The rise of Chinese games on Steam

Deleted member 1849 · Jan 18, 2019

Over the past few years, Chinese game development has grown rapidly. I used to see a few interesting games from the region, mostly Wuxia RPG's, but these days it feels like the Chinese industry produces a few interesting games per month. A couple are translated into English, but most are left untranslated and don't get noticed by many in the west.

However, some games do get translated and I'll begin by listing a few of those so people know what kinds of games I'm talking about.

The "Xuan-Yuan Sword" is an epic oriental RPG series with 25 years of history.It elaborates on the very heart of this series, the idea of "one, looking at the same thing from different angles, may come to different conclusions. " through a variety of historical incidents in different times.

ICEY is a 2D side-scrolling action game and a META game in disguise. As you follow the narrator's omnipresent voice, you will see through ICEY's eyes and learn the truth about her world. The narrator will constantly urge you in one direction, but you must ask, "Why? Why am I following his directions?"

《Bright Memory:Episode 1》is developed by an independent game developer FYQD in his spare time.Travel to the sky of land to prevent SAI from digging out the secrets of the rebirth of ancient creatures.This is a war between future science and ancient civilization.

Escape an astonishing disaster in Ring of Elysium, a battle royale shooter developed by Tencent Games.

Tale of Wuxia has been dedicated to providing gameplayers with a player-defined platform, where they can customize their own Wuxia. Instead of being restricted to characters' basic properties and martial arts, in this new version, gameplayers can also choose the personalities and talents of their

Zengeon' is an action role-playing game with anime style and Roguelike elements. At the time of the Luna eclipse, the enchantment of 'DongTianFudi' was inexplicably broken, resulting in darkness come out. In order to restore the enchantment, the player will be act the student who experienced the event.

An action game set in the Ancient China, bringing players addictive experiences with its unique Chinese traditional art-style and sound design.

This is a martial arts action role-playing game. The core of the game is battle-oriented, and it combines many fighting elements. If you are a player who pursues blood and is brave enough to challenge the limits, it will definitely inspire your adrenaline and bring you the best combat experience.

Become a god and help change the fate of people, even the world! In WILL: A Wonderful World, you will receive letters written by characters living in urban cities. By rearranging the order and combinations of sentences in these letters, you are going to alter the destiny of whomever that wrote them.

And a select few games which have not received translations which I think look interesting:

This is only a small selection of the huge number of games that are coming from the region. Also, a shoutout to the games from China and Taiwan Steam curator https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32768202-Games-from-China-and-Taiwan/ run by our own Chairmanchuck. One of the best ways I know of to find out about these games.

I really hope as people gradually discover these games, more effort gets made to improve the frequency of English localization.

Have you played many? Do you have any favourites? Or maybe one game in particular you liked the look of but wasn't available in your language?

Chairmanchuck (另一个我) · Jan 18, 2019

I am currently playing "Our End of the World".

It is quite nice for an Indie VN, but nothing special.

Bladed Fury from the OP is really cool though. Its a Vanillaware like game, but without an Open World.
Heroine Anthem Zero is another Vanillaware like game, but suffers from too many cutscenes:

There is also a nice SRPG by Softstar on Steam:

Also dont sleep on Rabi Ribi by Taiwanese devs. Imo far better than Momodora or Axiom Verge as a Metroidvania:

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One major drawback with a lot of the english translated ones is that the translation often is not that good. Some feel like they were machine translated and just edited after that. Some feel like a literal translation from Chinese to English, that sometimes wouldnt make sense.

Kunka Kid · Jan 18, 2019

Those last 3 images look hilariously similar

Cheesy · Jan 18, 2019

The only one mentioned that I've played so far is Bright Memory, it's not perfect, and as it is can be beat in less than an hour, but it's a really unique experience, a fun mix of Devil May Cry and FPS action.

Korigama · Jan 18, 2019

I have and quite enjoyed Icey (got all the Steam achievements, too). Great soundtrack as well.

ShinUltramanJ · Jan 18, 2019

Yo! That Bright Memory game looks fucking awesome! I was eyeballing it last night.

The only thing putting me off is the short length.

Atolm · Jan 18, 2019

I bought Iris.Fall, which according to the credits is mostly made by Chinese people. Little great puzzle game with awesome graphics.

Deleted member 1849 · Jan 18, 2019

ShinUltramanJ said:
Yo! That Bright Memory game looks fucking awesome! I was eyeballing it last night.

The only thing putting me off is the short length.

It is super short, and can be completed in like 40 minutes. What is there is super interesting and unique though and it's a reasonable price, so IMO it's still worth trying. Steam reviews seem to agree.

Final version of the game is meant to be like 3 hours long, which is closer to what it should be I feel.

Swiggins · Jan 18, 2019

China's economy is doing gangbusters right now, it'll be exciting to see what comes out of the country as time goes on.

