What happens when high-quality drama visuals combine with the high interactivity of games? The FMV game Road to Empress, released on September 9, 2025, provides an example of the convergence of live-action footage and games. Players can be immersed in the environment of the ancient Chinese palace, experiencing the exciting story of “from a lady of talent to an empress” from a first-person perspective, where each decision can influence the direction of the story.
The game was developed by New One Studio, with over 85% positive rating on steam. The company previously produced the first breakout FMV of the industry, The Invisible Guardian (2019). The game is based on the life of Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history, using female growth as storyline. The players take on the role of the main character named Wu Yuanzhao and experience this legendary story of the prosperous China’s Tang Dynasty in person and decide the direction and ending of the story themselves. Life in the palace is full of danger, the players must make a series of risky choices, relying on wisdom, courage, and careful consideration to survive and ultimately achieve victory. This game is not only a technological upgrade, but also indicates an innovation in interactive storytelling. It combines the fast-paced “short drama” narrative structure with a high interactivity and represent Chinese culture, demonstrating how interactive media can transform passive viewers into active participants, while allowing Chinese culture to resonate with overseas players.
Road to Empress can be seen as a successful example of fast-paced narrative in interactive movie games. One major challenge in interactive movie game is balancing the needs of watching movies and playing games. Road to Empress attempts a new path, using the narrative of dramas as a foundation, adding multiple endings and story branches , catering to the entertainment needs of audiences that shifting from passive viewing to active experience in contemporary society. Each episode of the game is 1-3 minutes long, perfectly suited to the fragmented media consumption habits of users shaped by the attention economy in modern society. Although each episode is short, the total length is approximately 1200 minutes and incorporates over 400 interactive nodes.
“Narrative games can offer rich storytelling, strong emotional impact, and immersion. Live-action filming can elevate the performance and authenticity of scenes to another level, providing players with a stage to control the story autonomously.”
Consequently, Road to Empress does not continue with a complex, longform structure. Instead, it integrates the logic of short dramas into the game, creating a fast-paced experience that allows players to have an experience similar to watching a short drama while playing. However, while the game offers multiple choices, these choices are all constructed within existing narrative framework. This raises a question: does the game truly give players control, or is it merely about making choices within a predetermined storyline? In this context, interactivity serves more as a means to enhance the immersive experience than provide players with complete freedom of choice.
In addition to narrative innovation, the game shows the digital reconstruction of traditional Chinese culture, reaching global players in a youthful and international way. The team does not simply use traditional elements as decoration for the game, but also integrates the logic of Chinese culture into the game mechanics itself. The team applied on-location shooting for over 100 days at Hengdian World Studios, China’s largest film and TV shooting base, recreating scenes of Tang Dynasty senses such as royal banquets and residences. Moreover, traditional cultural elements such as osmanthus soup are incorporated into the interactive mechanics and are given new narrative functions. For example, osmanthus soup transformed from a symbol of reunion to a food containing poison, peony that serves as a symbol of wealth and prosperity becomes an element that induces death. As players interact with these elements to drive the plot forward, they actively explore and understand Chinese culture through play. To allow international players to experience this game, Road to Empress is available on Steam, iOS, and Android, and supports multiple languages including English and Japanese. But it does not sacrifice the accuracy of the content to meet the needs of overseas users. Instead, the game maintains the native Chinese aesthetics.
Different audiences have different standards for judging a game, so satisfying everyone is almost impossible. As the first game to pioneer the integration of palace survival and interactive film, Road to Empress demonstrates considerable effort and creativity in its plot and theme, which bridge the regional, gender, and cultural gap. Undeniably, as the number of works of this type increases, the risk of content homogenization aggravates, how to continuously provide innovative experiences becomes a critical problem. However, as the themes become more diverse and the emergence of several blockbuster games like Road to Empress in the market, interactive film games are gradually shifting from niche to mainstream, truly entering a mature stage.
Shoujie Wang 
Yinan Zhou 
SUN Yinchen