Chinese Computer and Video Games Reviews Index

[StChris]

With the increasing number of both Chinese developed games and foreign games localised into Chinese, playing games is becoming an increasing viable method of improving your language skills . Since we already have comic book index and TV series index threads, I thought it's about time we had a games index thread as well. Feel free to write your own reviews and I will add them to this index. The format of the review is up to you, but try to include:

- basic info about the game

- screenshots/gifs

- a link of where to buy

- how fun it is to play

- how effective playing it is for improving your Chinese

 

 

Chinese Parents 中国式家长

 

 

Experience life as a Chinese kid, as you guide him or her from birth all the way to the dreaded gaokao exam.

 

Two Point Hospital 双点医院

 

 

Design stunning hospitals, cure peculiar illnesses and manage troublesome staff as you spread your budding healthcare organisation across Two Point County.

 

Devotion 还原 / 還願

 

 

Explore an apartment in 1980s Taipei, as you try to uncover unsettling family secrets in this first-person psychological horror game.

 

Unheard 疑案追声

 

 

What if you could hear every word spoken at the scene of a crime? “Acoustic Detectives” wanted for testing our new device! Return aurally to crime scenes and use the voices you hear to identify potential suspects and solve the mysteries. What is it that’s connecting these seemingly unrelated cases?

 

Three Kingdoms 全面战争：三国

 

 

Total War: THREE KINGDOMS is the first in the award-winning series to recreate epic conflict across ancient China. Combining a gripping turn-based campaign of empire-building & conquest with stunning real-time battles, THREE KINGDOMS redefines the series in an age of heroes & legends.

 

Civilization VI 文明6

 

 

Originally created by legendary game designer Sid Meier, Civilization is a turn-based strategy game in which you attempt to build an empire to stand the test of time. Become Ruler of the World by establishing and leading a civilization from the Stone Age to the Information Age. Wage war, conduct diplomacy, advance your culture, and go head-to-head with history’s greatest leaders as you attempt to build the greatest civilization the world has ever known.

 

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy 逆转裁判123成步堂精选集

 

 

The classic courtroom adventure series that has sold over 6.7 million copies worldwide is finally here. Become Phoenix Wright and experience the thrill of battle as you fight to save your innocent clients in a court of law. Play all 14 episodes, spanning the first three games, in one gorgeous collection. Solve the intriguing mysteries behind each case and witness the final truth for yourself!

 

Sloane and McHale's Mysterious Story 2 斯隆与马克海尔的谜之物语2

 

 

Its time to train your analytical mind. Remember Professor Layton the brainy amateur sleuth? Sloan and McHale is one of his recommendations. While the professor is more puzzle solving-inclined, Sloan and McHale trains your inferencing skills. Using the same warm colours as the Professor Layton games, the stories are told through shadow puppet plays to increase the mysterious atmosphere. Go through the story, pay attention to details, design a line of questioning and shoot them at your suspects. 

 

Professor Layton and the Curious Village 雷顿教授与不可思议的小镇

 

 

This is a classic puzzle game that is incidentally pretty good practice for Chinese. There are basically two types of text in this game: dialogues and puzzle descriptions. Dialogues are pretty easy, the story is simple and it's supposed to be kid-friendly so there isn't much fancy vocabulary. The game centres on Professor Hershel Layton, and his self-styled apprentice, Luke Triton, investigating the fictional village of St. Mystere about an artifact known as the Golden Apple, an heirloom that the late Baron had left as a test to determine who would receive his fortune after his death.

 

Shenzhen I/O 深圳I/O

 

 

Design and code for electrical products, as you experience life as an engineer job in Shenzhen.

 

Akinator

 

 

Akinator is a browser-based guessing game. It asks you to think of any person and then asks you questions until it can make a guess. It's available in Simplified Mandarin only, but MandarinSpot does a good job adding pinyin and annotations, so you can still get the Traditional Characters easily if you want. The vocabulary is pretty simple and repetitive, so it's great for beginners who want easy reading practice. So far I haven't been able to stump it with any famous people from China, Taiwan or The US.

 

 

密室逃脫 - 文字獄 | Prison of Word

 

 

文字獄 is exactly what a text adventure should be. Even if you don't like escape rooms, you should play just to see how Chinese Interactive Fiction is improving on language-based interactivity.

 

Cyberpunk 2077 《赛博朋克2077》

 

 

One the the biggest blockbuster games of recent years actually has an amazing Chinese version. Give your language skills a good workout as you explore this huge futuristic and dystopian world.

[Luxi]

(ETA: I may have posted this in the wrong thread of the 3 or so recent ones on the topic, in which case sorry for the intrusion. Mods or @StChris, feel free to move to a suitable place)

 

I saw this article and thought of the current threads on Chinese games. I haven't tried the game, but I think the links below cover all the necessary information

 

Quote

Since its release on February 19th, Chinese gamers are captured by the first-person atmospheric horror game Devotion (还愿). The popular game has taken social media by storm, triggering discussions all over Weibo; the hashtag #Devotion (#还愿) has received over 120 million views on Weibo at the time of writing.

