A mysterious fishing game has taken China by storm, beating out popular titles such as Persona 5X and Honor of Kings – Find the next hit! 3 notable game apps that have not yet arrived in Japan[April 21, 2024]

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of cases in which the target age range for games has been raised in China and South Korea. For example, “Stellar Blade”, which Sony Interactive Entertainment is scheduled to release on April 26th, has been judged as “not suitable for use by young people” in South Korea.

Recently, it has become clear from a post on the official South Korean community that the smartphone app “Brown Dust 2” will also be prohibited from being used by young people. Additionally, “Snowbreak,” which is currently being distributed on Steam/Smartphone, is restricted to users under the age of 18 in China through real name authentication.

Will these efforts related to age restrictions continue to accelerate? On the other hand, I feel like Japanese games are challenging themselves to a chicken race where they keep pushing to the limit. For now, let’s introduce three titles to watch this week.

*In this article, parts that should be written in simplified/traditional characters may be replaced with variant characters due to system reasons.

◆“Happy Fishing Master”
Currently in China, a new fishing simulation for smartphones called “Happy Fishing Master”, released at the end of March, is very popular.

After the game was released, it rose to the top of the rankings on the App Store and TapTap, and the ever-popular “Osha Glory” and “Persona 5: The Phantom It has continued to maintain its No. 1 ranking from other large-scale RPGs such as Monoka Yashin.

However, as of the time of writing, there is a pre-download period for “Monoka Yashin” before the official service starts, so it is quite possible that this ranking will change after the official service starts.

However, “Ki Le Diaoyu Master” has recorded an astonishing 4.91 million downloads on TapTap alone, which at this point has already exceeded the number of pre-registrations for “Mono Hua Yaxin” on all platforms combined. .

Of course, the number of pre-registrations and the actual number of downloads may not necessarily be the same. However, a title that has been in beta testing for a long time, raised the expectations of many users, and steadily increased the number of pre-registrations, has suddenly become a hot topic as a mysterious fishing game. There is something very sad about what happened.

According to a survey by the Chinese media outlet “Yujiu Zhuan”, approximately 50 million people are watching videos related to the current work “Douyin” on the Chinese version of Tiktok “Douyin”. Since streamers from their home countries are all streaming, it is likely that general users, not gamers, are contributing to this number of downloads. It has become a dark horse game.

◆“Light of the Stars”
In South Korea, the new strategy RPG “Light of the Stars” was released on April 18th. The title feels somewhat Japanese-like, with the visual illustrations and the atmosphere of the beautiful girl characters, but in fact, the Japanese version of the theme song and Japanese audio have already been recorded.

The voices that can be heard in the character introduction on the official website, and the Japanese narration in the PV for the home country, seem to be expected to be expanded to Japan in the future.

You can listen to both the Japanese version of the theme song and the English version of the theme song on official YouTube. However, the quality of the animation shown in the PV cannot be said to be high. We watch anime regularly and talk about the animation and direction, so we have become discerning, so do we have high standards? The theme song and characters are good, but something about the animation itself feels off.

Immediately after its release, the game received decent reviews, with the character visuals being highly praised. It will likely take some time before a more concrete evaluation is finalized.

◆『ZERO9』
Since its release in South Korea in mid-March, the side-scrolling action RPG “ZERO9” has been gaining popularity and has been at the top of the rankings. Although some time has passed since its official release, it has achieved high scores on both the App Store and Google Play.

The content of the reviews is also very specific and has many positive opinions. In addition, the score ratio is high overall, and there is no extreme bias where only low and high ratings are noticeable.

The game is being developed by Ujoy Games. The company is also known for inheriting the Japanese publishing rights for the RPG “Ash Echoes – Shiraiku Corridor”, which is currently being distributed in China, on February 14th of this year.

Ujoy Games has not released any hit works that have been widely talked about so far, but if the upcoming “Ash Echoes – Shiraiku Corridor” does well in the Japanese market, the current work “ZERO9” will be released in Japan. There may be hope for this as well.