By Kafka (edited by Chibbi)- July, 2026
What actually went wrong?
Gacha gaming is huge these days. Even if you’ve never played anything gacha related, you've probably heard about games like "Genshin Impact", "Wuthering Waves" or "Infinity Nikki". Those are some of the most popular and mainstream gachas that some would consider the most notable in the genre. There are smaller ones, like "Reverse: 1999" or "Path to Nowhere", or super niche like "Black Beacon" that reached the end of service almost a year ago. But what if I told you that there are some rare ones that are not even available on the global market?
Gui Long Chao (Returning of Dragon Tides) (Chinese: 归龙潮) is one of those rare games that was too good to to be true. It was very difficult to install it if you didn't live in mainland China. You see, the game was only available for Chinese market. So in order to get in you needed to create an account with a special method. Google or any email method wouldn't work because you actually had to verify your real identity. A Chinese ID would be ideal only if you were a citizen, but since I wasn't one, there was still a way to create an account as a non-Chinese resident. So, I tried the BilliBIlli method. I had to upload my real ID and a photo to their website, as it's required by law, and when I received the application approval, I was the happiest person in the world.
The game won my love immediately. The smooth tutorial that puts you straight into the action without overloading you with dialogue or cutscenes, plus straight and simple instructions even if you don't understand a single world in Chinese. Something I really liked about the game is its simplistic yet diverse platforming level design that would change dramatically with each new chapter of the main story. There was also semi open-world city sections where you could use your character in 3d and walk around with them. There were also some mini-games and puzzles as well..
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The gacha system and the gameplay loop
As a gacha game, the game was very generous. You needed 150 gems per pull to get a character with 80 pulls. You could also use a special 100 pulls banner but you were always guaranteed to get a unit you wanted without losing a 50/50 chance. And the soft pity would often hit much earlier: 60th or 80th pull depending on the banner of your choice. Weapons were free and pretty easy to get. Each character had a special "disk" you could buy at the disk store with their portrait on it. Made it very easy to pick the right weapon.
Other gacha-like aspects included your typical gear application (called relics or artifacts in the most known gachas) but with additional quality of life feature: you could always see all 4 substats. Of course, it's not a gacha game without the end-game content. Gui Long Chao had a very typical end-game mode where you just use you characters to complete different sets of levels every 2 weeks, to get some recurring rewards. There was also a permanent end-game mode where each level would be harder than the previous one. The rewards are one-time claim only.
I've tried all of those modes myself and got pretty far in some of them. My favorite so far was the boss event where you have a limited time to beat a boss enemy. The stronger and more skilled you are the higher the score. The event was semi-PVP one. You would get additional rewards (cosmetics) if your score was high enough among different players.
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I liked the game and its uniqueness. Yes, platformer as a genre is nothing new. But in a gacha, where most games are either action-adventure RPGs or turn-based games with auto-battle function, this game stood out a lot. What's more, it was different in its identity. It was built with traditional Chinese aesthetics in mind, mixed with modernity and some paranormal elements.
Additionally, the game wasn't very easy. Many gachas are relatively easy games if you are lucky with your pulls and know how to build characters properly, yet no matter how strong and invested your character was in Gui Long Chao, the platforming part was always skill-based. With some rare exceptions, like when a particular character could just fly over an obstacle. There were some additional challenging levels + one character story quest with an extremely difficult platforming sequence that I loved.
The story was quite alright, in my opinion, though it's very hard to judge it without a proper localization (The game was in Chinese only). It was mainly a classical visual novel with some minor cutscenes. Character roster is diverse but not without some typical gacha tropes: like having more female characters than male ones, and the female characters having fan service while male ones having it to a very minimum.
The setting was charming. The game had obvious horror elements, or how some would call, new weird. The main city is full of hidden paranormal activities, and we, disguising as film directors needed to investigate those occurrences. I liked this idea. Being a movie director in a gacha game was quite interesting. No main characters with amnesia or a lost sibling... like in some other games.
The game's questionable state and future
The game wasn't without its issues. And the issues were mostly not due to the game itself but rather the management and the company behind it.
The development of the game was quite hectic. From constant changes in direction to the massive layoffs in FunPlus Shanghai, the game developer. The first month revenue was pretty solid with 140 million yuan (or around 21 million US dollars), but it would drop dramatically later, reaching around 10-20 million (1.5 - 3 million US dollars) yuan in November, just 3 months later after the launch.
The development itself has undergone constant changes. Early prototypes had elemental reactions, and the whole style was purely side scrolling. Then later they've added fully 3d-like hub worlds similar to "Honkai: Star Rail" or "Zenless Zone Zero" urban level designs, putting further pressure on development. There were other issues, like when the game was trying to appeal to universal target audiences, promising a 50/50 male to female character ratio in the beginning but failing to meet those expectations which only led to more controversies. The character design direction was very inconsistent and,with some female designs wearing comfortable day-to-day clothes while others having a more typical "waifu" design with pretty noticeable fan-service.
There was also a "lawyer's letter" incident (a content creator getting a lawsuit over a criticism about the game), "141 free pulls" on launch that was different, 98 RMB ($14.48) permanent monthly subscription (a pretty rare type of monetization in these types of games), a letter from developer Xiao A. stating that "the game won't shut down (eos)", a messed up "20648" giveaway situation (where they added extra number to the price, confusing players) just to name a few...
When I played the game, the questionable game state was noticeable. Even during the first patch there was this dark omen hanging over Gui Long Chao, waiting for bad things to happen to it one day or another. And it was called EOS or "end of service", the worst fate a gacha game could face.
You could see pretty early, how desperate the game asked you to stay, just for a little longer. The main story almost stopped developing; the events got repetitive and very rare, but the rewards would get very generous. At one point they've added a daily login event with a pretty good reward system. And one day players have received the final message: "the game will EOS soon", but we are getting 60 000 gems for our pulls, several additional months of service and an "guest server (which is still active)" access if you meet some requirements.
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Gui Long Chao is an reminder that game development is extremely difficult, the game industry is constantly evolving and changing, while suffering from layoffs and extreme competition. Sometimes doing less and sticking with it could be more preferable than trying to build a very ambitions project while being at risk of failing. Gui Long Chao is not a bad game, but it's far from perfect. It feels like it was trying to be everything at once like it was a jack of all trades but master of none.
Some notes from my friend who studies game development:
Live service games are best suited when they simply improve on their existing formula rather than forcing new forms of content that are added just because they could be. If a game developer adds in new mechanics to the already established gameplay then, to a degree, it’s fine. The problems arise when those new mechanics becoming the main focus instead of focusing on the already existing gameplay and having the new mechanics compliment it. GLC’s (Gui Long Chao) problem was that it was becoming overly ambitious by adding many new gimmicks to keep their target audience engaged instead of just fine tuning what their system already had and making it even more fun and unique.
Despite everything, I still miss the game a little. It was very rough around the edges, but it was a game where you could feel care and thought put into it. If it wasn't for the hectic management and some controversies, the game could've succeeded. Maybe one day we will see more games like Gui Long Chao in the gacha market, only time will tell...