Backed by NetEase and Bilibili, the company had as little as 30,000 yuan in the bank at its lowest point, but this veteran of the anime and manga scene is set to make a lightning-fast comeback.

Released in 2019, *Bubble Winter Scenery* may well be a landmark title in the Chinese visual novel industry. Not only has it received widespread acclaim across multiple platforms and sold over 400,000 copies—successfully breaking out of its niche audience—but it has also drawn the attention of investors to the existence of the Chinese visual novel scene.

Thanks to this impressive achievement, *Bubble Winter Scenery*’s developer, Chengdu Nekoday, shot to fame and, over the next two years, secured investments from Bilibili and NetEase, enjoying a period of great success.

Unfortunately, as with most teams during an industry downturn, Cat Day’s story took a turn for the worse: projects in development were halted one after another, launched projects suffered heavy losses, cash reserves ran dangerously low, and the team was drastically downsized…

When Game Teahouse paid another visit to Gu Luo, the head of Cat Day, the team had already moved from an office building near Chunxi Road to a Hengda commercial-residential complex in the northern part of the city. The sparse number of vacant desks in the quiet office also hinted to Game Teahouse that Cat Day’s current situation was far from ideal.

After six years of hiatus, Iron Blood—a veteran of the anime and manga scene—has regrouped and joined forces with its former partners to co-develop *Poem of the End of the Century*, the official sequel to *Bubble Winter Scenery*.

On the eve of the Spring Festival, *Poetry of the End of the Century* launched on a crowdfunding platform. Within less than a month of its launch, the game had garnered support from 1,800 players and raised over 600,000 yuan—more than ten times its original goal—giving Cat Day a crucial boost.

Speaking candidly with Game Teahouse, Gu Luo opened up and carefully reflected on the “slight” detours he’d taken over the past six years.

01

A cutting-edge new project left the company with only 30,000 yuan in the bank

The Sino-Japanese co-production *Bubble Winter Scenery* breaks free from the clichés of traditional anime romance narratives. Centered on the theme of “non-romantic encounters,” it portrays ordinary people caught in the tide of the times, striking a chord with players. It stands out as a rare, high-quality visual novel with a realistic theme in the domestic market at the time.

Within six months of its release, *Fairy Tail: Winter Scenes* sold over 300,000 copies, earning both critical acclaim and commercial success. The subsequent release of mobile and Switch versions further expanded the game’s reach and helped Cat’s Day secure investment from Bilibili.

At that time, Gu Luo’s self-developed game had been a huge success, and he had secured investment from Bilibili. At the height of his success, he had even become a bit arrogant.

Driven by this confidence, Gu Luo led the team through rapid expansion: within a short period, the team grew from 8 to 16 members, and subsequently expanded further to nearly 30 members.

To accommodate the team’s growth, they secured a 300-square-meter office in an office building near Chunxi Road. With the intention of establishing a long-term presence, they also allocated a substantial budget to carefully renovate the space.

After successfully completing the *Bubble Winter Scenes* DLC, Cat's Day, brimming with enthusiasm, launched a narrative-driven adventure puzzle game, which was later titled *Lost Floating Sounds*.

"Lost Floating Sounds" represents not only a bold creative breakthrough for Cat's Day, but its core conceptual design remains avant-garde even by today's standards.

The game innovatively employs a dual-platform, dual-perspective narrative across PC and mobile: on PC, players follow the female protagonist as she unravels the mystery behind a baffling series of "wooden man" murders, while on mobile, players take on the role of the male protagonist in an adventure that explores the intersection of modern urban life and ancient Shu culture.

Though seemingly unrelated, the two storylines intersect at several key junctures. They can unfold simultaneously or independently across both platforms, and while the male and female protagonists exist in different dimensions, they frequently interact. By imbuing the "medium" itself with narrative significance, we aim to deliver an unprecedented storytelling experience to players.

In addition, inspired by *13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim*, the game also features side-scrolling gameplay.

This scene really has a *13 Machina* vibe to it.

All things considered, a project of *Lost Floating Sounds*’ scale and complexity is certainly not something that an inexperienced startup team could easily handle.

But in the second half of 2020, the domestic gaming industry was riding high on the crest of a boom cycle. Major game publishers were writing checks left and right, scrambling to invest heavily in game developers. The entire industry, from upstream to downstream, was abuzz with a sense of exuberance and prosperity.

