Ancient books hold many clues

After the single-role version was launched in November 2024 and the three-role version on Jan 23, the game has quickly become popular among puzzle enthusiasts and traditional culture fans. By late January, about 1,000 players participated in the game. Chen Weiwei, from the exhibition department of the National Library of China, reveals that the reservation quotas regularly sold out in one minute.

Feng tried many times to make a reservation and finally played the game with a friend three weeks after its launch. The two young women walked around the exhibition hall, talked about the storyline in low voices, and browsed the pages of the ancient books that provided clues. They spent more than an hour completing the game. The answer to the final puzzle revealed a deeply touching motto that encourages the inheriting of ancient classics.

The game is a subprogram of the originally designed IP Shanhaishe, a virtual community for the protection and restoration of ancient books, which was named after the classic Shan Hai Jing and initiated by the museum in 2019.

"We developed the Shanhaishe IP and created a series of puzzle-based activities, hoping to introduce similar activities alongside major exhibitions in the future," says Gu Heng, director of the exhibition department at the National Library of China.