I’d been keeping an eye on this one for a while but never bought it, and the reason was that whole abstract Chinese crowdfunding mess from before. You open Modian’s front page and more than half of it is various “heart-stopping Chinese visual novel masterpieces” in vigorous development — who knows if you can actually finish yours, maybe you’ve already run off with the money? Then I saw the game had launched, and it even went on discount for the winter sale, so I figured I’d buy it and give it a spin. It’s way longer than I expected, and after finishing it I have to sigh — as expected of a team that went to Japan to study, it’s better than traditional Chinese galgames in basically every respect, and in a lot of places it’s genuinely excellent. At the very least it does things “right.” I’ll break this down into a few points, and since spoiling this game would kill half the fun, I’ll try to keep things spoiler-free:

I have to trot out the old line again, the one I’ve said who knows how many times: I have no idea when I bought this game. Probably some sale. Anyway, I recently noticed it was already sitting in my library, so I figured I’d give it a spin. Saying this every time makes me feel like I’m cosplaying QZXX, but it really is the truth. I probably just saw an interesting title and screenshots that looked decent enough, and bought it. That game is Otaku’s Adventure (otaku的人间冒险).

I found out about Huang Xia because he was bumming around in Zhangzhuang, Zhengzhou — and our work unit was about to move there too. So I stumbled onto him by accident. Then COVID hit, our unit’s plan fell through, and Huang Xia started walking across the country. Some people call Huang Xia an idiot, a lazy bum, a piece of shit. I can’t confirm any of that. What I can confirm is that he’s not a dumb one. His videos are formulaic as hell, but there’s this weird absurdist artistry to them — the camera work, the content, the daily situation reports, all of it has a real sense of image. Huang Xia knows exactly what the audience wants, he films the stuff everyone loves to watch, and then when people start flaming him he plays the victim. And it’s not just him — all his “good homies” do the same. Zhang Gongmao and that whole crowd, same deal. Lots of people say today’s youth are all about deconstruction, deconstruction. Nah. Huang Xia is the real postmodernist artist. Especially since everyone used to dunk on Huang Xia for being a loser every single day — until Liangzi of the Big Stomach Bag fame burst onto the scene, and suddenly everyone thought Huang Xia was actually not so bad.

Around May last year I was thinking about replacing the laptop I’d been using for over three years. Unfortunately, the only new stuff out at the time was either a Ryzen 7840HS with mediocre Linux support, or the new Intel Meteor Lake ThinkPads. Even though going from an 11th-gen chip to Meteor Lake would have been a big jump, Meteor Lake barely improved over the previous generation — it even regressed in places — so I decided to wait it out. While waiting, I stumbled onto this “Chinese-made laptop,” the Cool-Pi CM5 Laptop. ARM architecture, RK3588, native Linux support, 32GB of RAM, hard drive expansion, and interest-free installments on the Tmall store. I thought about it and figured I’d play with it for a bit. Ended up buying one.

Getting older, I still like looking at the pretty and the hot stuff for the eye candy, but I also like messing around with e-waste. The regular stuff just doesn’t excite me anymore. And the hottest e-waste lately is all the Linux-based “xinchuang” (信创) gear. “Xinchuang” is basically the mainland’s push for domestic everything—replacing the “Western” and “open source” stuff with fully Chinese products so nobody can strangle you with supply chain sanctions. Whether that’s realistic, whether it’s feasible, how far along it actually is—let’s set all that aside. At the very least, the xinchuang scene does enough work with and on top of Linux to satisfy a Linux guy’s urge to tinker with junk. I’d wanted a Loongson laptop for a while, but that batch of RMS-endorsed 198-yuan group-buy machines is now stupidly expensive, and the specs and pricing are just absurd. Newer Loongson laptops are also pricey, out of my league, so I just watched from the sidelines. Then a kind soul reached out a hand. With help from a certain big shot, I somehow got my hands on a “xinchuang laptop.” Carrying that person’s earnest warnings, I started my own xinchuang journey.

