Dongbei Zhi Xia (东北之夏) Review

I’m not from the Northeast, but I know plenty of Northeasterners.

Back when World of Warcraft was huge, Zones 2 and 6 were the China Unicom servers, and they were basically northerners’ territory. And among northerners, Northeasterners made up a wildly high proportion of the player base.

It was pretty much: join any random raid, hop on voice chat, and there’s a good chance the raid leader is speaking with a Northeastern accent. Combined with the old sitcom Northeast Family (东北一家人) being a hit, I’ve picked up the dialect by osmosis.

The Northeastern dialect is a branch of Northern Mandarin, with a lot of Beijing influence in the pronunciation. Anyone who understands Standard Mandarin can follow it without much trouble, and it carries this weird mix of “comic” and “gangster” energy. A lot of people assume Northeastern guys are all hard cases, but honestly the Northeastern girls are worse. Fun fact: the only domestic violence shelter in all of China that protects men is in Shenyang, Northeast China. Meaning out there, the girls will chase the big Northeastern lads around and beat the crap out of them.

I’ve never watched Northeast Past (东北往事), and I don’t know Daoge or Huge. I just know a few of the memes. Stuff like “Xiaoliang, do a bit for him,” “you won’t get any good juice from me,” “this one’s even more heavyweight,” “I dunno,” “bite a lighter,” that kind of thing. But this game called Northeast Summer (东北之夏) caught my attention because of the flood of positive reviews, and when I found out it was free, I downloaded it without hesitation.

Northeast Summer is basically those “Daoge” and “Huge” characters turned into cute girls and made into something that looks like a visual novel. I say “looks like” because there’s no real romance to speak of.

The game has exactly one achievement, and it’s hidden. I still haven’t figured out how to unlock it. The system design is actually pretty creative: beyond the usual visual novel setup, they even added a “Pinyin” option under languages, and when you pick it you get actual Hanyu Pinyin. Gotta hand it to the devs for the shitposting.

The game claims to have “official authorization” from Daoge, but look closely and it turns out the dev just went into Daoge’s livestream and asked if he could make a game, Daoge said yes on the spot, and that was the “authorization.”

Northeast Summer got a lot of praise online shortly after release, especially from some of the bigger game outlets, which ran feature pieces calling it “a nostalgic work full of old Northeastern elements,” praising the author’s dedication. The backgrounds and scenes are packed with Shenyang references that easily trigger memories for Shenyang natives.

But honestly, I’m not from Shenyang and I don’t get any of those references. The story isn’t anything special either. If anything, the whole Northeast Past meme series is pretty mid on its own. The low-effort originals only got big because talented fan creators made them funny; it’s not like Daoge and Huge were giving masterful performances.

The dialogue and plot are painfully clichéd too. Long stretches are just people filling silence for the sake of filling silence, and the script is mediocre. Flat as water, puts you to sleep — that’s the game’s defining feature. I can see why so many people praise it: the gimmick is solid, it’s free, and most of those people probably installed it, booted it once, poked around a bit, and quit.

It’s free, so if they managed to make it at all, may as well leave a positive review.

I don’t really have a problem with the game. Like I said, it’s free, made out of love, and as a fan work it basically meets the bar. But one piece of its marketing really annoys me: “Northeastern dialect voice acting.”

I’ve heard the Northeastern dialect. I talk to Northeasterners all the time. I can even speak it myself…

Can the “Northeastern dialect” in this game really be called that? It feels more like “Standard Mandarin with a hint of Northeast.” I honestly doubt the voice actors are even from the Northeast. That drawn-out, gruff, stubbly flavor the dialect naturally carries (not an insult) just doesn’t come through in this game at all, and that accent is the most direct impression the whole country has of Northeasterners.

If Northeast Summer has one big flaw, it’s that the concentration of “Northeastern dialect” is way too low. I don’t know if the voice acting was toned down so players wouldn’t fail to understand it, but if that’s the reason, it really wasn’t necessary. If you’re curious, go look up Ma Fanshu or Wang Bingbing speaking Northeastern dialect. I think they cut looser than this game’s voice cast.

This is both good news and bad news. The bad part: the game loses some of its flavor by missing the core Northeastern dialect. The good part: that flavor wouldn’t be hard to restore — just record a new voice track and you’re done.