"Sultans Spiel", der "Faust-Simulator" des 21. Jahrhunderts | Spiele etwas Gutes!
Text | Liu Chongjiang
Editor | Liu Shiwu
Introduction
In the 19th - century verse drama Faust, there is such a story: God makes a bet with the devil. A kind - hearted person, even if lost in the pursuit, will eventually find the right path. So, the devil finds Faust and signs an agreement with him: as long as the devil can make Faust indulge in pleasure and say, "How beautiful you are! Please stay a while!" at a certain moment - then the devil can take away Faust's soul.
In this game with the devil, Faust's wishes are fulfilled one by one: first, in order to pursue love, he turns into a young man; then he helps the king pay off his debts; he also falls in love with Helen in the war; finally, he even wants to conquer the sea. At the end of the story, the blind Faust finally says the words, "How beautiful you are! Please stay a while!"
Readers who have played The Sultan's Game may not find it difficult to understand why the author quotes Faust here: these two stories actually have something in common! Because in The Sultan's Game, the story unfolds like this:
A foreign sorceress offers the Sultan a game: persecute others according to the instructions on four types of cards - luxury, lust, killing, and conquest. The Sultan quickly falls in love with this game, and the kingdom is shrouded in the shadow of death. And you, as an upright official, finally decide to risk your life to persuade the Sultan! Unexpectedly, the Sultan directly throws the deck of cards into your hands - from now on, you no longer have to obey the laws of the kingdom, but you must break one card every seven days, otherwise, you will be killed by the Sultan... Do you choose to go crazy with this game or look for the elusive hope?
The Sultan's Game was officially launched on Steam on March 31, 2025
Just reading the names of these cards - luxury, lust, killing, and conquest - it's not hard to understand the tone of this game.
Indeed, as early as the DEMO stage at the end of 2024, The Sultan's Game attracted wide attention with the gimmick of "explicit content". More than 100,000 players added the game to their wish lists.
On March 30, 2025, when The Sultan's Game was officially launched on Steam, the sales volume in the first week exceeded 250,000 copies. According to VG Insights' estimate, so far, the game has earned $6.7 million (approximately RMB 48.99 million). In addition, the positive review rate of The Sultan's Game has reached an amazing 91%.
The sales volume of The Sultan's Game exceeded 100,000 copies
Under the great popularity, when it comes to the game itself, the controversy surrounding the plot is an unavoidable topic.
As mentioned before, the game became quite well - known for its "explicit content", and this double - edged sword will naturally fall back on the creators in the end. In today's society, which is sensitive to gender issues, the accusation of "in - your - face gay plot" has undoubtedly pushed The Sultan's Game into the spotlight.
However, what is the real situation? Maybe we need to enter the game to find out.
The climax caused by the sense of immorality and the spiritual reward brought by irony
Before delving into the gameplay, let's talk about the core thinking of The Sultan's Game.
In daily life, everyone is restricted by morality. Not to mention the beautiful pursuits such as working hard and starting a family, at least the law is deeply engraved in everyone's heart. However, who doesn't have a little... unusual impulse in life? These desires that are difficult to satisfy in real life often become the expectations of some people for cultural and entertainment products.
Perhaps we can make a bolder assertion: When experiencing cultural and entertainment products, what we expect is definitely an "immoral" world.
The protagonist of The Sultan's Game
Just like the short dramas that have been very popular in recent years, they are actually an infinite amplification of the suppressed desires in daily life. Being bullied in reality? Well, the short drama will tell you: actually, you are the Dragon King of City X! Being deceived by a scumbag in reality? It doesn't matter. In the short drama, you can become a revenge queen!
The creative logic of The Sultan's Game is actually similar: write the behaviors of "luxury, lust, killing, and conquest", which are not allowed and out of reach in daily life, into the rules - Welcome to the Sultan's world! Indulge yourself here to your heart's content!
In the game, players can use the "lust card" on "everything", from wives to male servants, and even to passing cats or white rhinos. If played well, they can even... defeat the Sultan! And when facing NPCs they don't like, players no longer have to endure the pain of biding their time, because - just kill them! "This is a killing card... after all, sex and love are connected!" You say so when killing the NPC who tries to seduce you.
However, beauty is always short - lived. Just like after watching a short drama, in the middle of the night, looking at the dark rental house and thinking about going to work tomorrow... life seems to become even more difficult.
Simple stimulation will only lead us to emptiness in the end, because the core of the story is not emotion, but: irony.
