How "Chaos Zero Nightmare" Achieved Unusual Success in the Chinese Market 2026-08-24

Smilegate's dark fantasy roguelike RPG Chaos Zero Nightmare has been warmly received in the Chinese market since its launch there in late May. Partnering with Tencent (腾讯) for its official China service, the game achieved a meaningful milestone by reaching No. 8 on the Apple App Store revenue charts in less than a month after launch.

How is Chaos Zero Nightmare achieving such unusual success in China, a market where subculture games from other countries rarely break through? Newsroom conducted a written interview with Sophie Teng (滕菲), the local promotion manager for the game at Tencent's IGE (Interactive Entertainment Group) business division. Here's her perspective on what's driving the game's popularity and what Chinese players are responding to most.

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How have local users reacted since the China launch in late May?

When Chaos Zero Nightmare was first revealed in China, the local user response exceeded expectations. As China-server content was unveiled and communication with users progressed in stages, community discussion around the game grew increasingly active, pushing user anticipation to its peak. An event featuring the renowned Go player Ke Jie (柯洁) generated a strong response, and user trust in the China server's operations has continued to rise.

Compared to reactions in Korea and globally, what stands out as distinctly different about Chinese users' responses?

Competition among developers in China's subculture game market is fierce. Because of this, Chinese users tend to pay closer attention to content completeness and the pace of version updates compared to Korean and global users. China-server players habitually compare Chaos Zero Nightmare's operations to other games, and they respond more sensitively than global-server users when it comes to operational details like benefit distribution, communication with users, and bug handling.

Some analysis suggests the June update introducing the new character "Heidemari" drove the revenue ranking increase. What was the actual user reaction to this character?

The reaction to Heidemari was very positive. Users praised the flexibility she offers in party composition, along with her character illustration and model quality. Following her release, fan-made content and strategy guides centered on the character poured out in large volumes and spread quickly across platforms. Among the top 20 trending posts, strategy videos and fan-created content made up the majority, confirming her strong popularity and impact within the user community.

The promotional video for the pre-revealed character "Fei" surpassed 5 million views in China. What significance do you see in this result?

Chinese subculture players tend to strongly favor characters with distinctly Eastern characteristics, and they show particular interest in characters revealed ahead of launch. Through Fei's story, visuals, and the unique cultural elements woven into the PV, users seem to have felt a heightened sense of "sincerity and authenticity" directed at Chinese players. Immediately after the Fei PV was released, many users created related content, including third-party works that surpassed 1 million views, which fully confirmed users' affection for the character.

The collaboration content with "Nuo Wu"(儺舞), a traditional dance recognized as Chinese intangible cultural heritage, also led to strong results.

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"Chaos Zero Nightmare"'s collaboration content with "Nuo Wu" (儺舞), a traditional dance recognized as Chinese intangible cultural heritage, as featured by Chinese media outlet Xinhua News Agency

That's right. The Nuo Wu collaboration content earned coverage from Xinhua News Agency, China's most authoritative media outlet, and gave users an opportunity to express curiosity and affection toward Nuo Wu. We believe this helped build positive brand awareness for the game.

How much organic content did local influencers and streamers produce, and what support did Tencent provide?

In the early days after launch, a large volume of KOC (Key Opinion Consumer) and KOL (Key Opinion Leader) content centered on Chaos Zero Nightmare poured out across various Chinese communities. The formats varied widely — strategy explainers, character reviews, live broadcasts, and fan-made derivative works. Overall, the content ecosystem showed a pattern of active, organic production and spread. On the publishing support side, Tencent implemented official incentive policies timed to coincide with version updates, which encouraged hundreds of creators to produce high-quality content. Partner creators concentrated their efforts during promotional periods for each version, producing large volumes of excellent content, which effectively expanded the game's promotional reach within the community.

What strengths of the game are mentioned in local communities like Bilibili, Tieba, and TapTap?

Character art and design are mentioned most frequently. The next most common mention is the strategic enjoyment of the card-based roguelike gameplay. Character controls (input difficulty, responsiveness, etc.) rank third, while free-to-play-friendly benefits and story quality rank fourth and fifth, respectively. Character art is the positive factor that resonates most broadly across all platforms, and depth of gameplay is a keyword users consistently bring up.

1) Bilibili is a Chinese video platform that started out heavily focused on subculture content but now hosts creators across many fields

2) Tieba is a community run by Baidu, China's largest portal, covering boards on politics, society, culture, and more

3) TapTap is a Chinese mobile game store and community with social features for downloads, reviews, and sharing images/videos.)

Compared to reactions in Korea and globally, what stands out as distinctly different about Chinese users' responses?

Which characters have local users most actively used as material for fan-created content in Chaos Zero Nightmare?

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Chinese users have created a wide variety of fan works — including stickers and memes — using the Chaos Zero Nightmare character Yuki.

Fan creation in China revolves around character "meme culture." While traditional fan art certainly exists, the most active form of creation comes in the shape of stickers and memes. In the early days of the China server's operation, most fan creation centered on the character "Meirin." Later, "Yuki" gained increasing buzz and gradually won over users' affection. A large volume of memes, stickers, and self-made animated shorts centered on Yuki were created, earning broad love from users.

We understand that user response to dark fantasy subculture games has been growing in China's game market recently. Are there any concerns around this trend?

In recent years, Chinese users' acceptance of dark fantasy has grown. Users note that the genre's characteristic low-saturation, cold color tones, twisted monster designs, and ruined space-station settings stand in clear contrast to the bright, vivid tone of mainstream Japanese-style subculture games. Dark fantasy subculture has met users' desire for depth and a distinctive worldview.

That said, there are concerns as well. Users worry that long-term operation of the game could undermine the sustainability of its dark fantasy narrative. Core users are concerned that the worldview could become diluted as it shifts toward more mainstream tastes, and some users point out that the story's dark fantasy tone is at times "too brutal."

Any final words you'd like to share with Chaos Zero Nightmare users?

We will continue building Chaos Zero Nightmare's own independent ecosystem of user and creator content communities. We're grateful for Smilegate's support, and we look forward to being loved by even more Chinese users going forward.

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