Given the booming market conditions, Gu Luo had clearly underestimated the challenges of developing the new project. He was optimistic that even if the project failed, there would always be opportunities to secure additional funding and start over; he believed that now was the time to seize the opportunity and achieve “leapfrog development.”

As a result, when custom projects from outside companies came their way, Gu Luo generally declined them on the grounds that “in-house original development takes priority,” devoting all his energy to the development of *Lost Floating Sounds*.

By turning down the offer for the cash-flow project, the seeds of crisis had already been sown.

Sure enough, as development progressed, Gu Luo gradually realized that *Lost Floating Sounds* was far more challenging to develop than anticipated, and he wasn’t even sure when it would be finished. The entire team gave it their all and managed to release a cross-platform demo of *Lost Floating Sounds* in the first half of 2021.

Lost Floating Sounds Art Assets

By this point, the company’s cash reserves were running critically low; by year-end, there was only about 30,000 yuan left, while monthly fixed costs had soared to nearly 200,000 yuan! This massive funding shortfall nearly pushed Cat’s Day into an abyss with no bottom.

Even so, though Gu Luo felt a sense of urgency, he remained convinced that there was always a way forward. He began traveling far and wide with the demo of *Lost Floating Sounds*, searching high and low for new investors in an attempt to secure a glimmer of hope for Cat Day.

02

From Launching Three New Projects to the Doomed Battle of *The Bardo*

In the second half of 2021, the gaming industry faced a sudden shift in the market landscape. The suspension of game license approvals directly led to strategic retrenchment among game developers. The investment and financing market, which had been booming in the first half of the year, quickly fell silent, and a chill instantly swept through the entire industry.

Gu Luo was undoubtedly lucky. *Lost Floating Sounds*, a highly innovative concept demo, caught the attention of NetEase, allowing the game’s promotional video to be featured at the “F5 Progressive Game Launch Event” hosted by NetEase LeiHuo the following July.

Even as major companies suspended their investments, Cat Day still managed to secure a second round of funding from NetEase, giving it some breathing room.

Given the ongoing economic downturn at the time, and to avoid repeating the mistake of a cash flow crisis, Guluo decided, after careful consideration, to suspend development of *Lost Floating Sounds*, convert the project’s assets into reserve resources, and simultaneously downsize the team.

He then split the team into smaller groups based on the members’ individual strengths, forming different project teams to launch three new projects simultaneously:

·Guluo is leading a team to develop a web-based, narrative-driven CRPG set in an alternate historical universe

· A side-scrolling combat RPG featuring AI-powered interactive gameplay

·Some members remade a supernatural exploration and puzzle-solving RPG based on works from their days in a fan club, which later became *The Bardo*

True to his belief in “knowing people and assigning them to the right roles,” Gu Luo decided that since some team members were passionate about creating games in specific genres and were better suited to lead projects than he was—and given that the company still had sufficient resources—he would delegate authority and let them develop the games they wanted to make. Meanwhile, Gu Luo chose to devote more of his energy to managing the company outside of development.

As we quietly entered the second half of 2022, Cat Day’s three ongoing projects were all impacted by the volatile external environment, making it extremely difficult to keep them on track. There were also differences in philosophy within the team, leading to constant friction among members.

Faced with this situation, Gu Luo realized that if things continued as they were, the company might end up repeating the same mistakes. Once again, he found himself forced to make a difficult decision.

It had been three years since Cat's Day released its previous title, *Bubble Winter Scenery*, and such a long hiatus was simply unacceptable for a small development studio. Cat's Day urgently needed to launch a full-fledged product; even if it didn't turn a profit, it would at least help stabilize morale.

Gu Luo took the bold step of cutting his losses, deciding to cancel the CRPG project and scale back the AI project, and instead channel all resources into the *Bardo* project. In his view, while *Bardo* had limited commercial potential, its development challenges were relatively manageable, making it the project with the best chance of being completed and launched at that time.

Having learned from the painful lessons of failed projects like *Lost Floating Sounds*, Gu Lu took the opportunity presented by the script rewrite to become deeply involved in the project’s development in order to advance the development of *Bardo* and better control costs.