ShinUltramanJ · Jan 18, 2019

Nappael said:
It is super short, and can be completed in like 40 minutes. What is there is super interesting and unique though and it's a reasonable price, so IMO it's still worth trying. Steam reviews seem to agree.

Final version of the game is meant to be like 3 hours long, which is closer to what it should be I feel.

I want to give it a shot, but what runs through my head is the entire package being a better value. I may just wait, but man...I don't know if I can.
Especially with this being Friday night and a three day weekend for me.

Crayon · Jan 18, 2019

I've been looking at Icey and Elysium. I had no idea they were chinese.

Gevin · Jan 18, 2019

Thanks for this thread, there are lots of cool stuff to see. Didn't even know Bright Memory was Chinese, looks amazing

i-Jest · Jan 18, 2019

Not quite related, but I'm very much looking forward to Lost Soul Aside. Never knew Icey was Chinese.

Tizoc · Jan 18, 2019

Various indie games had also added Chinese languages to them like Defender's Quest

It's a cool trend to see such indies trying to attract more consumers

Deleted member 1849 · Jan 18, 2019

Chairmanchuck said:
Also dont sleep on Rabi Ribi by Taiwanese devs. Imo far better than Momodora or Axiom Verge as a Metroidvania:

Talking of Taiwanese developers:

Chairmanchuck said:
One major drawback with a lot of the english translated ones is that the translation often is not that good. Some feel like they were machine translated and just edited after that. Some feel like a literal translation from Chinese to English, that sometimes wouldnt make sense.

I agree with that, and think it's a massive shame and something I would like to be improved in future.

Pellaidh · Jan 18, 2019

From the top of my head, I've played a total of three of them

Tale of Wuxia was a pretty interesting mix of turn based strategy and a raising sim. Ultimately though, the game had a ton of text, and a pretty poor translation. I admire the fact that they took the effort to localize it though, and enjoyed my time with it.

Rabi-Ribi was surprisingly one of the best metroidvanias I've played. Going in, the artstyle looked pretty terrible, so I was a bit wary. But the actual gameplay was great, with tight controls and really good boss fights that merge platforming and Touhou style bullet hell gameplay. There's also a large focus on actual exploration, with pretty much most of the world being available to explore from the start, which makes it really stand out from other games in the genre that rely on locking exploration behind powerups.

The last one is Honkai Impact 3, a free to play gatcha phone game with gameplay that takes heavy inspirations from Bayonetta. And while it's obviously not anywhere near that good (mostly due to a lack of enemy variety or varied encounters), it's still fun to play, and it controls surprisingly well given that it's a phone game. It's also one of the best gatcha games I've played in terms of good, consistent content updates. As far as phone gatcha games go, this one is one of the best I've played, although it still comes with a lot of garbage that is common to gatcha games.

Overall, I think it's great the region is getting more international exposure. It's pretty cool to see how big their industry is considering I didn't even know it existed something like 5 years ago.

Deleted member 1849 · Jan 18, 2019

Crayon said:
I've been looking at Icey and Elysium. I had no idea they were chinese.

Yo Crayon. I know you play on Linux. You might be interested to know that Icey, Bright Memory, Bladed Fury, Rabi-Ribi, and a few others on this list all work great in Proton.

francium87 · Jan 18, 2019

Pellaidh said:
Tale of Wuxia was a pretty interesting mix of turn based strategy and a raising sim. Ultimately though, the game had a ton of text, and a pretty poor translation. I admire the fact that they took the effort to localize it though, and enjoyed my time with it.

I will note there is a fan translation project underway (I'm putting in some work), to also bring in the latest content updates after the devs stopped updating the english version
more info on the steam forums

Aters · Jan 18, 2019

My Time at Portia is also by Chinese developer.

Kunka Kid said:
Those last 3 images look hilariously similar

Yep. There are way too many Wuxia games and not enough everything else.

Buckle · Jan 18, 2019

Its been really cool to see.

Was always disappointed to see that PC gaming never really picked up in Japan, happy to see China and others picking up the slack in Asia.

Deleted member 1849 · Jan 18, 2019

Aters said:
My Time at Portia

Damn, I had no idea. According to their website Pathea are split between two studios though, one in the US and one in China.

EDIT: Seems like they are Chinese, but then expanded after the Team17 partnership?

Chairmanchuck (另一个我) · Jan 18, 2019

Pellaidh said:
Rabi-Ribi was surprisingly one of the best metroidvanias I've played. Going in, the artstyle looked pretty terrible, so I was a bit wary. But the actual gameplay was great, with tight controls and really good boss fights that merge platforming and Touhou style bullet hell gameplay. There's also a large focus on actual exploration, with pretty much most of the world being available to explore from the start, which makes it really stand out from other games in the genre that rely on locking exploration behind powerups.

