Infinity Nikki 2.0 is peak gaming. I'm 100% serious. Have been playing for the past two weeks.
Chinese Video/Computer Games
- Thread starter AssassinsMace
- Start date
Infinity Nikki 2.0 is peak gaming. I'm 100% serious. Have been playing for the past two weeks.
Never played the game as I don't like platform games. However they nailed it with some songs.
The now referred to as the Paper Crane Song.
This new one is absolute magic.
I've given up for 6 months, too busy with reverse 1999 and HSR.
No idea what this is. Some kind of limited series. The series started out in Japanese but somewhere along the line Chinese took over. Animation by Lighthouse Studios in partnership with Moonton of Mobile Legends fame. Reminds me of the Last Exile. Dystopian with cyberpunk. The last aircraft has a wing configuration reminiscent of a Chinese UAV.
I was just reminded of this post from September when reading about the top indie games of Steam this year from .
Chinese indie games have had a good year on Steam. There's 5 on that list (Escape from Duckov, Sultan's Game, AI Limit, Legend of Heroes Three Kingdoms and Revenge on Gold Diggers)
However, Chinese indie games are mostly single player experiences, while the biggest Steam indies belong in the co-op "friendslop" genre (ex. Schedule I, REPO, Peak, RV There Yet). So instead of focusing on Silksong, there's is good opportunity for Chinese indie devs to go in and out-卷 the mostly Swedish devs doing these friendslop games.
Chinese indie games have had a good year on Steam. There's 5 on that list (Escape from Duckov, Sultan's Game, AI Limit, Legend of Heroes Three Kingdoms and Revenge on Gold Diggers)
However, Chinese indie games are mostly single player experiences, while the biggest Steam indies belong in the co-op "friendslop" genre (ex. Schedule I, REPO, Peak, RV There Yet). So instead of focusing on Silksong, there's is good opportunity for Chinese indie devs to go in and out-卷 the mostly Swedish devs doing these friendslop games.
There's more than enough talent, money, and support to do both. It will naturally happen.
We are only seeing so much focus on AAA because the people have been demanding a domestic AAA sector that rivals the west and also due to the recent success of Black Myth Wukong, paving the way for everyone else to join in.
Once China developes it's AAA sector enough, there will be enough talent everywhere that indie games will become a lot more frequent. Expect both AAA. AA. and indie sector to be completely dominated by China within the next decade.
I’ve said it before. The biggest impediment to these types of games in China is the government approval process. The reason China doesn’t just dwarf the rest of the world in number of new games is because the Chinese government only approves 100-200 a month. While 10x that are released on Steam each month.
The gating process makes Chinese developers much less inclined to experiment. Since if you’ve only got limited shots at releasing a game you’ll tend to fall back on what’s safe, which is usually copying existing successful games. Developers need to survive after all, they can’t afford for their titles to get bottle necked in the approval process.
Chinese mobile games also had a very good year. released mobile games in 2025 were developed in China.
Note this chart excludes Chinese app stores which is very significant. For example this chart has "Legend of Staff and Sword" earning under $100M, but the publisher, G-Bit, reported the game has earned over or around $300M in 2025, so you can basically triple the China revenues.
游戏工委, China's official video game committee, that Chinese developed game exports reached $20.5B this year, up 10.2% YoY). The strong performance of Chinese SLG games and Merge-2 games in oversea markets is a major contributor to this growth.
To give context on the scale, the video game market ex-China is around $150B, so Chinese exports make up 13% of the global market ex-China. This is also significantly larger than the entire Japan domestic video game market which is estimated at around
Just like China's rise in auto, semi, and machinery exports, you are now seeing from the western mobile game industry due to the strong export growth.
This is a reason, but I don't think it's the major one. Chinese mobile games have the same restrictions but have no trouble going overseas. You don't even need a license to publish an indie game on Steam and 3/5 indie games on the previous list do not have a domestic license, selling only on Steam.
A bigger reason is due to industry ecosystem effects. Sweden produces a lot of hit indie games because there is a where successful developers help new developers and share experience. This is the same logic as Chinese studios in Beijing dominating the global mobile SLG genre or Turkish developers dominating the global match-3 genre.
Chinese indie game development is too spread out diluting this effect, though I'm bullish on Chengdu, as there is a burgenoing ecosystem forming for single player games.
Releasing on Steam only in a market that is 70% mobile dominated is kind of missing the forest for the trees. But even if you’re a PC only developer, not having domestic license means you’re going to have to appeal to global audiences, which is way outside the comfort zone of small time developers who lack localization experience.
Just think about how many Western independent developers localize (at all), vs the number of games released. Self teaching game development is a big thing in the West. For China to develop the ecosystem the way must first be opened and not bottle necked.