Localisation of games into Chinese seems to have turned a corner (inc. game recommendations)

[Takeshi]

On 6/22/2019 at 6:54 PM, StChris said:

Regarding new Chinese-made games, a new game, ahem, "inspired" by Nintendo's Zelda Breath of the Wild, Genshin Impact, was announced earlier this month and now the beta has been released.

 

I just started playing this game recently. It is great; it's the first Chinese game I have truly enjoyed playing, and it feels just as polished as any other major Japanese game. Having Chinese voice is an extra plus.

 

On 4/19/2020 at 4:31 AM, NinKenDo said:

One problem I've had with Chinese games, specifically Starcraft II as an example, is getting Chinese characters displaying in Wine. It has been a massive pain. When I finally, finally managed to do it, the game wouldn't launch. So yeah, bit of a random point, but something to keep in mind for people running Linux. I recommend people on Linux go down the route of emulating classics rather than PC gaming, but this definitely shrinks the available game library significantly (and also forces you toward games in Trad characters, but that's no issue for me).

 

I have never had problems getting umm Japanese text running in wine. Probably getting Chinese is the same. You need to enable Chinese locales in your system first (the process is very distro specific), then just prefix wine with LC_ALL=zh_TW or something when you run it (replace TW with CN for simplified), I'm sure it would work. The reason the characters are not displaying is probably because the programs are not unicode, and if you try to run a non-unicode program in an English (or other) locale, it won't know what the language is, so it won't read. This is ironically an easier problem to solve in Linux than Windows itself.

[ThomasSimpson]

You raise a really important topic of localization of the game, the developers justify this by saying that localization does not affect sales in any way and there is no point in localizing the game. I'm a first-year student and I'm learning Chinese. And at the moment, I took up the free localization of a little-known pixel game.I think it will be a great experience.

[roddy]

Interesting looking game popped up on Steam today, Dyson Sphere Program - looks a bit like Factorio in space? Anyway, full Simplified Chinese interface, and developed in everyone's favourite hilly city, San Fran... nah, kidding, Chongqing.

[roddy]

On 7/18/2019 at 11:29 AM, roddy said:

Here's one for someone else to take a look at: Shenzhen I/O. Looks to be a game based around designing circuit boards - with the instructions manuals in Chinese.

 

Picked this up today as it was cheap and out of curiosity - looks a lot of fun, if you like programming electronics. Which isn't to dismiss it, it's well designed and well-written (although I was playing in English, so can't vouch for the Chinese).

[StChris]

The China Steam store opens today. The international version of Steam has been something of a loophole for smaller Chinese developers, allowing them to avoid having to go through the official approval/censorship process. While the regular version of Steam is still available for now, it seems inevitable that it will get block eventually. I hope we still continue to get Chinese language games on regular Steam. Here is a good article about it:

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/why-chinese-developers-are-worried-about-steam-china-launching-next-week/

[roddy]

I see castle construction classic Stronghold now has an Asian themed ("Great Khans, Imperial warlords and Shōgun commanders") game, with, according to the Steam page, Chinese text and audio. Not cheap though and reviews are mixed. 

 

Edit: Someone should, if they aren't already, start streaming themselves playing games in Chinese. Ideally someone who doesn't speak it very well, it'd be funnier. 

[Pengyou]

Interesting...I have not had time to read all of the threads.  I also do not play computer games - I am afraid that I would spend too much time doing so.  I have a friend in Shenzhen who makes a very good salary (30,000 rmb + bonuses each month) working for a company that translates western games into Chinese - menu options, help files, etc.  It seems that there will be more and more computer games "localized" in the future.

[roddy]

Yet another 'I haven't played it' suggestion from me, but looks fun: Detective Di and the Silk Rose Murders. No audio, has simplified Chinese interface. Retro-style point and click detective larks with everyone's favourite ancient detective, Di Renjie. Featuring Wu Zetian also! Well reviewed. 

 

Just to respond to the above post - games localization and transcreation does seem to be booming right now.

[StChris]

On 4/1/2021 at 6:38 PM, roddy said:

Yet another 'I haven't played it' suggestion from me, but looks fun: Detective Di and the Silk Rose Murders. No audio, has simplified Chinese interface. Retro-style point and click detective larks with everyone's favourite ancient detective, Di Renjie. Featuring Wu Zetian also! Well reviewed. 

 

I was always really into the Lucasarts adventure games as a kid, so this kind of game is right up my hutong. I promised myself at the beginning of the year that I wouldn't buy any more steam games (working on clearing the backlog of games I already have), but I'll buy this for myself at Christmas and play it some time next year.

[StChris]

I recently watched this video from a Chinese youtuber about typing games, and she mentioned a game with Chinese language support where you have to type in Chinese words in order to attack enemies:

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/398850/Epistory__Typing_Chronicles/

 

Unfortunately, all voice acting is still in English, but it should still be a fun challenge.

[NanJingDongLu]

This is something I've been keeping track of with my own game library. I have a list of all the games I have, all the games on my wishlist, and all the games I need to look into, and one of the criteria I track is whether they have any Chinese language support. I've spent the last couple of hours trying to reformat that information to be more useful for you guys, but it's still not perfect. I originally wanted to share the google sheet, but there isn't anyway to do that without revealing my full name and email address to the internet, so for now here is a screenshot of the current list, and a csv if you want to download it and use any of it or filter it. If anyone wants to contribute to it and use it as a master list, i'd be more than willing to sort something out.

 

The headings are as follows:

• Title Name
• Comments - A quick description
• HLTB - How long the game is in hours according to howlongtobeat.com
• Year
• Price - The price you can get this game for if you're willing to shop around and wait for sales. For some games this price is easier to achieve than others.
• 中文？ - In what way does this game support Chinese language?
• 简体字? - Does it support simplified characters?
• 繁体字? - Does it support traditional characters?
• Potato? - Will this game run on integrated graphics? A new GPU is currently more expensive than some cars, so this one is especially important. Unfortunately I haven't got perfect data here, so while most of the ticks will work, that doesn't necessarily mean all of the empty boxes won't. It's a work in progress.
• Rating - I rate my games as 0 = I don't want to play it and therefore it's not on the list, 1 = it seems worth trying, but I doubt it will stick, 2 = probably a fine game, 3 = seems like something I would enjoy, 4 = pretty fantastic, 5 = one of the best games you can play.

One thing that was hard to express in the list was that sometimes "subtitles" means its an english game with english voice acting, but there are chinese subtitles. Sometimes it means this game is entirely in Chinese, but it doesn't have any voice acting in any language. It was also hard to distinguish between games with no dialogue in the levels, but story in between, and games where you're constantly reading/listening.

 

Anyway, here is the list:

Chinese Games.csv

[StChris]

@NanJingDongLu thanks for the info. If you ever have the inclination and free time, feel free to open a new thread to gave a more detailed review of any Chinese language games you've played. I'll then add it to our review index.