Exactly. Too many people sleep on it and I can see how the bunny outfits and loli characters can be off-putting. But its really imo one of the best Metroidvanias on Steam.

Deleted member 1849 · Jan 18, 2019

Chairmanchuck said:
Exactly. Too many people sleep on it and I can see how the bunny outfits and loli characters can be off-putting. But its really imo one of the best Metroidvanias on Steam.

It's unfortunately super off putting. I can't blame people, either.

Crayon · Jan 18, 2019

Nappael said:
Yo Crayon. I know you play on Linux. You might be interested to know that Icey, Bright Memory, Bladed Fury, Rabi-Ribi, and a few others on this list all work great in Proton.

Omg I didn't even realize there wasn't a Linux version. Everything's been different since the proton bomb.

Deleted member 1849 · Jan 18, 2019

Oh, and the biggest Steam release of 2019 so far kind of counts.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1613886175

texhnolyze · Jan 18, 2019

Yeah, I've been following lots of games from Chinese developers lately.

This is just the start and lots of them have already delivered fantastic games. Imagine what can they do in 5-10 years.

caylen · Jan 18, 2019

Chairmanchuck said:
I am currently playing "Our End of the World".

One major drawback with a lot of the english translated ones is that the translation often is not that good. Some feel like they were machine translated and just edited after that. Some feel like a literal translation from Chinese to English, that sometimes wouldnt make sense.

Since Chinese -> English localization is only now beginning the possibility of mass market beyond AAA publisher (Tencent Games, NetEase, Perfect World, etc) capabilities, getting your Chinese game localized by an game-specific agency is actually pretty challenging from both an availability & cost factor. It's also pretty difficult since many of the more involved games have cultural-specfic nuance that's hard to suss out in literal translation (kinda like in Japan!), so you ideally want a loc shop that is either native or full of ex-pats with diverse/well versed backgrounds.

As such, translation efforts will probably improve in the coming year substantially, but it's usually serviceable. The worst example I've played of recent was Bloody Spell (which is really cool imo!), and it's still considerably better than the worst loc jobs on NES and PS2 games during those port hayday.

Seeing Chinese developed games in the west becoming more of a thing is really cool, and I'm excited to see more stuff like this in the coming year.

Exto · Jan 18, 2019

I always put those on ignore

sauce · Jan 18, 2019

I didn't even know My Time at Portia was by a Chinese team. That's pretty cool. It's definitely encouraging to see the rise of Chinese games on Steam.

Not sure if this is on Chuck's curator, but this game looked pretty good:

Uraizen · Jan 18, 2019

I'm interested in this one and need Chairmanchuck to tell me how necessary it is to know the language.

I don't care about story, I just want to have fun fighting shit.

jawzpause · Jan 18, 2019

Any AAA games in development in China?

Kumubou · Jan 18, 2019

I would be remiss to not have one of the all-time classic jank fighters mentioned: Sango Guardian: Chaos Generation

It's a traditional 2D fighter that basically takes a bunch of random mechanics from Street Fighter and King of Fighters and... tries to make something out of it? It actually originally started as an arcade game (!) and has actually gotten enough attention from the developer so that it's actually playable (even if it's still super jank).

Older versions of the game actually had a hilarious anti-infinite mechanic: if your combo got too long, your damage scaling would start going negative (as in, your opponent would start gaining health from every hit).

hanshen · Jan 18, 2019

jawzpause said:
Any AAA games in development in China?

Diablo Immortal.

I kid. Gujian3 and Xuan-Yuan Sword are pretty much AAA from what I've seen. Xuan-Yuan Sword being the oldest Chinese ongoing RPG series.

Sputnik Sweetheart · Jan 18, 2019

Hi all. Has anyone here played Tale of Wuxia? Is it any good? I've had it on my radar for quite some time but never knew whether to bite.

Richietto · Jan 18, 2019

I have my eye watching closely on Bright Memory.

Deleted member 1849 · Jan 18, 2019

Sputnik Sweetheart said:
Hi all. Has anyone here played Tale of Wuxia? Is it any good? I've had it on my radar for quite some time but never knew whether to bite.

It's a remake of a pretty important game in China. It does some interesting things and it's a good game to play if you want to learn more about Wuxia in general, but is really, really rough in some areas. Most notably, the poor English translation.

Apparently there are some fans working on updating the translation and using the more recent version of the game which has more content and bugfixes

Sputnik Sweetheart · Jan 18, 2019

Nappael said:
It's a remake of a pretty important game in China. It does some interesting things and it's a good game to play if you want to learn more about Wuxia in general, but is really, really rough in some areas. Most notably, the poor English translation.

Apparently there are some fans working on updating the translation and using the more recent version of the game which has more content and bugfixes

Thanks for this! I don't have much exposure to Wuxia so seems like it would be worthwhile. The fan translation definitely has me excited. It's top of my steam wishlist now so will pick it up once I clear a bit more of my backlog and keep an eye out for the fan update.

