“Shonen Journey to the West 2” short video is a big hit, but the game balance is a huge failure – look for the next hit! 3 notable game apps that have not yet arrived in Japan[May 5, 2024]

The fishing game “Happy Fishing Master'', which I introduced last month, shows no sign of slowing down.

It continues to dominate the rankings on various platforms, and seems to have become a huge hit, comparable to what is called a “Watermelon Game'' in Japan.

Both have gained popularity on SNS and are something of a dark horse in the game market, but since “Kiraku Diaoyu Master'' is distributed only in China, it is difficult to see how successful it is. Things remain unclear unless you check your home country's SNS. Moreover, unlike Japan, the country has its own uniquely popular SNS, so it feels like trends are isolated from other countries.

It's quite rare for an app to dominate the top spot this far, so I'm really curious about what will happen next. Well, this week, unlike last week, we have picked three titles that have not yet been released in Japan.

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

◆“Fate Sacred Covenant”
A title whose pre-registration numbers are rapidly increasing on TapTap is “Fate Seiki”.

According to the official Weibo post, this work was nominated as a “highly anticipated title'' at a developer conference held by Chinese smartphone manufacturer vivo and OPPO.

For some reason, this game has been highly anticipated by two smartphone manufacturers, and ever since the beta test was held on March 20th, we have been gradually gathering players to pre-register.

There are no official PVs such as gameplay footage, but when I looked it up on bilibili, it is an idle RPG that depicts beautiful girl characters with 3D graphics. Idle RPG is one of the popular casual game genres that continues to be played all over the world, and its popularity seems to be strong in China as well.

The story in the work is comically expressed using “Webtoon”, which is known for vertically read manga. The game was generally well received by players who played the beta test, with visual aspects such as the “cuteness of the characters” and “3D modeling” being praised.

I look forward to further updates on this.

◆”Shonen Journey to the West 2″
“Shonen Journey to the West 2”, which was distributed by YOOZOO Games on April 30th, has achieved high rankings on each platform. As the “2” in the title indicates, this work is a sequel to the previous work “Shonen Journey to the West”.

“Journey to the West” is one of the Chinese classics that is popular in Japan, but it is also often used as the subject of games in its home country. In August of this year, the full-fledged beautiful action game “Journey to the West'', “Black Myth: Goku,'' will be released for PC and consoles.

Such “Shonen Journey to the West 2” has been tenaciously struggling from the beginning even though many existing popular works such as “Ouja Glory”, “Hehei Seiyo (formerly PUBG Mobile)” and “Minecraft” continue to maintain high rankings. This is a rare situation.

So, when I checked the number of video views on bilibili's official account, I found that only the live-action PV had a strangely higher number of views than the game PV.

These live-action PVs feature popular Japanese actors Luo Jiaying and Che Bo Luo, and it is believed that these PVs were the main factor in expanding the game's popularity. The one that received a particularly strong response this time was a short video of this work posted by Che Bao Luo to his own account on the Chinese version of TikTok “douyin.”

At the time of writing, the short video has become a huge buzz with 13.4 million likes and 805,000 comments. The video itself was posted around summer last year, but if the video became this popular before the game was released, it can be considered a huge success as a promotion. Personally, I feel like I can see why people want to push popular actors and influencers so hard when a Chinese game comes to Japan.

However, in Japan, even if a celebrity becomes an advertising figure, it doesn't really lead to a game becoming a hit.

Furthermore, compared to the number of downloads, the reputation of the game itself is mixed. This work is a casual-oriented RPG title as introduced in the previous section, but from the first day the server opened, there was an extreme difference in strength between the retired players who paid a large amount of money for the game and the regular players. This poor game balance has led to major complaints from users.

The game's art visuals and character designs have been well-received, but I can't help but feel that motivation will be dampened if the game has been so far behind from the first day of service that it has been impossible to catch up with the top players just because of the payment. There is no such thing as nothing. Despite the success of the promotion, the results were extremely disappointing.

◆“Mountain and River Travel Exploration – Murders on the Yangtze River”
The smartphone version of the indie adventure “Murders on the Yangtze River'', which was released on Steam on January 31, 2024 and has received “overwhelmingly positive reviews'', has been released and is currently gaining popularity. There is no Japanese language support at this time, English subtitles are supported.

The smartphone version was released on April 28th. However, three days before this, downloadable content equivalent to an expansion pack had been distributed, so there was some movement in consolidating it into a short span of time.

The game is set in China in the early 20th century, and is a mystery-based puzzle-solving adventure in which players solve various incidents that occur in towns along the Yangtze River.

It is not clear whether this game is influenced by Capcom's “Gyakuten Saiban'', but according to the introduction on Steam, “If you are a fan of “Gyakuten Saiban'', you should check out “Murders on the Yangtze River''. You can't miss it,” and a similar scene has also been posted.

The tasteful graphics and the view of the world of early 20th century China, which we rarely get to see, are very interesting. Now that this game is starting to be well-received by Western players, I would love for Akatsuki to support the Japanese version as well. Does this feel like a hit movie?