2024’s Best-Selling Chinese Premium Games and Their Lore
Here's the full chart of the Best Selling Chinese Premium Games of 2024:
Every year, the volunteer team from 国游销量吧 (Chinese Premium Games Sales Tieba) gathers stats and curates a chart to showcase the best-performing games of the year. They've again kindly given me permission to translate it into English. Read the original full charts incl. additional commentary from the team here.
The top 1 best-selling game is a surprise to no one, but its magnitude overshadows almost every other premium game coming from China in 2024, even more so in the Western press. This is why I feel the obligation to break down the plot twists and jumpscares (complimentary) within this chart:
The Hungry Lamb: A visual novel about tragic stories during a 17th-century (Ming Dynasty) famine. But it’s also... anime. The combination of a heavy historical theme and a visual novel with no traditional "gameplay" selling nearly 1M copies—mostly in a single country—could be described as unfathomable almost anywhere else.
Soulmask: Until recently, most Chinese players, myself included, didn’t realize this game was made by a Chinese studio. Beyond that, it’s also a great achievement for a debut game.
Murders on the Yangtze River: A murder mystery narrative game set in the early 20th century, one of the most turbulent periods in modern Chinese history. Many players are moved by the care with which the game addresses the historical, political, and cultural themes of that war-torn era.
Chinese Online Game: A meme game parodying all the classic traps that pre-gacha-era Chinese MMORPGs used to manipulate players into spending money. The fact that this game sold over half a million copies in one country was definitely not on my 2024 bingo card. It should be considered textbook material for anyone even remotely interested in video game history.
Feed the Cups: A co-op bubble tea shop management simulator. The game has a lot of drama (which I won't delve into here), but as a game that is almost unapologetically janky, it also has an inexplicable addictiveness that most polished Overcooked-style games lack. Perhaps it's the brutal realism, drawn from the developers’ real-life bubble tea shop management experiences, that creates a tension against the "cute and cozy" image of the drink.
Knowledge, or know Lady: I could write an entire blog series about Chinese FMV dating sims, a cultural phenomenon that started with Love Is All Around (2023), but today is not the day.
Lost Castle 2: Lost Castle (2016) was one of China's first-gen indie hits in the Steam era, selling millions of copies across PC and consoles, with tens of millions of downloads on mobile. Despite being one of the most iconic and influential indie games in China, Lost Castle—like many games from this part of the world—isn't as well known globally.
Legend of Mortal: Every year, a Wuxia game comes out and immediately gets hated on for the most petty and avoidable reasons. In 2024, that game is Legend of Mortal. While I didn't follow all the tea, it seems that the game has improved significantly after several updates and went somewhat viral in Korea for mysterious reasons. Also, this is how the main character looks.
- Outpost: Infinity Siege: A sci-fi mid/hardcore tower defense game with high production value and a Western visual style. While it launched with a lot of hype, it underperformed due to issues at launch.
For the top 11-20 games on the chart, I'll be a bit more selective:
Cluckmech Oasis: a roguelike tower defense made by a studio from a student background. While the game has its rough edges, it adds a lot of action and urgency to the classic tower defense formula, keeping me on the edge of my seat the entire time.
DICEOMANCER: I rarely describe a rogue-like deckbuilding battler as endearing, but this is how the game felt to me. In addition to the cute hand-drawn visuals & Gen Z cultural references, it's best known for having a "cheat" option as part of the game's main features, allowing players to manipulate any number present on the UI, which, to say the least, adds a lot of strategic depth and sense of impact to the gameplay. If I could only recommend one game from these 20, this is the one.
Cat God Ranch: Inspired by the core mechanics of Luck Be a Landlord, this game takes the concept to the next level. Here, you manage a ranch filled with animals—including fantasy creatures—with the goal of optimizing their position to produce enough tribute for the Cat God you worship. The backstory might sound a bit all over the place, but somehow, it just makes sense.