Gaming Project 1: 雨血之死镇 (Rainblood: Town of Death) (PC)

[Gleaves]

Welcome to the first entry in the Grand Gaming Project. If you are looking for an interesting RPG to practice your Chinese, read on.

《雨血之死镇》 is an RPG for the PC that comes out of China. You play as 魂, a swordsman with a shady past. You quickly find out that a deadly plague has struck the town of Pang. The rest of the plot, which gets quite thick, fills in as you play the game. The game is a mix of dialogue (written dialogue, no voice acting), exploring the environment, and battles. The game is basically interactive fiction with your typical RPG stuff gluing it together. The game has a very cool, hand drawn style that does a good job of expressing the dark and violent story.

The game is pretty brief. I finished it in about seven hours, but it would have probably taken less than half that time in English. 雨血 is an indie game. It is mostly the work of one fella that goes by soulframe. As far as I know, the Chinese version has always been freely available, but if you want to show your support, you can buy the official English version on Bigfish Games. This is the first Chinese indie RPG translated into English and officially released internationally. Soulframe is currently at work on a sequel, 雨血2:烨城.

If you like RPGs, then give this game a try. I enjoyed the experience.

Details

Download: Download it direct from here (130MB). Or Dropbox link here. Or from verycd here. You can buy the English version from Bigfish Games here ($6.99).

Platform: PC (XP/Vista/7)

Legibility: Good (Simplified)

Difficulty: Intermediate. Almost Upper Intermediate. There were more than a few phrases I needed to look up.

Study value: Good. There is an abundance of text to read.

Install: Unpack the game in any folder you like. In the “Game” folder, double click on “Game.” It doesn’t need to install, it just runs. You can add a shortcut to the desktop, if you like. Draw your sword to start the game (拔剑).

Controls: Use the arrow keys to walk around. Enter or space bar to select menu items or interact with the environment. ESC or X pulls up the menu when not in a dialogue or battle. You can save (存档) from menu. Save often (While mostly stable, it crashed on me once and another time I got stuck at the top of a stairwell). Don’t be afraid to use this walkthrough if you need help.

If you give it a try, let us know what you think.

"当今的武林中，绝没有人能避过这一剑" -魂

[imron]

《雨血之死填》

[Gleaves]

imron - Good point. I think the filename referred to it as 雨血-死镇, but 雨血之死镇 is the official title.

[Glenn]

I can't get it to download from either of those sites.

[Gleaves]

From the mediafire link, you should see a "click to start downloading from mediafire" link on the right. I can upload it elsewhere, if needed (does this dropbox link work?). For verycd, you'll need emule. Verycd should work from China, not sure about the others.

[Glenn]

It worked! Thanks!

[creamyhorror]

Looks like a cool game. Definitely gonna play this - thanks for sharing it, Mr Gleaves!

[michaelS]

This is a really good idea. The language is a little hard for me but with the walkthrough I get by. The graphics are great, although I could have done without the constant Edward Scissorhands music.

Thanks for the link, much appreciated!

(One thing: I had to change my system locale to Chinese before extracting the file with winrar, otherwise it came out as gobbledegook)

[Gleaves]

Thanks for that point on the system locale. I have my computer set to PRC, so I woudn't have realized there was a problem.

One thing to note for those playing, there is a point in the game where you will need to find a shack for shelter for the night. What follows is a bunch of little cut scenes that took me a good while to read. So definitely save before you go in (in case you can't make it through all the cut scenes and need to exit the game).

[Glenn]

I didn't have a problem with the locale, and I'm pretty sure mine isn't set to PRC. I'll have to check on that, though.

Thanks for the tip. Now if only I can get past 鋸者 and 力者. I've seen that last screen shot too many times, man...

[Gleaves]

Those suckers are unexpectedly hard. You barely need to pay attention to the battles up to that point. They killed me more than a few times.

[Glenn]

Ha, I got past them tonight! Turns out I just needed to figure out when to use 鬼步 (I think is what it's called).

And man, the next fight was unexpectedly easy.

[Glenn]

By the way, I just checked, and my region is US, so I don't know what's going on with that.

[michaelS]

no, me neither. it did seem to make the difference for me though, but I don't really have a clue what I'm talking about when it comes to tech advice.

making very slow progress through the game cos the reading takes me a very long time, just had the hilarious fight with the woodcutter thing (first battle after the village)

[Glenn]

I just finished it. It seemed like it was halfway before I realized it was ending, but I guess that's what the sequel is for (and it looks pretty good too).

[Gleaves]

Well done. 恭喜. The game definitely leaves a few loose ends.

The second one looks like it expands on the style in a cool way. I think I read that it is not out until later this year, but I will keep an eye out and post here when I see it.

[Glenn]

謝謝！From what I saw of that video you linked to in the OP, it's due out this winter. They seem to have gotten more detailed with the animation, and they also said the story is going to be longer. It also looks like they added some new techniques.

Anyway, I thought something was fishy when they give you an ultimate technique you never come close to having the 殺氣 to do (well, it's still weird, even with the sequel, because you never get to use it in the original).

[Gleaves]

That's a funny point (in the spoiler tags). In a few ways, the game feels like a first episode. It's hard to tell how much of that is intentional or just the result of this being something of a one-man project. I haven't seen any other indie RPG projects from China like this, but hopefully there is a growing community of folks producing interesting stuff.

michaelS - 加油.

[michaelS]

thanks! i've finished it now. the ending was great, final fight etc. The game design and some of the characters' appearances was great. I wouldn't say I fully understood the storyline but you don't need to get everything for it to help.

[Gleaves]

Bravo. The storyline got pretty convoluted and I wasn't clear on everyone's motives, quite frankly.