In 2025, Love and Deepspace producer Lizi stood on stage at Gamescom in Germany to receive the Best Mobile Game award, rewarded to a female-oriented title for the first time. With its blend of action combat and romance, this game brings players to the sci-fi world of Linkon City where they’ll uncover the secrets of a lost civilisation, accompanied by a charming cast of male leads.

Here, the App Store Editors sit down with Lizi to discuss her philosophy on female-oriented games: how she fights the good fight and open a door to the world with love.

App Store Editor: Love is a key element in romance games, but it’s a hard one to quantify. How do you think that concept is conveyed in Love and Deepspace?

Lizi: I, too, feel that love can’t be quantified, and I don’t think there’s one fixed way to convey it. But if we want players to experience love, we have to make sure that we are driven by passion ourselves. We develop characters as real people who are inherently worthy of love, with the hope that players can see themselves in these male leads and, through that, come to find more self-love. And just maybe, they can fall in love with different elements of the game, such as astronomy, physics, art, literature and Chinese culture too. Through human connection, we discover the love that exists all around us.

App Store Editor: Many players are curious, as the producer of Love and Deepspace, what do the male leads, and the characters in general, mean to you personally?

Lizi: I see them as incredibly important partners. In our daily work, the entire team treats them as if they are real people. They are members of our team, people who truly matter to us.

App Store Editor: Love and Deepspace is a female-oriented game that features action combat, which some might say is quite unusual. Why did you design the game this way?

Lizi: Even now, when I talk to people in the industry, I’m still asked: “Why put combat in a romance game?” What I wanted to express was a feeling about love itself: it’s you against the world.

Love isn’t only sweetness and light. It also comes with difficulties and challenges. I wanted players to stand with the person they love and fight together, rather than always being protected by their romantic partners. So, love and combat aren’t separate things. In our story, fighting side by side is what love is all about.

App Store Editor: And did you and the team face a lot of challenges while building that combat system?

Lizi: Absolutely. Bringing that vision to life was incredibly difficult. For one, we had no reference points, and for another, no one on our team actually knew how to build a combat system. For about four or five years, we rebuilt the system over and over. We faced constant scepticism, and there were times I wondered if we should just give up and make something simpler, something within our comfort zone.

But if we had given up, we would have lost. We would never have known if it could work, and people would have gone on believing that combat can’t be a part of a romance game.

App Store Editor: So developing Love and Deepspace was itself a process of fighting and overcoming challenges?

Lizi: You could say that. This game is essentially our answer to the question of what love truly means. Our combat system still needs refinement and improvement, but at least many players enjoy it and find a sense of achievement in it. In our fan community, players are constantly sharing combat guides and tips. Some even say the combat is what drew them to the game in the first place.

Most importantly, though, many players have connected with that core philosophy of “us against the world” that we wanted to convey.

App Store Editor: It’s been well over a decade since you joined the gaming industry. How do you feel you’ve grown?

Lizi: I really do feel that I’ve become stronger. Perhaps I’ve grown alongside my projects! Back when I was a solo creator, I was introverted, even timid. Now, I can lead a large team and express my ideas with confidence. I’ve gained a lot of courage, and that’s been an important step forward for me, both personally and professionally.

Before I became a game producer, I had never imagined that this was where my career would lead. At the time, YY (Papergames CEO Yao Runhao) encouraged me to just dive in and learn as I went. His advice was: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”