Born in China
Be born at random somewhere in Chinese history, then live that life one year at a time.
Official site games.csiesheep.com, verified Nov 3, 2026. Linked from the developer's own itch.io page (English version, ?lang=en) and from the launch post on the developer's blog.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — official siteBrowserReleased · Opens in Traditional Chinese; English at ?lang=enFree
Runs in a desktop or mobile browser. No download.
Browser (no download) · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
- Play free — itch.ioitch.ioReleasedFree
Plays in the browser on itch.io. No download.
Browser (no download) · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Born in China
A free text-based life simulator set in Chinese history, played in the browser on a phone or PC. Each run drops you into a random year between 400 BC and 1940 and a random region and station in life — a farmer, a scholar's daughter, a merchant — and the years then pass one by one. Births, life spans, deaths and events are drawn from per-era data on population, life expectancy, child mortality, social status, imperial-exam odds and more; each figure carries a confidence label (historical record, scholarly estimate or model estimate), and the developer says life expectancy before 1949 is a model estimate. A few times in a life the game stops and asks you to choose, with no timer, and at the end you get your age at death, a short life story and an epitaph. It was made by one developer in Taiwan, csiesheep, who says AI helped with the code, illustrations and music; the developer's blog describes splitting the work between several AI agents. It is inspired by 1 in 8 Billion and plays in English or Traditional Chinese.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe itch.io page says the game was made by one developer in Taiwan with AI help for the code, illustrations and music, and its itch.io AI disclosure lists code, graphics, sounds and text. In the launch post (Traditional Chinese) the developer says they acted as project manager: the work was split into issues and handed to separate AI agents for the engine, the visuals, the text and the illustrations, each working on its own branch and merged only after checks; the era illustrations were drawn with a locally run AI image model. No source names the coding tool used for this game, or how much of the code AI wrote.
- DeveloperLaunch post (20 Oct 2026): "one person + a group of AI agents"; work began on 16 Oct and had passed 800 commits by 20 Oct. — CSIESHEEP (developer blog)
- DeveloperDevlog (21 Oct 2026) on the developer's orchestrator / worker / checker setup across ten web games, with examples from this game; 900+ commits on it by then. No tool is named. — CSIESHEEP (developer blog)
- UnverifiedIn a 1 Nov 2026 post about another game, the developer writes that they also make games with Claude. The remark is general and does not say Claude was used for Born in China. — CSIESHEEP (developer blog)
Solo developer as project manager, with separate AI agents for the engine, interface, text and illustrations and a separate check before each merge (developer-reported). The developer says the main effort went into verification: 42 periods with 49 data fields each, every figure with a source, and batches of simulated lives run to confirm the results match the input statistics.
- Engine / framework
- Not disclosed (web game)
- Languages
- Not disclosed
- Team size
- 1 (solo)Developer Reporteditch.io
- Initial build time
- Under a week: work began on 16 Oct 2026, and the launch post with a play link is dated 20 OctDeveloper ReportedCSIESHEEP (developer blog)
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“Made by one developer in Taiwan (csiesheep), with AI help for the code, illustrations and music.”- Launch post on the developer's blog (Traditional Chinese)
- Devlog: making ten web games with a team of AI agents (Traditional Chinese)
Verification notes: Description, languages, AI disclosure, rating and itch.io publication date (26 Oct 2026, 14:23 UTC) from the developer's itch.io page, which links the game's own site. AI workflow and development dates from the developer's blog (csiesheep.com). The coding tool is not named for this game, so it is recorded as undisclosed; a general remark that the developer makes games with Claude is kept only as unverified evidence. The web version was already playable when the launch post went up on 20 Oct 2026, but the exact first release date is not given. The developer's count of lives played (13,950 as of 29 Oct) is their own unaudited figure and is kept in the history, not as a metric; the developer has said their own automated test runs inflated the public counter earlier. No source gives downloads, which a browser game does not have.
Development history
Development begins, per the developer.
DeveloperCSIESHEEP (developer blog)The developer's launch post links the playable game on games.csiesheep.com; by then the project had more than 800 commits.
DeveloperCSIESHEEP (developer blog)Devlog on building the developer's web games with a team of AI agents; Born in China has more than 900 commits.
DeveloperCSIESHEEP (developer blog)Published on itch.io (English, with a Traditional Chinese option).
Officialitch.ioThe developer writes that the game had been played 13,950 times (lives) as of 29 Oct. This is the developer's own unaudited count; an earlier post says the developer's automated test runs had inflated the public counter.
Game performance
Each figure measures something different — concurrent players, owners, downloads and sales are never interchangeable and are never added together. Labels show where each number comes from.
Browser (official site)
Free, with no download, account or login, per the game's site.
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: Concurrent players (site), Monthly revenue, Gross revenue.
itch.io
Not publicly available: Gross revenue.
Sales & revenue (all platforms)
Browser game — there are no downloads to count.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Prototype: your vote is kept only in this browser and is not counted anywhere.
No player reviews yet.
Prototype: reviews are stored in your browser only and are not published or sent to a server. Reviews are shown in the language they were written in.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Born in China by csiesheep itch.io | Store page | Oct 26, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| 生在中國 — official game site csiesheep · Chinese (Traditional) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| [遊戲開發日記] 生在中國：如果你投胎到中國古代，能活到幾歲? CSIESHEEP (developer blog) · Chinese (Traditional) | Devlog | Oct 20, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| [遊戲開發日記] 一個人用 AI 做了 10 款網頁遊戲：分工、驗證與踩過的坑 CSIESHEEP (developer blog) · Chinese (Traditional) | Devlog | Oct 21, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| [遊戲開發日記] 上班族、接案、創業、開源、Vibe coder：那張收入圖，真的太真實了 CSIESHEEP (developer blog) · Chinese (Traditional) | Devlog | Oct 31, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| [熱門遊戲介紹] 《江湖千萬人》：千萬江湖人中，你不過是個過客 CSIESHEEP (developer blog) · Chinese (Traditional) | Devlog | Nov 1, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
- Era range
- The itch.io page and the game's site say you are born in a year between 400 BC and 1940, across 42 periods. The site's list of 42 era pages, however, includes seven periods from 1950 to 1990 (from 建國初期 to 市場經濟). They may be periods a life can run into rather than birth eras, but no source says so. (itch.io, csiesheep)