Council Pop · Jan 18, 2019

Really awesome stuff, need to play some of these. Really exciting to see so many emerging Chinese developers!

Exto said:
I always put those on ignore

Why?

Loan Wolf · Jan 18, 2019

Glad to see new developers emerging in the Chinese market, hopefully nothing shady about invasion of privacy is involved with them considering the way things are going with Huawei.

Gilver · Jan 18, 2019

I thought ICEY was good and it was my first Chinese game. But really really looking forward to Lost Soul Aside the ultimate chinese game (although not on steam). It seems like China is finally developing on other platforms other than mobile which is super cool!

chiu7 · Jan 18, 2019

Xuan Yuan Sword's next project will be in late 2019 or 2020, perhaps with more information on E3 this year.

Zafir · Jan 18, 2019

I swear we had this thread just the other day.

But yeah, there's a lot of interesting Chinese games that haven't got localisations yet. I really hope these games see enough success that more and more start thinking about localising them into English. There's some really promising stuff.

Admittedly some of the stuff that do have localisations at the moment don't have the best translation, but it's better than nothing.

signal · Jan 18, 2019

Zafir said:
I swear we had this thread just the other day.

Probably thinking of this or this. e: oh nm

texhnolyze · Jan 18, 2019

The main problem with these devs is that they're basically small indie studios. Therefore, localization is more or less out of the question for them due to lack of budget. Maybe they should start a Kickstarter campaign for that.

Uraizen said:
I'm interested in this one and need Chairmanchuck to tell me how necessary it is to know the language.

I don't care about story, I just want to have fun fighting shit.

There are some guides for menu translation in the guide section on Steam.

Deleted member 1849 · Jan 18, 2019

signal said:
Probably thinking of this or this. Speaking of which, no one mentioned one of those yet.

GuJian 3 is in the OP.

DarkFlame92 · Jan 18, 2019

Damn,I'll admit that Chinese/Japanese games of these type look generic asf and will never manage to get my interested

signal · Jan 18, 2019

Nappael said:
GuJian 3 is in the OP.

Ya just ctrl+f'd (and I didn't load the steam embed from other person who also posted it)

Luminaire · Jan 18, 2019

While we're looking at Chinese Steam games, I had a lot of fun with The Initial 2: New Stage. It's worlds better than the first, but still not great by any means.

It's an indie action game inspired by Nier Automata and Ninja Gaiden.

I made a few gifs of it when I played it.

Additional GIFs
https://gfycat.com/InferiorVacantAmericanratsnake
https://gfycat.com/LimpingDelayedAmericanalligator
https://gfycat.com/HonestInformalColt
https://gfycat.com/PointlessContentIndianpalmsquirrel
https://gfycat.com/UnhappySkinnyGalapagosmockingbird
https://gfycat.com/PaleHalfChamois
https://gfycat.com/DangerousShortCattle
https://gfycat.com/ScientificSoftApatosaur

It's pretty short, only about 5 hours or so. It's available in English, but the translation is pretty terrible. Amusingly enough, Kira Buckland (2B from Nier) did the voice for the main character. She genuinely stuck to the script, as broken as it was. It's entertaining, but I highly recommend playing it in Japanese as there's a character who only has one line of monologue when he's attacking and it's...annoying.

It's somewhat janky and hitchy but it has a lot of neat ideas. It doesn't really evolve too much beyond getting new weapons and chips (to increase dmg or steal life). Combos are all unlocked at the start so it doesn't feel like you have much progression. Still, I found enough variety to have fun. Most encounters are run from point a to point b and deal with x number enemies in a combat arena. It grows tiresome pretty quickly but the combat kept me intrigued up through the end. The boss fights can be fun but are kind of pushovers if you just use your super ability to deal a ton of damage.

Check out some full youtube videos beyond just the gifs I posted as they may paint the game in a slightly better light than an actual gameplay video might.
Also don't bother with the first game. While I enjoyed it for being a somewhat interesting arena fighter, it's only an hour long and it has too many damn 'accidental' upskirts. The story is pretty trash in the first one. Bad translation aside, I found this story to be interesting at least.

Zafir · Jan 18, 2019

signal said:
Probably thinking of this or this. e: oh nm

Yeah it's possible I was thinking of those.

Natsunoyuutsu · Jan 18, 2019

Got all trophies on ps4 and it's fun. It has a wuxia feeling to it but the story is actually foucsed on normal folks in countryside which is freshing. Very good atmosphere with simple but fun gameplay. The performance has much to be desired due to the game engine and localization is so bad but still for a small team efforts, I'd recommend it. It also has an ICEY easteregg in it but I don't know how these two related.

The rise of Chinese games on Steam

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