Most people reserve televised “guilty pleasures” for reality shows, but mine are Chinese historical dramas — C-dramas to aficionados. Recently I discovered an utterly bonkers FMV game that perfectly captures that melodramatic energy: New One Studio’s Road to Empress, which launched in September for Windows, Mac, and mobile, but only made its way onto my radar lately.
Road to Empress is a narrative RPG set in the Tang Dynasty, inspired by the life of China’s only female emperor, Wu Zetian. True to C-drama form, its narrative is equal parts historical anchor and theatrical excess: poisoning is routine, etiquette is deadly serious, and a single misstep in attire can be catastrophic. The game wastes no time establishing this tone in its opening sequence, when a group of newly inducted palace attendants—Cairens—arrive to join the imperial household.
My avatar, Wu Yuanzhao, has just become a Cairen. As the group awaits an audience with the high-ranking Consort Wei, Yuanzhao’s childhood companion Liu Xi offers her a delicate gold hairpin carved like a peony. Yuanzhao refuses out of respect—knowing it was a present from Liu Xi’s mother—yet Liu Xi insists until the pin slips from her hand and clatters to the floor just as the Consort is announced.
When Consort Wei notices the fallen pin and admires it, the game gives you a choice: claim the pin, confess it belongs to Liu Xi, or say it belongs to someone else. I blamed another Cairen, and that decision escalated faster than I expected. Apparently peonies are favored by the Empress; a lowly Cairen wearing one is interpreted as an affront. The girl who claimed the pin was hauled away for a brutal punishment, and I began to suspect Liu Xi—her insistence felt oddly calculated—as if she were maneuvering me into disgrace.
C-dramas often blur the line between historical drama and heightened soap opera, trading plausible realism for plot twists—secret identities, illicit liaisons, and murder schemes are the norm. What sets them apart visually is the lavish production design, and Road to Empress delivers in spades. The game unfolds through filmed live-action cutscenes, punctuated by decision points, and boasts sumptuous period costumes, meticulously constructed sets, and richly detailed props that feel straight out of a top-tier historical series.
Those same filmed sequences, however, also limit narrative branching; filming a huge number of alternate scenes would be prohibitively expensive. Choices influence outcomes, but more often than not you’re presented with three options and only one advances the story. That constraint can be frustrating, yet it also becomes part of the game’s eccentric charm.
Case in point: I was once imprisoned for wearing a gown deemed “too ostentatious.” While incarcerated I was offered bread and promptly collapsed—poisoned. Reloading, I refused the bread but accepted gruel the next day and died again. Finally I declined both rations and, in a twist that had me laughing out loud, perished from starvation. The lesson was clear: nothing in that prison is safe. Eventually I reloaded to a previous save and chose a more subdued dress.
Road to Empress won’t appeal to everyone—it’s a niche blend of melodrama and FMV interactivity—but for fans of C-dramas or anyone who appreciates gloriously over-the-top live-action storytelling, it’s an entertaining, visually lavish, and frequently uproarious ride. The game also teases more to come: the closing cutscene functions as a trailer for New One Studio’s next installment, Road to Empress 2, which promises to continue the saga.
Source: Polygon
