Palace Museum to launch puzzle-solving game book

A young team of creators

It is noteworthy that the core design team of the project is all quite young.

Xu Aolin and Chen Zhendu, who respectively worked on the design and plot, were both born in 1988. Li Huiting, a post-90s generation, worked on the game route. Wang, 34, the only person from the Palace Museum and who worked as the advisor of historical facts, is the most senior member of the team.

The Palace Museum has carried forward many innovative cultural projects in recent years in hope to trigger more interest of the younger generation in the Forbidden City. The range of products includes cultural products such as fans, and notebooks, downloadable apps for children, GIFs and beautifully-designed calendars.

The team is now working on the portable ends of the project. At the same time, a second edition of the book is also being planned.

When asked what message he wanted to convey to the readers, Wang pointed to an old photograph on the wall of his office.

"This is the first picture ever taken of the Forbidden Palace. There are none before it. The picture may look monochrome to you, but in my eyes, it's vibrant in color.

"What I want the readers, or players, of the book to feel is that 'decorous history can also be lively.' I hope that traditional culture can be spread and passed on in a complete novel way," Wang responded.

The interactive game book is a first attempted project of its kind by the Palace Museum. The publishing house originally aimed to gather 100,000 yuan ($14,418) through crowd funding, which it did with ease as the figure surpassed 1 million yuan in just 10 hours. It made a record in crowd funding in the Chinese publishing industry in 24 hours. Now the figure stands at 10 million yuan in just 26 days.

Migong: Ruyi Linlang Tuji is scheduled to go on pre-sale at the Palace Museum flagship stores both offline and online in December. Hard copies are scheduled to go on shelves on Jan, 2019.