CyberJoker · published
As of August 29, "Niu Lai" box office has surpassed 50 million RMB (cumulative 56.6369 million). In the first 9 days, total gross was only 7,169 RMB. August 15: single-day broke 200k. August 16: 5 million. August 17: 10 million... And today, August 28, our own Demo has officially launched free on Steam. From being mocked to making a comeback, "Niu Lai" took 20 days. From a single line of code to the Steam card table, we've walked 8 months. An animated film mocked as "extremely rough" has crashed into the summer of 2026 in the most absurd yet most fired-up way.
🎬 A Mother and Son, Five Years
"Niu Lai" runs 86 minutes. The core creative team? Just two people — 28-year-old director Xin Yumeng and his 61-year-old mother, Sun Lifang. Over five years, the mother and son taught themselves modeling, animation, voice acting, and editing on a home computer, hand-crafting every frame of this theatrical feature. Zero investment, zero team, zero marketing. The ending song is the mother's a cappella, recorded 73 times with no autotune, preserving the most authentic human imperfections.
Five years. Two people. One home computer. You say it's rough? It absolutely is. Broken models, stiff animation, typos in subtitles. But two ordinary people with no professional background buried their heads for five years and pushed an animated film from project initiation, censorship, obtaining the dragon seal, all the way to the big screen — the very act of this is so clumsy it hurts.
🤖 Is Making Indie Games in the AI Era Stupid?
I'm the developer of CyberJoker: Fight to the Death. For the past 8 months, I've questioned myself every single day. Peers say: "A card game now? Balatro 1.1 isn't even out yet, the market is already saturated." Friends say: "Use AI to generate art, it's fast and good." Investors are lukewarm: "Cyberpunk? That genre isn't fresh anymore." At 3 AM, I stare at my code and ask myself: "Will anyone actually like the dual-track mode?"
In 2026, AI has made game development easier than ever. Hundreds of AI-generated games hit Steam every day. Players are starting to wonder: was this game seriously made by a creator, or just stitched together on an assembly line? Tech media says: "AI lowers the cost of 'making something,' but not the difficulty of 'making it right.'"
💪 December 28, 2025, 1:00 AM, Shenzhen
I stared at the news of Balatro breaking 5 million copies sold and winning Game of the Year. My coffee had gone cold. It was a year of AI's explosive growth — art with Midjourney, programming with Copilot, copy being demanded to "write it with AI, you just change a few words." The entire industry was being reshaped by efficiency. A voice kept spinning in my head: "In the age of AI, are you stupid for making indie games?"
That voice hasn't stopped to this day. But that night, I gave myself an answer: If robots awaken, drive humans into the slums, and instead of killing you, they design a computing-power card game to slowly replace you within the rules — what would you do? I would sit at the card table. Because there's no way out in the slums. Because the computing-power card table is the only chance. Because the moment you sit at that table, it's a fight to the death. And so CyberJoker: Fight to the Death was born. Not to prove AI is bad, but to prove that as long as everyone persists in their dreams, they possess irreplaceable value!
🔥 Our Promise
The CyberJoker: Fight to the Death Demo has officially launched free on 8.28. I know some will ask: what if, after the official release, we can't even make 7,700 RMB? My answer is: Even if it's less than 7,700, this game will be finished for the sake of my dream. Not to prove anything, not to please anyone — just because, as an indie developer, this is what I have to say to the world.
The mother and son of "Niu Lai," with zero foundation, no money, and no connections, stubbornly brought a "rough" animated film to the big screen. What they got was not unanimous praise, but massive controversy. But they finished it. And this world will ultimately leave a place for those who "finish."
Is making indie games in the AI era stupid? Maybe. But if we give up our own expression just because "everyone else uses AI" — that would be truly stupid.
August 28, see you on Steam. Search "CyberJoker" or "赛博小丑". The free Demo experience is now live. Come to the Rust Belt card table and decide for yourself — would you sell that card?
Whether you come or not, we'll be at the table. Fight to the death. 🃏
— The Rust Belt Dealer, CyberJoker Dev Team