The official Lord of the Mysteries game reached No. 1 on the China App Store, Bilibili, and TapTap before its August 21 open beta. That kind of chart sweep is the clearest sign yet that SPARK NEXA has found a large audience in China before a single beta day begins.
TapTap pre-registration numbers surpassed 2.1 million, and the first servers filled so quickly that the team added two more servers, Abyss and Death. For a cross-platform MMO built around an officially licensed web novel, that is a strong launch signal, not a soft one.
Cuttlefish That Loves Diving
The game adapts Lord of Mysteries by Cuttlefish That Loves Diving, and the source material already carries a built-in reader base. SPARK NEXA built the project in Unreal Engine 5 and set it up as a Victorian-era occult MMORPG for PC, Android, and iOS in China.
The chart results line up with that setup. No. 1 on the China App Store’s Popular Downloads chart, No. 1 on Bilibili’s Game Popularity ranking, and No. 1 on TapTap’s popularity list put the game in rare pre-launch territory. In practical terms, the market did not wait for the open beta to decide whether this was worth trying.
Abyss and Death
When character creation and pre-downloads opened, the servers filled fast enough to force an expansion, which is why Abyss and Death were added. That response suggests the early user load was already beyond the first allocation, the sort of problem developers prefer to have before a launch window opens.
The game also sits in a narrower lane than a typical MMO. It is an officially licensed adaptation tied to a specific web novel, with Tingen City and Pathways among the story elements noted around the project, so its pull comes from a defined China audience rather than broad genre appeal alone.
August 21 open beta
August 21 is the first real test. Players in China can go in on PC, Android, and iOS, and the early demand gives SPARK NEXA a head start, but it does not answer whether the same pace holds after launch day.
The bigger business read is simple: the game already has the numbers that matter most before release, and the only open question is whether that pre-launch demand stays hot once the August 21 open beta begins.