Bardo

After that, the project team stopped exploring new directions, cut many features that were difficult to implement, and strictly limited the scope of *The Bardo* to rapidly increase the game’s completion rate.

Ultimately, *The Bardo* was officially released in April 2023. Unfortunately, its commercial performance has been dismal; as of this year, the project’s total revenue has not even reached one-tenth of its development costs.

“(Developing) *The Bardo* was a battle we were bound to lose.” Looking back, Gu Luo admitted that he knew the game would lose money and that staff changes would be necessary, but he had to bite the bullet and forge ahead. “On the one hand, we had to fulfill the ‘political mandate’ of launching a new project; on the other hand, we needed to provide the team with tangible lessons learned from our failures. Only hard-won, real-world lessons are truly persuasive.”

Gu Lu believes that even if he could go back in time, he would make similar decisions, “though I might handle project downsizing and staff adjustments with a bit more caution.”

03

After a six-year hiatus, the sequel to *Winter Scenes in a Bubble* is finally here.

After the release of *Bardo*, the Cat's Day team eventually shrunk to its current size of about four members. During this time, Gu Luo took on freelance projects to keep the company afloat while quietly planning a sequel to *Bubble Winter Scenery*.

The open-ended conclusion of *Bubble Winter Scenery* deliberately left the fates of several key characters unresolved, leaving room for imagination regarding a sequel. Over the past six years, players’ anticipation for a sequel has never waned.

In May 2024, after completing development support and localization work for *Shinjuku Sōmei* (written by Sato Okamoto, scriptwriter for *Bubble Winter Scenery*), Koraku finally had enough time and startup capital to officially launch the sequel to *Bubble Winter Scenery*—*Poem of the End of the Century*.

*Poems of the End of the Century* was heavily influenced by the Japanese TV drama of the same name; both stories are set against the backdrop of the late 20th century and share the central theme of “different forms of love.” However, as a continuation of the *Bubble Winter Scenery* universe, the game places greater emphasis on “universal love that transcends language and national boundaries (or so they say),” and the plot may also incorporate elements exploring familial bonds.

Gu Luo told Game Teahouse that *Poem of the End of the Century* will surpass *Bubble Winter Scenery* in both production quality and content volume. Taking the upcoming demo as an example, it offers approximately one hour of gameplay, and the amount of available content already reaches 70% of that in the main game of *Bubble Winter Scenery*.

"We are currently fine-tuning the voice acting, performance, and design details, and we aim to release a demo as soon as possible."

The good news is that the crowdfunding campaign for *Poems of the End of the Century* has far exceeded Guluo’s expectations, so funding is no longer the main obstacle. The Cat’s Day team will work closely with its partners to complete the game and officially release it within this year.

04

The veteran anime fan returns like a bolt of lightning

During the years that the Cat Day team has been lying low, the Chinese visual novel industry has undergone a dramatic transformation, giving rise to phenomenon-level titles such as *Daughter of the Volcano* and *Starving: A Thousand-Mile Journey at the End of the Ming Dynasty*—a development that has left Gu Luo, a veteran of the industry, deeply impressed by the talent of the younger generation.

Although the market has expanded severalfold, Gu Luo remains level-headed and cautious, and does not dare to expect *Poem of the End of the Century* to replicate the commercial success of *Winter Scenes of a Bubble*.

“I’ll do everything in my power to ensure that *Poems of the End of the Century* surpasses its predecessor in quality. As for the rest, I’ll do my best and leave the rest to fate.”

Over the past six years, we’ve gone through many twists and turns, and the world has changed. Cat’s Day has exhausted its investment funds, the team has shrunk back to its original size, and we’ve returned to the field we excel in. Through all the ups and downs, it feels like a long dream—and when we wake up, everything is just as it was before.

On Cat Day, the office doubles as Guluo’s living room, and he has turned his study into a personal library.

Gu Luo candidly admitted that he had long since outgrown the phase of “biting off more than he could chew.” Having weathered the ups and downs of the industry, he now has a clearer understanding of his capabilities. He has also learned to assess a project’s prospects more thoroughly and cautiously in its early stages, and he understands that even when funds are plentiful, he must proactively drive the R&D schedule forward…

However, the overwhelming success of the crowdfunding campaign for *Poems of the End of the Century* is a clear sign that this seasoned, die-hard anime team is set to make a lightning-fast comeback.