@Iw4
Monster Circus | wen
Last month, Summerhouse, an indie game about building houses, was officially released on Steam, and the game has actually been online for a while, but not many people have paid attention to it before. At present, the game has more than 1,000 reviews on Steam, with a positive rating of 95%, which is a good result among similar games.
Interestingly, the most popular part of this game, developed by a German solo producer, is Chinese social media. At the end of March, the producer said that the game sold 120,000 copies in two weeks, and about 37% of the sales were contributed by Chinese players, making it the largest group of buyers.
Producer's X
And I suspect that the proportion may be even higher now, because the popularity of the game in China is significantly higher than overseas, and it continues to spread.
Now, if you go to Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Douyin, you can find a lot of "Summerhouse" related posts with thousands of likes, which are especially popular in Xiaohongshu. And when I went to YouTube and Tik Tok, the game was not very popular, and there were very few tens of thousands of plays.
Although this game has made a Chinese version of a few words, I don't think it should have been publicized in China. Maybe the style of this game happens to poke Chinese players in particular.
The gameplay in Summerhouse is deceptively simple: you just have to easily build a house that matches your aesthetic on a side-scrolling map. The game has four map environments, and you can build your house on the outskirts of the city, or in a forest, lakeside, or desert.
The process is as simple as choosing different styles of house modules and putting them all together. The game offers a variety of material styles, including windows alone, that allow you to build houses that look all the way from the old and shabby to the hobbit treehouse from The Lord of the Rings.
@Roscata
But don't look at this game as simple as it seems, in fact, the depth of construction should not be underestimated. Because first of all, it is built in depth, and the map seems to be a 2D horizontal map, but in fact there is an axis from near to far, and various modules can be placed in different positions near and far. So, we were able to build patios and balconies.
Secondly, the various building blocks can not only be put together, but also placed on top of each other. Therefore, small windows of one style can be stacked together to form a large window, and materials of different styles can also be superimposed. Because of this overlapping feature, the game can piece together tons of things that aren't houses, from cable cars, to Leshan Giant Buddha and Godzilla.
@虫鹅鹅鹅
@CrownStar
Then, once you've built it, you can choose from three more weather modes: Sunny, Rainy and Night, to show off your results in different styles.
The gameplay is very Buddha-natured, with only one goal: to meditate and admire the house you have built. In a very zen atmosphere, you can slow down the pace and get the leisurely feeling of being transported to a bright and different world.
@Illness the Ghost
And don't look at the game's material splicing has a high degree of freedom.,It seems to be very casual.,In fact, it feels very good when it's built.。 These building materials are very textured, and there is obvious feedback when they are spliced together, and some things even have a wonderful "sense of impact" after they are put down, which makes the whole process extremely comfortable.
Due to the popularity of the game in China, it has led to the emergence of a bunch of bigwigs here, which has made the art style completely different from that of overseas players. Nowadays, Chinese players are not just building a simple house, but a whole community, with a variety of styles.
Sometimes it's not even a house at all, but a train station and a landscape that is slightly beyond the original style of the game.
@Borek
In addition, many people use it to restore classic houses in some film and television works. Since the game's building materials can create many strange shapes, some people use it to recreate Howl's moving castle, and because the game's bright colors and vibrant colors, some people think of using it to recreate the unique color style of director Wes Anderson in The Grand Budapest Hotel......
Chinese gamers have discovered the huge potential of a good indie game, and judging from the price of 20 yuan for the game, it is really not a loss. If you are interested, you can search for the creative community of this game in China, and you will find many works of big guys, which are even more magical than the examples I showed today.
As for why "Summerhouse" is more popular in China than in other countries, we can only guess. Perhaps because people find it particularly healing with its light texture and bright colors, and for us who are hellish in buying a house, building the house of our dreams is particularly attractive, and those gentle, quiet and lively places to live are especially utopian to us.
@ᶻ 𝗓 𐰁
Therefore, the Polish Independent Games Association's "Development Guide for Games for the Chinese Market" suggests that independent game developers around the world pay attention to the Chinese market, which is really forward-looking the more you look at it.
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