I‘ve been pretty curious about Chinese games lately after playing Sword and Fairy and really loving it, I believe I also own The Gate of Firmament and have never touched it.
I’m curious of other games I may have missed simply because I‘ve barely been exposed to games from over that way.
Also curious about games from other Asian countries that aren’t Japan.
I've found a multiple truckloads of almost completely unknown eastern European titles, but have had quite a bit of trouble tracking down non-Japanese Asian games.
Bonus points for being playable in English; even more bonus points for a very silly English translation.
Can't speak much to specifically Chinese games, aside for modern ones which are available nowadays anyway. I do have some cool thoughts & opinions on chinese media in general though, and many people are noticing some cool chinese AAA potential.
As far as asia at large, definitely play [_Maple Story_](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/441-adventure-island-online-maple-story-is-secretly-wonder-boy-in-monster-world) if you haven't, haha
and here's a thread with heaps of info about [Korean Retro Gaming](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/1383-korean-retro-gaming-thread)
Eastward is a gorgeous looking and fun game with a weird story that didn't quite click for me, and it was developed by a team based in Shanghai. I wanted to love it, but ended up kind of lukewarm on it. A lot of people did love it though!
And I've got my eye (both eyes, honestly) on [A Space for the Unbound](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1201270/A_Space_for_the_Unbound/), which is a 90s style throwback adventure by a team based in Surabaya, Indonesia.
I have nothing to contribute as a philistine dundridge but I will say I'm looking forward to when big internationally localized single player/console game ass games from China and RoK finally start to really break through. Genshin Impact was just the herald…
This forum needs more DNF fans to keep @Syzygy company
@whatsarobot I played the demo for A Space for the Unbound and really enjoyed it!
Definitely planning on picking that one up one of these days.
I guess it‘s worth mentioning that the two games in the OP are both Taiwanese. In terms of their game industries (and many other things) Taiwan and Mainland China are very different. Taiwan’s game industry started earlier and as such there are, for example, more single player games for consoles like the genesis, though I haven‘t played any of them. There were also domestically produced consoles whose name I forget. Not very useful information! When I get home I’ll post actual links to things.
For Mainland China a lot of the important stuff is online, and therefore less accessible due to servers no longer existing or only being restricted to China. Probably the biggest online game that hasn't been mentioned yet is the MOBA Honor of Kings. I've also heard people talk about battle royale Ring of Elysium and tower defense RPG Arknights. Someone like @"Syzygy"#279 who's played a lot more online games than I have probably knows more. I can also ask some of my friends in China about older now defunct ones
You can look at this list on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32768202-Games-from-China-and-Taiwan/
It's mostly smaller indie stuff, but it also has games from larger studios on there (like Sword and Fairy). I also know there is a large RPG maker and visual novel scene that probably isn't very well represented on Steam.
I previously mentioned this article about Chinese electronic dictionary games, which I think for this particular forum is more the sort of thing people would find interesting.
Anyway, I always feel like I need to learn more about the Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese game industries, so maybe this thread will be an excuse to do some more research/ask my friends.
Though if the reason you're interested in Chinese games is that you like Chinese themes and aesthetics, well that's a completely different discussion.
@saddleblasters I completely forgot the games I mentioned are Taiwanese, Regardless, I am interested in those as well.
As for why I‘m interested, the answer is mostly simply because I don’t know a lot about it, and I like to know about stuff, but also a little of the other stuff you said.
My feeling is that sooner or later there will come a mix of conditions where the international market trends line up with the right batch of weirdos in China who want to do something agnostic towards the local trends out of the passion for a certain genre or kind of gameplay.
Though, I suppose the tricky limitation there is, who is out there big enough to both make a big fat game, but that bucks local tastes enough to kind of make an international release make economic sense? If the larger a company gets the more likely it will dependably go with familiar monetization strategies, I guess it'd have to end up being a moderately large pack of weirdos in China with an already proved track record for it to make sense. Despite finding out it's being made in an especially toxic environment towards women, I still have some hope that _Black Myth: Wukong_ is a sign there were weirdos like that in China.
Basically, setting aside that they've become associated with a very particular sort of game and I just mentioned one like it, I could see there being a Chinese From Software someday, maybe relatively soon. The right mix of idiosyncratic creative leads, a lot of accumulated success and experience, and a collective desire to create something of a particular style, such that an international release becomes economically viable, if not the most profitable thing possible.
OR maybe we should just get over it and play Dungeon & Fighter.
how many dozens of hours do I need to play to become the sexy luchadora
I haven’t played the game yet but I notice a flagrant lack of [size=11][color=#AE8625]INS[/color][color=#D2AC47]ERT CREDIT[/color][color=#EDC967] GA[/color][color=#D2AC47]ME[/color][color=#EDC967] OF THE Y[/color][color=#D2AC47]EAR 20[/color][color=#AE8625]21[/color][/size] F.I.S.T. Forged in Shadow Torch presence in this Happy Chinese New Year thread.
https://youtu.be/3OiuWxJ9l8s?t=46m46s
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GOTY
@chazumaru i am ashamed not only of myself, but of all of us
I learned about this Taiwanese Famicom RPG Feng Shen Bang today:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1qS4y1L7zJ
I looked it up after seeing this screenshot:
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/0rOZPkO.png]
I haven't really looked at it very much, but it is very technically impressive, and in true famicom RPG fashion, the characters all seem to be from a bunch of disparate sources that have nothing to do with each other (at least I don't think Nezha and Legend of Condor Heroes are connected in anyway? (I don't really like Wuxia stuff, so I know very little.))