Read more at: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/weibo-netizens-captured-by-taiwanese-horror-game-devotion/

 

This could almost tempt me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX6ybc7CMxM

 

Where to find?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1006510/Devotion/

 

 

[StChris]

@Luxi People have been talking about that game here. I have no preference of where to post info of new games. Here is fine too. My laptop isn't quite up to running it, I'm afraid. It does look good and seems to be selling like crazy. Now seems to be a really good time to release a Chinese-based game, as the market still isn't oversaturated yet (unlike English language games on steam). Don't forget to write a review if you do decide to buy it.

[Mijin]

On Devotion:

 

Quote

At the time of publishing Devotion is not available to purchase on Steam. The game was pulled by Red Candle Games, which stated this was due to "technical issues that cause unexpected crashes and among other reasons." The game was also caught up in a controversy surrounding art in the game which looked to be based on a meme of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Addressing this, Red Candle Games said "our team would also review our game material once again making sure no other unintended materials was inserted." The game is expected to be made available again in the future.

 

[StChris]

I hope Devotion comes back at some point.

[Mijin]

Got hold of a copy of devotion (don't ask how...let's just say I'll make a donation to red candle games when everything's back up), and played about 2 hours.

 

As a game

Thoroughly enjoying it. It's genuinely scary, but not because of any actual threats, just various ways the game screws with you.

The story and setting is enthralling.
Adventure game fans might find it too simplistic though; most of the mechanics so far have simply been 'Take object A and put it in the place where object A is clearly meant to go'

 

As a learning resource

Although there is speech in the game, it's at fluent speed and doesn't repeat, so it's no better than watching a movie in that regard.
The text OTOH is great though because it is mostly not long passages of text; it's usually just a couple sentences in the context of looking at some object so you can have a stab at guessing some characters and also you get some association between words and their meaning.
And you can view the text as often as you like at your leisure. Since the story is good, it did motivate me to try to understand as much as I could. There are a few words which are taiwan-specific, but so far not too many.

So overall highly-recommended.

Level is HSK5+, simplified or traditional characters.

[StChris]

Thanks for the review. I'll do a thread and link it up with the main index this weekend.

[Mijin]

Update: after playing through a bit I have found several places where there is chinese speech in a loop, so there are in fact some places that could help with chinese listening.

[StChris]

Civ 6 and Total War reviews added.

[StChris]

Review of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy 逆转裁判123成步堂精选集 added.

[StChris]

A recent hugely popular release is Animal Crossing (动物森友会) for the Nintendo Switch, and this latest version is the first to get official Chinese localisation. It's normally described as a 过家家 ("play house") type of game, where you live on this island, make friends, make home improvements etc. It seems to be especially popular with female gamers (see this short video from a Chinese up主 for more info).

 

Note that although it does have voice acting for each language, each one is actually an invented "mumbling" language (think Snoopy and Charlie Brown's teacher) that is only meant to sound vaguely like the target language, so don't worry about not being able to understand. It looks like a relaxing game with plenty of text, so might be the perfect game to pass the lockdown time.

 

I don't have a Switch, so won't be reviewing it myself, but here are some pictures of the game:

 

  

 

   

[StChris]

Another game with a recent Chinese version is Streets of Rage 4. It's a traditional side-scrolling beat'em up, so doesn't have much learning value to be honest, but it's a great game nonetheless! Those who owned a Sega console in the 90s will recognise the series:

 

 

Here's the Steam link, but it's out on all modern platforms:

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/985890/Streets_of_Rage_4/

[feihong]

Added a review of Sloane and McHale's Mysterious Story 2

[StChris]

On 9/7/2020 at 8:03 AM, feihong said:

Added a review of Sloane and McHale's Mysterious Story 2

 

Thanks, I've added it to the review index.

[StChris]

Shenzhen I/O review added.

[Wei-Ming 魏明]

I reviewed a neat beginner game called Akinator here.

[Wei-Ming 魏明]

I reviewed a Chinese parser-based text adventure called 《文字獄》here.

[StChris]

@Wei-Ming 魏明 I was off the forums for a couple of months, but I've added you're reviews to the index now. Thanks for the recommendations. 《文字獄》in particular looks interesting.

[malazann]

There's an Animal Crossing sort of game that is made in China called "My time at Portia". With Chinese audio as well ofc. Looks decent though 

[malazann]

just found "Coffee Talk" which is basically a visual novel where you make coffee for customers and hear them talk about their lives. Only played 30 mins so far but its great reading practice. Since it requires keyboard input to move conversation forward you can go at your own pace. Obviously it also uses language that will help with daily communication and is engaging enough. There are also mods available but no idea what has been made for mandarin

Coffee Talk on Steam (steampowered.com)

 

 Extra Credit Assignment: Maybe team up with someone and create some audio for the game. Do some voice acting!!! The barista can be the same actor and a bunch of others rotate in for the roles of the customers