Recently I played a game called Qingyu, and its theme turned out to be the rare Dota 2 esports backdrop. At first I figured it was a shitpost, but after actually playing it, I was kind of surprised. First off, the author clearly plays Dota — it’s packed with memes only old-school 刀斯林 would get. Shame the game came out too early; if it were made now there’d be way more material — 组织语言, 闹麻了, 可以啊, 不Ban猛犸, 唯有责任, 要不你来, lowlowlowlowlow, 香槟, the greatest runner-up…

I don’t know when I bought a Chinese-made galgame (for lack of a better word) called Migratory Bird on Steam. I strongly suspect I meant to buy Qingxiang and misclicked, but whatever — it’s bought, no refunds, might as well take a look. From top to bottom, the production values on this thing are relatively “serious.” The whole work gives off this dead-earnest vibe. That’s not a dig, and it’s not a joke — I mean it in a mostly positive way. The story’s theme is the one we always see when former high schoolers look back on the Gaokao years: the Gaokao sucks, but youth is forever. It follows an utterly unremarkable male student who loses his sense of direction, meets the top-of-the-class heroine, finds a reason to try, grinds through high school, watches his grades climb, and promises her they’ll get into the same school. He fails the first Gaokao, but resolves to repeat the year for her sake and his own future — and it works out.

Kamigami no Kuni no Mahoutsukai (神の国の魔法使い) Another China-Japan co-produced visual novel, another Nekoneko Soft, another Kataoka Tomo. Nothing about its existence surprised me. Honestly, I half-wondered if Kataoka Tomo and his company had run out of ways to survive in Japan and now had to lean on Chinese money to keep making games. The premise didn’t grab me at all — a Chinese brother and sister go sightseeing in Japan, get swept up in some incident or other. At one point I was convinced this was basically Toshimaen Winter Scenery Mark II. And the weirdest part: the first release wasn’t even the full game. The story got pushed out in episodes. I still can’t understand that decision, and I think it’s one of the reasons the game flopped. Anyway, after half a year of stop-and-start updates the story was finally complete, and reading it straight through, it’s not as low as I expected. Plenty of it is actually pretty creative, and it overturned my fixed impression of Kataoka Tomo as a scenario writer who likes to whine for no reason.

I actually downloaded this game a long time ago, and I honestly don’t remember why. I just saw someone upload it on Nyan. I had no idea who made it, where it came from, or when it released. Then I downloaded it and, like most of the visual novels gathering dust on my hard drive, never touched it again. Not out of burnout—just a total lack of interest. I’d say I’ve played quite a few so-called “Chinese text adventure” games, and most of them left me disappointed. It’s like China’s music industry: full of copycats with nothing of their own. What made me finally play this one was when the game’s producer posted a “blind date / fishing expedition” on the “Save the Older Otaku” account. He pulled off a piece of performance art in the most absurd way possible, and I instantly thought: this guy’s got ideas. Fine, he’s legit! So I decided to give his game a shot.

As everyone knows, the Japanese galgame industry is on its deathbed lately — August didn’t even have a single big release worth playing — so out of boredom I had to go find something else to play. That’s when I happened to see someone on a blog hyping up a galgame called Hallucination (幻觉). The funny part: the studio behind it, Ash Heaven (灰烬天国), had a previous game called Old Watch (旧手表) that was pulling in a lot of positive reviews on Steam. Most Chinese-made galgames on Steam have high ratings anyway, except the ones that shitpost themselves to death. Considering Old Watch was especially praised for its story, and considering I literally had nothing better to do, I bought the Old Watch + Hallucination bundle and started playing. Old Watch first, naturally. The playthrough wasn’t especially long, wasn’t especially short. Honestly, Old Watch far exceeded my expectations. Compared to the games I ran into years ago where the “anime-nerd concentration was high enough to make me vomit,” Old Watch actually has a shadow of what a real “Chinese-made galgame” could be, and its strengths and weaknesses are both very obvious. So I figured I’d write something about this game and its sequel, plus my own views on the endless stream of “Chinese-made galgames” coming out these days. No plot summary this time, and no savage roasting either (I heard bashing Chinese galgames gets you flamed?). Just an essay, writing wherever my thoughts go.