Edit: Ok I actually looked things up, and it is based on Investiture of the Gods (封神演义) but with additional characters from other sources (like Legend of Condor Heroes)
this playlist has all the bosses, which have cool sprites. unfortunately the person who captured the footage used one of those filters that makes every weird and round:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Y5411Z7Hf
I have been thinking for about 2 years on how it would be extremely viable to just copy and paste the power structure and world building of a Xian Xia novel with JRPG or WRPG aesthetic coding.
Not in effect like Genshin Impact per se, but almost the opposite. In some ways Yakuza games are like Murim novels set in the streets of modern Japan, it's interesting to turn it over and over like a rubik's cube. You could take this idea of hunting for elixirs, ancient cultivation texts, self transformation through breaking tiers and bottlenecks. Add granularity to scalar growth systems that might as well be based on the Chinese national religion of apotheosis to begin with. Maybe I'm just tired of all this "Balance" in power levels we have in our game design now, and envy the cultural idea of exploiting our differences and constantly one-upping and breaking the odds instead. At the very least it would be nice to gain strength through actual self improvement instead of just accumulating murders and achievements for arbitrary power currency.
Well, that’s a wild one. Reversed Front (
逆統戰 
逆統戦コミースレイヤー), a board game about overthrowing the Chinese Communist regime.
https://youtu.be/2WTQRG1oubo
>
The players may assume the role of Hong Kong, Tibet, Uyghurs (East Turkestan), Kazakhs, Mongolia, Manchuria, Taiwan or Cathaysian Rebel factions, establishing organisations in 269 territories in the Cathayan Continent to overthrow the Communist regime!
You can play as the Communist Party, but コミースレイヤー in the Japanese title means *commie slayer*, just to be subtle about the whole idea. Here’s what the original board game looks like.
https://youtu.be/liTZUyMxh9Y
Reversed Front started as an amateur board game released in 2020, including at the time only Hong Kong, Manchuria, Taiwan and the Communist factions. As the COVID19 restrictions progressively loosened, it gained a lot of attention (no shit) in conventions and became especially popular in Japan. Now getting a [Kickstarter campaign](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reversedfront/reversed-front-dear-revolutionaries) to finance a digital version and full English and Japanese translations. The Steam page is already open.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2197370/Reversed_Front/
The full Steam description is worth a look, quite a doozy! I wonder if they’ll manage to release the game on Steam in the end, considering how feisty Chinese nationalists can get on the Internet.
I am necro-bumping this to share something I think some people on this website might be interested in. Earlier today I was digging through old russian Palm OS warez websites and found an English-language copy of Richman for Palm OS:
For some context, Richman is a Taiwanese game series that‘s been around since the late 80s, created by the same guy who would later create Sword and Fairy. It’s one of the oldest game series in China, and a wildly successful one. As for the gameplay… well, it‘s basically monopoly with a stock market simulation thrown in. My understanding is Richman 4 is generally considered the best one, and I think that one’s a fair bit more advanced than this one is. But still! Was really stoked to find this.
I've uploaded it to [PalmDB](https://palmdb.net/app/richman) and confirmed it works on [CloudPilot](https://cloudpilot-emu.github.io/). I have no idea where this came from! I knew there was a Taiwanese release from digging through Taiwanese Palm sites, but I had no idea they'd released anything in English before the games started coming to Steam and (officially licensed) consoles.
I'm still holding out hope for the Vast Fame-developed GBC version, [Feng Kuang Da Fu Weng](https://hhug.me/?post=41) getting a translation. I don't understand any Chinese at all, but the sprite work in that game is incredible.
Chinese fmv games look pretty good! Anyone tried?
During their research, the developers immersed themselves in similar games, like Heavy Rain. Their exploration led them to a significant revelation: the ideal scenario for a choose-your-adventure game would be a spy story set during times of political turmoil. In such a setting, players would not only grapple with difficult decisions to survive dire circumstances, but they would also need to decipher people’s hidden motives.
Oh shit, without looking too much into it, are Chinese games going to start trying to ride the Jubensha wave?
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Taiwan, but I finally ordered a copy of the (port of the) original legend of sword and fairy for saturn. It’s notable for a few things. The obvious one being this is a major/popular Taiwanese RPG ported to console and translated into Japanese. It’s also a rather late Saturn game, coming out in 1999 (it wasn’t rated well though). The next game in the series to get a port would be sword and fairy 6, which got a port in 2019 - there’s a gap of 20 years in there!
You can tell why this game got a poor score on saturn in 1999 by looking at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-br0bHdDVk
But you can also see how ambitious it was, and the graphical style also has a charm and uniqueness to it. Looking forward to checking it out when it arrives!!
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I think this game looks really cool
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