also emotionally abusive towards Jimin, treats him like a burden and blames his situation on his inability to "get better" from his trauma.
- Alone Among Families: A "parents aren't dead but they're absent and neglectful" variation. We learn in Jungkook's story that he went to the storage room in the first place the day he and Yoongi were discovered because he didn't want to stay in a classroom during an open house for parents.
- Animation Bump: There are very specific points in the The Most Beautiful Moment in Life: I'M FINE story where we get cutscenes with Pre-Rendered Graphics instead of relying on the story creation Limited Animation. These include the game intro cutscene, the very first chapter in Namjoon's story, Jungkook jumping off in his story, and Yoongi and Jungkook playing piano in Yoongi's story.
- Answer Cut: If the stories are played in order, Jungkook's story ends with Seokjin wondering who could save Jungkook instead of him - with the next story being Yoongi's. And when he asked himself the same question in Jimin's chapter, the next chapter is Hoseok's.
- Anti-Interference Lock Up: In Jungkook's story, Seokjin is eventually prevented from spending time with Jungkook - and thus from preventing Jungkook's death - by Seokjin's father, who moves some strings to have Jungkook sent to a boarding school with no way for Seokjin to contact him. This is in order to keep Seokjin away from what his father considers distractions.
- Book Ends: Discounting The Stinger, the official trailer begins and ends with a close-up on Seokjin's face while he stands in his room - only difference being that he's smiling in the beginning, and crying at the end.
- But Thou Must!: Regardless of your actions within each story, the outcome will be the same at the end.
- Call-Back: At the end of the trailer, the shot of Seokjin crying while looking at the camera is very similar to a shot of him doing the same in the "I NEED U" music video.
- In Yoongi's story, one of Seokjin's recordings shows Jungkook going to listen Yoongi play the piano. When he starts to absently chew on his nails, Yoongi immediately stops and offers to teach him to play, showing how observant Yoongi is. Jungkook's nail-biting habit is also called out by Yoongi in the first volume of The Notes.
- Continuity Nod:
- The official poster shows the boys exactly as they appear in the "I NEED U" music video (the official start of the series).
- From the trailers:
- The teaser and trailer literally recreate through 3D animations scenes of previous videos in the universe, such as the shot of the boys playing golf with a bottle in an empty pool from "HYYH: Prologue", the close-up on Jungkook as his friends party around him from "RUN", and Taehyung stabbing his father with a broken bottle from "I NEED U".
- The 10 minute trailer also features various scenes that were either described, alluded to or implied only in the 1st volume of The Most Beautiful Moment In Life: The Notes. One of the first scenes shows the container area where Namjoon lives being raided and set on fire, showing the events that lead to Taehyung finding Namjoon dead in his final nightmare in volume 1. In another, Hoseok limps while walking to a stage full of rehearsing dancers - in volume 1, Hoseok finds a group of touring dancers during rehearsal and he accompanies them for a while while he recovers from a broken leg.
- We actually get to see Jungkook getting hit by a car and then being approached by the creature that allows him to survive - now revealed to be the same creature that set Seokjin on his original quest.
- The BU story series in the game is titled The Most Beautiful Moment in Life: I'M FINE. "I'm Fine" (both as Arc Words and as a song title) is a follow-up/mirror of "Save Me" - the title of the webtoon that details the start of the story is also titled The Most Beautiful Moment in Life: SAVE ME.
- Namjoon's story reveals he keeps a broken headlight from the motorcycle he used when he worked on delivery - the same motorcycle his coworker was using in the fatal accident Namjoon still blames himself for.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Namjoon reacts very negatively to Seokjin helping him with his bills - as someone who is constantly looked down on due to his poverty, he hates feeling pitied (and the thought of facing life by himself is what had kept him going).
- Downer Ending:
- In Namjoon's story, finding out Seokjin paid off the hospital bills makes Namjoon turn cold against him and work overtime. On his way to a job in the middle of the night, he gets momentarily distracted and gets into a fatal traffic accident, restarting the loop.
- In Jungkook's story, while Seokjin manages to make progress by regularly visiting Jungkook, Seokjin's father finds out that Jungkook is the reason of Seokjin's absence in the inauguration ceremony, so he pulls some strings and has Jungkook transfer to a boarding school, with no way for Seokjin to find him. Alone with no friends or even family with him, Jungkook escapes to the beach and kills himself. Seokjin wakes up in a new time loop, wondering if the person who can save Jungkook isn't him, but someone else.
- In Yoongi's story, bringing him the music sheets from the storage room makes Yoongi instantly turn cold against Seokjin too and starts avoiding him. Seokjin is too late to save Yoongi from another suicide attempt, triggering the loop as Seokjin despairs.
- In Jimin's story, Jimin, Seokjin and Taehyung are caught by Jimin's mother while trying to escape the hospital, and they get chewed out by her. After his mother talks to him, Jimin is moved back to the psychiatric ward, and loses all hope, saying he just "wants to rest" while the rain reminds him of the Arboretum incident. The loop resets.
- In Hoseok's Story Seokjin realizes that Jimin can be the one who can save Hoseok from falling off the stairs, and tries to get his attention. But because Seokjin didn't contact Jimin before in this particular loop, Jimin's too surprised and scared. Realizing this, Seokjin goes back to the stairs, only to see Hoseok falling and the loop resetting.