In The Sultan's Game, when you break more and more cards, kill more people, participate in more taboo activities, and even say to the sorceress, "I want more madness! Give me two more", will you remember that at the beginning of the game, you were not the cruel Sultan, but the kind - hearted official who spoke out bravely - the dragon - slaying boy finally becomes the dragon.
When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares back at you.
In the game, you can use the lust card on "everything"
Questioning the Sultan, understanding the Sultan, becoming the Sultan... Although netizens jokingly call The Sultan's Game a "human nature simulator", it actually completes an irony of desire through indulgence: in real life, isn't power also corroding human nature in this way? - All in all, the pastime of instinctive desires is just a gimmick of the game. It has caused such a big reaction because it is closely connected with reality.
The game mechanism is innovative, but the detail handling still needs improvement
People with bronze - colored skin and exotic music - especially when hearing the name "Sultan", the first picture that comes to mind for most people is probably an Arab world far away in the desert. And when it comes to Arabia, how can we bypass that well - known story?
In ancient Arabia, there was a king who was cruel and jealous. He married a young girl every day and killed her the next morning. To save innocent women, the daughter of the grand vizier voluntarily married the king. She attracted the king by telling stories. Every night, when she reached the most exciting part, dawn would break, so the king, out of love for the stories, couldn't bear to kill her and allowed her to continue the next night... She told stories for A Thousand and One Nights, and finally, the king was touched and lived happily ever after with her.
The mysterious sorceress in The Sultan's Game
Both the plot and the gameplay mechanism of The Sultan's Game have undoubtedly drawn enough inspiration from A Thousand and One Nights.
First of all, the core gameplay of the game is that players draw cards from the mysterious sorceress. After each card is drawn, it must be broken (the task must be completed) within seven days. Secondly, as mentioned before, there are four types of cards in the game: "luxury, lust, killing, and conquest". Each type of card is divided into four grades: rock, bronze, silver, and gold. Except for the gold card, which has only one, there are two cards for each of the other grades. Therefore, the total number of cards in the deck is twenty - eight. In addition, the broken cards will not appear again, but the order in which the cards appear is completely random.
There are 28 cards in The Sultan's Game
The simple mechanism provides players with a clear main plot line. After entering the game, with seven days as a unit, players need to complete the major task of "breaking the Sultan's card"; each day is a small round. In addition to completing daily tasks such as earning money and going to school, players also have to deal with various random emergencies and look for opportunities to break the Sultan's card.
Also having one round per day, The Sultan's Game has a better rhythm than This Is the Police, which is also a card - strategy game.
In This Is the Police, players play the role of a police chief who will retire after 180 days. In addition to handling daily cases, they need to save up $500,000 in retirement funds by colluding with gangs and misappropriating public funds. However, the 180 - day countdown is too far away, and the daily work life becomes boring. Even with movie - like cut - scenes, if players put the game aside for a while, they will be confused about "what they are doing now".
The game screen of This Is the Police
In contrast, the card - drawing mechanism that cycles every seven days in The Sultan's Game, as well as the remaining card pool that can be checked at any time, provide players with more "predictability". Whether it's slacking off at work or having fun on weekends, players can play the game at any time. It can be said that this controllable feeling provides a sense of security for players in a fast - paced life: everything is under control - after all, this is an era when everyone is pursuing stability.
However, compared with the strong plot and novel mechanism, the handling of details in The Sultan's Game is quite a headache.
The first problem is the game card design. In daily events, players will continuously obtain various event cards, item cards, and character cards. To fit the overall tone of the game, most of these cards have awkward and meaningless names. Without looking at the card descriptions, it's completely impossible to understand the meaning of the cards. To make matters worse, there are a huge number of cards in the game, and they rarely repeat.
This leads to players being forced to read a large amount of text in the early stage of the game, but they may not even know what to do with this reading. Perhaps in this sense, The Sultan's Game is actually a "postgraduate entrance examination simulator": don't worry about understanding! Just memorize it first!
And this also leads to a series of problems. For example, due to the large number of cards, the card interface stacking phenomenon in the game is very serious. The mountain of cards is piled up layer by layer. Although the in - game provides a card sorting function, compared with the defect of the system, this patching up of details is a drop in the bucket.
The game screen of The Sultan's Game
In this regard, This Is the Police performs much better. The game cleverly links the cards representing police officers with the plot, fundamentally controlling the number of cards in the player's hand. There are also no fancy item cards, and the gameplay of specific events is simplified to the extreme, relying only on the player's dialogue options and the attributes of the cards themselves to determine the outcome of actions.
