If you had to kill someone within seven days, who would you choose? This is the sort of moral dilemma Sultan’s Game — a narrative-driven strategy title dominating China’s 2025 spring-quarter game charts — confronts its players with. Developed by Double Cross and published by 2P Games this past March, the breakout hit weaves murder, intrigue, and lust into stories as labyrinthine as those in Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Garden of Forking Paths.”

Set in a fictional land similar to “One Thousand and One Nights,” the game begins with the titular Sultan receiving a deck containing four types of cards — Carnality, Extravagance, Conquest, and Bloodshed, which are ranked Gold, Silver, Bronze, or Stone — each representing a different fate. Should the Sultan draw a Gold Bloodshed card, for example, he must kill a corresponding Gold character — such as the Aged Consort or the General.

The court quickly devolves into chaos as the Sultan revels in the carnage. Enter the protagonist — the player’s avatar — who reprimands the Sultan. Yet in a twist of fate, the Sultan deems this an opportunity for even more sadistic fun and orders the player to play “Sultan’s Game” in his place. All the player must do is draw the cards and complete each dreaded action within seven days. If they fail to satisfy the cards’ demands, the Sultan will execute them.

From that point on, the player is given free rein, and it becomes worryingly easy to do terrible things. For instance, when a girl goes to the player’s home to return a book, they can choose to rid themselves of a Bloodshed or Carnality card. If they use the Carnality card to have sex with her, she will be sympathetic to the demands of the Sultan’s game, but will be unable to stop herself from crying, apologizing, and asking if this is all that even well-read women can ever amount to. Should the player abstain from using a Sultan’s card on this stranger, however, she will go on to become a major character and a literary genius.

Sultan’s Game makes no secret that it is violent, erotic, and bizarre, or that it is chaotic (perhaps even chaotically evil) by nature. The choices are truly endless — when the player draws the Carnality card, they can have sex with any character of corresponding rank, from their wife to a wild white rhino, and even the Sultan himself under certain conditions. Each choice determines the player’s fate at the end of the game, which can range from death, escape, battling a god, slaying a dragon, leading a religious cult, or even launching a rebellion.

Sultan’s Game is, in essence, a prime example of what makes interactive stories both enticing and revealing. According to scholar Espen J. Aarseth, who coined the term “ergodic literature” for texts wherein “nontrivial effort is required … to traverse the text,” the appeal is in how readers or players can “explore, get lost, and discover secret paths in these texts, not metaphorically, but through the topological structures of the textual machinery.”

Yet while ergodic works like Detroit: Become Human and the text-based narratives on 66rpg.com have long proven wildly popular in China, Sultan’s Game stands out for what it reveals about Chinese players and how traditional culture impacts modern play. Limitless choices can reflect quite a bit about a player base, and as it turns out, despite the many paths available, one storyline has proven almost irresistible: rebellion.

The rebellion path is related to a character named Nawfal. He is pale and haggard and first appears as a political rival, mocking the player for going along with the Sultan’s cruel game. Later, he invites the player to a secret meeting where they can choose to use a Sultan’s card on him to thin the deck. If they use a Carnality card, for instance, he will be angered, yet sigh, “I pity you,” before becoming a major rival. But should the player resist temptation, Nawfal will propose overthrowing the Sultan and may become their greatest ally.

Players seemingly cannot resist Nawfal. According to the game’s data, about 86.1% of players agree to help him overthrow the Sultan. It is as if Chinese players — even those intentionally trying to unlock new endings in other playthroughs — cannot help but gravitate toward Nawfal and the secret meeting. Chinese fan art surrounding the game also shows Nawfal’s popularity — and even sex appeal — as he appears as a fallen hero, a mourned lover, and an anointed leader.

Why Nawfal? One possible reason is that his path feels more known and concrete. Faced with an elaborate ergodic narrative and an unpredictable outcome, the moment Nawfal appears with a clear-cut plan, the player has a goal. They know what to do, how to do it, and what will happen. There are no moral gray areas — the player either succeeds or fails. What’s more, failure is just a way to end the seven-day cycle, planting a seed of hope that will only grow.

However, for Chinese players, there also seems to be a cultural element at play. Nawfal is highly evocative of lauded officials in feudal China such as Qu Yuan, Xun Yu, Zhuge Liang, Wang Anshi, and Zhang Juzheng — iconic figures who took matters into their own hands to either help run the nation or overthrow unfit tyrants. Several Chinese players have even remarked on this similarity in online forums, noting how Nawfal seems to tap into a long-standing archetype. His appearance, then, is akin to a fixture of Chinese history reaching across time to hand players a note. Once Chinese players meet Nawfal, it is as if they reach a cultural consensus.

Nawfal’s proposal to take down the Sultan is like telling the player, “Succeed, or die trying,” which echoes countless stories in Chinese history. Chinese players need not look further than the “six gentlemen of the Hundred Days Reform” near the end of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) — several of whom were executed for trying to implement reforms. Chinese history is rife with Nawfal-like figures.

For Chinese players, the gravitational pull of this very “predictability” within Nawfal’s storyline goes beyond a desire for a clean, concrete ending. It taps into some basic level of cultural consensus and reveals a certain habitus cultivated by traditional culture. Players’ enthusiasm for the rebellion storyline stems not just from a youthful passion for overthrowing tyrants, but from historical precedent itself. This is all to say that, even when players are presented with countless options, their choices will always be influenced by culture.

In ergodic narratives, people often see themselves reflected back at them through the choices they make, and Sultan’s Game puts this on full display. Throughout the seven-day cycle, players traverse possible futures, question themselves and their intentions, and rail against fate time and again. Sometimes they are cautious in an attempt to protect their reputations. Sometimes, they will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. The game does not judge evil choices nor does it praise kindness; instead, it leaves everything to the outcome.

All of this can be summed up in a moment in the recent “The Mirror Visitor” expansion. When taking the form of the poet, the mirror asks the player, “Who brought you the most pleasure?” The player is then shown a small spark amidst the darkness and is overcome by everything they’ve done in the game thus far — the disappointments, rebukes, intentions both good and evil, obsessions, objects just out of reach, and every complex desire that has come to pass. All of this, they are told, fuels their inner fire — which may yet be what keeps them coming back.

Translator: Hannah Lund.

(Header image: From Bilibili)