- Taehyung's story ends with similarly to SAVE ME only that Seokjin's death, instead of being because he got stabbed by Taehyung while struggling with him to keep Taehyung from attacking his violent father, he got thrown to the wall during the struggle and fatally hits his head.
- The end of the epilogue is a brief version of the fight after the beach trip described in the novels, but while in the novels the story continues after it and finally earning a happier ending in The Notes 2, here the last scene is Seokjin musing if he did the right thing after all as, while his friends are alive and mostly well, they are, in the words of Taehyung, "still alone" (read, just as unhappy as before.)
- Driven to Suicide: Jungkook, Yoongi, and Jimin. The story has Seokjin try to find out how best to prevent their deaths.
- Dying Alone: The fates of Jungkook, Yoongi, and Jimin in both the original sequence of events and their stories' time loops.
- Escapism: The reason Namjoon reads books is because it's easy for him to get lost in them and stop thinking. While he works 2 jobs to barely make ends meet for himself and his family and he's constantly looked down on and mistreated by strangers for his social status, he spends his free time reading the same books at the bookstore and patiently saves up money to buy them.
- Friendless Background: Namjoon, Jungkook, Yoongi, Jimin and Seokjin are not shown to have friends other than the other three in the group (with Seokjin's only other friend we know about being a kid who disappeared when they were both children).
- Heroic Sacrifice: In a scene from the trailer, as the area is raided and goes down in flames, Namjoon runs into one of the containers to rescue a child. While he manages to get him out, Namjoon himself gets trapped inside as the fire consumes the place. As we know from The Most Beautiful Moment in Life: The Notes 1, he doesn't make it.
- It's All My Fault: Jungkook believes it's his fault that Yoongi was expelled, and is quick to believe he's only causing trouble for everyone (likely to originate from the incident with his biological father), which sends him into a downward spiral that leads to his original fate.
- Lonely Rich Kid: Seokjin's father believes that human relationships that don't help you succeed are useless, and tries to instill that to his son, to the point of moving strings to isolate him further.
- Pre-Rendered Graphics: Certain key cutscenes in < I'M FINE > (one in the intro, plus 1 per story) are entirely pre-rendered.
- The Quiet One: Yoongi's story highlights how, despite seeming distant from the rest of the group, he actually is extremely observant and silently cares for the others in his own way.
- Rewatch Bonus: Some choices in the < I'M FINE > stories can lead to different scenes and thus additional info, so it pays off to replay chapters to see all possible conclusions (helped by the ability to fast-forward into choices when replaying a chapter).
- Shout-Out: Namjoon owns a copy of Cosmos by Carl Sagan and Alone to a Distant House by Heo Sugyeong. In his list of other books he'd like to buy, there's also No Exit and The Devil and The Good Lord by Jean-Paul Sartre, The Life Before Us by Emile Ajar, and Wetlands Ecology Report by Choi Gyuseok. He's also shown reading Also sprach Zarathustra in a flashback.
- Single Tear: Seokjin cries like this at the end of the trailer - appropriate, as both here and in the rest of the universe he's generally The Stoic.
- Small, Secluded World: Jimin has been locked in a psychiatric ward for 2 years. May year 22 contains a relatively narrow window of time where he's transferred to the hospital due to an injury.
- Stepford Smiler: In a flashback, Yoongi notices Seokjin is this, and asks him "when was the last time you genuinely laughed?". This is because the principal was already making Seokjin report on his friends' behavior.
- The Stoic: Seokjin's general demeanor during the trailer, implied to be due to the indeterminate amount of time he's been trapped in the loop having to watch his friends die.
- Suicide Watch: Seokjin tries to do this both for Jungkook and Yoongi, going out of his way to keep them company. Both are later made impossible in different ways: Seokjin's father finds out that Seokjin skipped the inauguration ceremony to spend time with Jungkook, so he has Jungkook transfer to a boarding school, with no way for Seokjin to contact him. With Yoongi, Seokjin tries to make Yoongi happier by bringing him his old music sheets from the storage room, which backfires as Yoongi turns cold and starts avoiding him. Both Jungkook and Yoongi end up dying, restarting the loop.
- Too Desperate to Be Picky: Namjoon's job at the gas station has him constantly face Jerkass strangers who treat him like dirt (and the gasoline smell it leaves on him afterwards doesn't get him better treatment elsewhere), but he endures it because he's the sole source of income for his family and he needs every job he can get.
- Tragic Dropout:
- Namjoon's story focuses on his love for books as a place to escape. His genuine love for books and interest in philosophy contrasted with the way he's treated by stranger hammers home just how tragic his situation is as someone who had to leave school to work 2 jobs and pay his father's hospital bills.
- While we already knew Yoongi is a gifted musician, his story highlights how he was extremely observant and silently caring towards his friends before he got expelled. Now he spends his days drunk alone in his workroom.
- You Are Too Late:
- In one of the first cutscenes from the trailer, Seokjin arrives when the flames have already started to consume the container where Namjoon was trapped.
- Yoongi's erratic patterns of behavior makes it really hard to predict in which motel he'll start a fire. As a result, Seokjin has been too late to save him in many loops.
- This is the reason most of the loops keep happening, to Seokjin increased frustration.
