A writer has arrived in the Chinese entertainment industry.

On November 14, 2013, many small and medium-sized game bloggers on YouTube received an email:

"Hey, so-and-so."

I'm a big fan of your channel, and I'm also an independent producer from China...

...I just finished a small project called "Vampire Survivor".

To put it bluntly, the game's graphics look like something from 1985, and you can play it with just one hand (just press WASD or the left stick to move, there's no attack button!). But believe me, after playing for just 5 minutes, you'll be surrounded by 3,000 monsters and feel like a god of war.

......

We've included the Steam activation code below (we're currently aiming for Steam Greenlight, and your support means a lot to us.)

"Activation Code"

If you're too busy to play, that's perfectly fine. But if you do try it, please let me know—I'd love to share your video on our Twitter and Greelight pages.

Stay cool.

"Eggplant\Luo Zhou Studio"

An independent developer from China.

In 2013, Western game bloggers almost never received emails from independent developers in China. The domestic single-player game environment was so rudimentary that even companies of a certain size struggled to survive, let alone independent developers.

Therefore, Zhang Heli emphasized this point in the email, giving them a feeling of "Wow, the mysterious power of Eastern indie games."

The email also included a GIF of a screen full of exploding monsters.

...

Ryan, a gaming blogger with 50,000 subscribers, saw the email while having coffee in the morning and initially thought it was a prank.

To be honest, this was truly the first time he had ever witnessed "a mysterious power from the East."

"One hand, no attack button needed?" Ryan raised an eyebrow, intrigued by the strange description. He casually copied the activation code and started downloading it on Steam.

Ryan's case is not uncommon. Both the "mysterious Eastern power" and the game description are quite bizarre in the current single-player game community.

Being quirky means being cool.

Moreover, Vampire Survivors is less a game and more like a gambling machine disguised as one. It completely abandons tedious controls and gameplay depth, using the quality of feedback to entice players to keep playing, which is what is known as addiction.

For most indie games, it usually takes half a month or even longer to accumulate 1000 to 5000 votes on Greenlight.

However, just three days after entering the "Greenlight" voting, "Vampire" broke through the 10000 mark with unstoppable momentum!

This all stemmed from a social media frenzy sparked by the contrast.

After playing for half an hour, Ryan completely overturned his original video plan and recorded a video titled "This Chinese game with only movement keys has me completely addicted."

In the video, he shouts "Oh my god" as he watches tens of thousands of monsters on the screen disappear in an instant.

Meanwhile, small and medium-sized bloggers like him posted videos. The game "Vampire Survivor" quickly went viral on YouTube, with the comment section flooded with comments like "extremely addictive" and "who is that Chinese developer?"

On November 20th, Yao Men and others gathered in the office, looking at the email on the computer screen, feeling it was all too real.

The email was simple; Valve had sent them the Greenlight voting data and a specialist to discuss the game's release.

"One hundred thousand votes?" Yao Men asked in disbelief. "How could there be one hundred thousand votes!"

Yes, in less than a week, "The Vampire" has already garnered 100,000 votes.

This is already the data for a top-selling product.

"It's because of this video!" Zhang Heli walked in, carrying a laptop, his face full of excitement.

Everyone looked at the computer screen, where a YouTuber named PewDiePie was displayed.

The difference is that he has over a million fans.

In the video, he screams into the microphone: "OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!! Did you guys see that?! What—what?! The screen is full of numbers! I can't see my character anymore! Hahahaha!"

"Come on! You pixelated jerks! More! I don't even need to move... Who said this image was simplistic? This is art! This is damn modern art!"

The otaku from Yusei suppressed their excitement and exchanged incredulous glances.

"How much can our game sell for?" Yao asked cautiously.

Zhang Heli's tone was as if he had memorized a script beforehand: "The best-selling game on Steam this year is 'Harvest Day 2,' which has sold around two million copies so far. But the standard edition sells for $29.99, and the collector's edition sells for $49.99. How much have we sold? $3.99."

As he spoke, he began to gesture involuntarily, "Judging from the current situation, I think our game can sell at least two million copies a year, and five million is not impossible."

"That means..." Yao Men did a rough calculation, then his eyes suddenly lit up, "...at least four million US dollars!"

By the way, the best-selling Chinese-made game overseas this year is a game called "Blood Rain: Mirage".

Steam sales are around 40 copies.

You may not be familiar with this game, because it was later renamed.

It's called "Shadow Blade: Mirage".

Although domestically produced single-player games face problems such as a poor environment, rampant piracy, and stigmatization, there has always been a group of people who have been quietly persisting.

......

Meanwhile, Su Liu also persevered quietly on set.

Since he stopped worrying about the "makeshift team" issue, he suddenly felt a sense of boundless freedom.

When he observed the production with a detached, theatrical attitude, he discovered that this unconventional crew possessed a wild beauty that was orderly amidst chaos.

The various departments within the production crew perfectly exemplified what it means to "go their own way and hurt each other."

The lighting team was like a group of self-taught electricians. The lighting director was a photographer who only had a superficial understanding of lighting equipment and also had to operate the camera for the director of photography.

So, when filming the nighttime birthday party scene, Su Liu asked him to simulate the dim lighting effect of the table lamps in the villa, while ensuring the amount of light entering the frame.

He set up the light array like a large-scale fishing site, almost blinding Su Liu who was watching the monitor.

Just as he was cursing, the assistants of one of the actors were distributing cups of hot coffee to the crew members. They were tripped by the messy cables on the ground and spilled the coffee all over the crew's power banks.

The power bank, which was operating at full power, suddenly started emitting blue smoke and looked like it was going to die.

Unexpectedly, the unstable power due to the short circuit actually stabilized the light within a suitable range.

The monitor screen showed a completely new image.

After experiencing so much, Su Liu still couldn't help but want to applaud and cheer.

Who said this film crew is chaotic? This is fucking artistic!