Plan your life year by year
Rise from dock work to a stall, a shop and a trading house. Every year you plan work, business, rest and social ties, weighing money, health, relationships and family.
Nanyang Chronicles is a life simulation game set in the Chaoshan emigrant hometowns of southern China and the journey to Nanyang, the Southeast Asian lands where generations sought their fortune. Year by year you plan work, business, rest and social ties, weighing money, health, relationships and family. Business rises and falls, the times change, and the family far away grows a year older with every year that passes.
On the day you left home, you made your wife a promise: once you've earned enough, you'll come back.
The red-bow junk sails out of Zhanglin's old harbor, and home slowly sinks below the sea. Leaving your pregnant wife behind, you set off alone to make a living in Nanyang. From dock work to a street stall, a rented shop and finally a trading house, every coin you save brings the same question: keep it in the business, or send it home so the family can live a little better?
The first reply letter says mother and child are safe. Later, the child starts school and the old house gets new roof tiles. Later still, your wife writes: when are you coming home?
Rise from dock work to a stall, a shop and a trading house. Every year you plan work, business, rest and social ties, weighing money, health, relationships and family.
A qiaopi is both a letter home and a remittance. The money you send can support the household, pay for schooling or build a grand family house. The replies show you life across the sea, and remind you of promises not yet kept.
Business rises and falls, the times change, and the family back home grows older year after year. Every sum you send and every year you miss stays with them.
Save up a fortune and sail home, or settle in Nanyang and pass the business and the longing to the next generation. Each choice leaves a different life and family story.
When the new house is finally built, will the lamp by its door light your way home?
While making Nanyang Chronicles, we kept returning to one image: someone far from home, living frugally, saving a little money, writing the words "safe and well" and sending it across the sea.
The writer wanted the family to stop worrying, so much of the hardship went unwritten. And the family, receiving the money, still had to ask: when are you coming home?
We wanted to put that longing into the game, so that small decisions like "one more year of business", "save a little more" or "not going back this year" slowly gain weight. Each time you press "Next Year", the shop changes, the children grow up, and your parents and wife grow a year older.
The game has a family business, a network of connections and a look back over a whole life. We also hope you remember a particular reply letter, a room that was always kept for you, or the moment you finally decided to board the ship home.
We hope that in this life in Nanyang, you build a family fortune and keep the people you long to see.
We hope that in this life in Nanyang, you build a family fortune and keep the people you long to see.