I got the tizzy so I can’t tell if this is a joke or not 🙃

Didn’t the meme originate on the Chinese internet? I assumed that in its original Chinese context the joke was just how similar the photo looks to the drawing

God I remember that fucking bullshit about the Chinese photographer/artist who made a piece dramatizing the crimes of Australia in Afghanistan.

The Australian flag draped over the Afghan flag shaped as a puzzle piece on the floor.

And the narrative the Australian media went with was “this is fake news, the image is fake.” Uh, yeah? That’s how art works, it’s not supposed to fool. Quit fucking distracting from the discussion about the crimes of Australia

Well first of all there is the well known Amazing Cultivation Simulator. If Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress types of games are what you like then this one is like that but incorporates eastern mysticism in ways that will break the fragile western mind. It is on Steam.

My Time at Portia is a Stardew Valley type game on basically every platform. Very well received. Never played it.

Then there are the Gacha Games by MiHoYo: Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and most newly Zenless Zone Zero. I don’t recommend any of these except Honkai Star Rail but it is heavy on the story side much of which is unskippable. Also it is a free game with gachapon - a paid gambling system. But otherwise it is well designed and the story is kinda cool and the setting is fun. MiHoYo has really talented artists and animators so everything is very well polished. Solid voice acting as well as a great sound track.

If you want to try an openworld gacha game then Wuthering Waves is the hot shit at the moment. Same as above, free but with a gambling system for characters and weapons (I’ve not paid a dime, personally). The story is trash but entirely skippable but the combat is cool. Has parrying and dodging and so on. If you’ve never tried one of these games this is the one to give a go at. I recommend against the English voices, they suck. I’m personally using Mandarin (I want the VA who narrates some of the scenes to narrate my life his voice is dope) but I heard the Japanese voices are good, too.

Once Human literally just released. It is an open world survival with a storyline about eldritch horrors invading earth. The concept is heavily inspired by the movie and book Annihilation. My friend has dragged me into it. Not usually my sort of game but it’s decent. Kind of buggy at the moment. Some people have big performance issues.

Naraka Bladepoint is a free Battle Royale where you sword fight and shit. I’ve played a bit and it is pretty fun. Basically little to no story. Do a tutorial the jump into a match and start doing Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon shit on people. Very fast action. A few of my friends are into this one and it’s pretty big and on all consoles. Has lootboxes and cosmetics and a character unlock thing system that can be sped up with cash. Didn’t seem too pay-2-win to me but I never played it enough to really know if that was the case.

I’ve also played Conqueror’s Blade for years. It’s Mount and Blade online, more or less. I, uh, can’t really recommend this one. It’s a case of great idea, mostly well executed, but leans into pay-2-win. You can still have a lot of fun as a free player but you will never be able to compete with whoever has the newest awesome released units with full doctrines as a totally free player. For a long time it was being mismanaged in the west but recently it changed publisher hands and performance issues have been solved.

Those are the ones I know of and have played that are available in the west easily and are directly developed by Chinese studios. There are a ton of Western game companies who have Chinese divisions they utilize as well as a load of games published by Chinese publishers and platforms in the west but are actually developed in Japan and Korea. Goddess of Victory Nikke is one example, which I actually think is a solid mobile game if you aren’t put off by objectifying women through fat-assed anime girls.