The interactive film game planned by Stephen Chow has been launched, with its average paid orders exceeding 100,000. Adapted from a well-known IP, its art style looks just like that of a browser game?
At 10 o'clock today, *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land*, a live-action interactive video game adapted from *Shaosong*, a top historical online novel on Qidian, was officially unlocked on the Steam platform.
Interactive Star, one of the producers of *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land*, received investment from Stephen Chow's BGO Group not long ago.
Meanwhile, *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* is a rare interactive video game product in the track that focuses on heavy male-oriented themes, representing a new attempt by capital parties and IP holders. This type of male-oriented narrative that highlights historical sentiment and strategic game, is it possible to become the second growth curve of the industry?
Today, DataEye Research Institute will discuss this topic.
Product Observation of *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land*
(1) Product Overview
*Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* is adapted from the historical novel *Shaosong* on Qidian Chinese Network written by Liudan Paishui. This novel is the first historical work on Qidian with an average subscription exceeding 100,000, and has long ranked TOP1 on both the bestseller list and the collection list of historical themes on Qidian. On the Douyin platform, the total view count of related topics has exceeded 2.4 billion.
In terms of production team: Stephen Chow's investment + director who pioneered the track. Interactive Star, one of the producers of *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land*, received investment from Stephen Chow's BGO Group not long ago. It also released a product with national sentiment called *End of Ming Dynasty: Conquer the World* in 2025, which currently has a "Very Positive" rating on Steam, with 92% positive reviews out of 1990 comments.
In addition, the original author Liudan Paishui participated in the whole process as the core planner, and the game director is Di Huangjin, who is also the director of *The Invisible Guardian*, China's first domestic live-action interactive film and television product. *Overlook the Northern Rivers* launched last year was also directed by him. Overall, the main creative team has strong strength.
The official price of *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* is 59 yuan, but there is a limited-time 20% discount for the first 14 days after launch. On August 14, the official announced that the number of Steam wishlists for *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* had reached 70,000.
(2) Controversy over Plot and Gameplay
In terms of game plot content: The soul-transmigrated male protagonist's road to saving the country, pursuing restoration of the original work. The core game setting of *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* is "a male college student transmigrates and becomes Zhao Gou, the founding emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty". The story is set in the Southern Song Dynasty after the Jingkang Incident. Players will face strong dramatic conflicts at the beginning of the game, and every decision made by players will affect the development direction of the later stage of the game. Therefore, the game sets multiple branch routes and provides multiple hidden endings that can be unlocked.
In terms of gameplay content: Integrating the "wargame" gameplay, but the sense of fragmentation is obvious. *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* inherits the basic gameplay of traditional interactive video game products - dialogue choices and QTE real-time reactions. The player is set as the monarch of a country, which effectively highlights the importance of "dialogue choices". At key plot nodes, the project team simulates on-the-spot decision-making in tense situations by integrating QTE real-time reaction methods.
At the same time, the interaction between the protagonist and other characters can generate favorability, which will affect the subsequent plot direction.
It should be noted that *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* adds turn-based wargame gameplay on the original basis. Players will enter the battle in specific plots, and they need to deploy troops and command the army. Later, this gameplay is integrated into the main plot to simulate the battle between the two armies and create grand scenes.
Essentially, the project team adds more highly compatible gameplay content to the traditional interactive video game products to improve the overall playability. However, this also easily leads to a clear sense of fragmentation between gameplay and content, because when switching to turn-based wargame battles on the plot content performed by real people, the screen adopts the 3D traditional oblique top-down wargame perspective. Moreover, the model accuracy is medium, the material is flat, the light and shadow are simple, and the overall visual look has the style of traditional web games and mobile games. Without discussing playability, the overall game immersion may be slightly insufficient.
Sorting out Marketing and Promotion Before Launch
DataEye Research Institute sorts out the marketing and promotion actions of *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* before launch:
(1) PV Content Promotion
On June 15, the project officially announced for the first time to release the first concept trailer, and simultaneously opened the Steam wishlist. Then on July 24, the scheduled PV was released, and the actor lineup was announced. At the same time, related topics were promoted on social media, such as #ShaosongInteractiveVideoGame.
Entering August, the project team continued to promote PV content. On August 7, the "Unfailing Loyalty" PV demonstrated gameplay such as content choice gameplay and character relationship favorability, and launched the Steam wishlist milestone lottery activity. In the "Who Else But Me" PV content in August, the project team focused on describing elements such as the battlefield and war to further push the wishlist to a higher level.
However, judging from the project team's Bilibili channel at present, the popularity of related video content is average. The first explosive PV currently only has 75,000 views, and only the scheduled video of the subsequent related content reaches 39,000 views, while other videos basically do not exceed 10,000 views.
(2) Social Media Operation
At the social media level, the official account calls players "Guanjia" (the honorific title for the emperor in ancient China), and the official calls itself "subject", hoping to fit the world view of the original work in daily expressions and strengthen the identity recognition of fans.
In terms of content, official promotion mainly displays character stills, behind-the-scenes footage, split PV clips, secondary editing of original work memes, and involves character emoticons for soft content promotion.
(3) IP Cross-border Collaboration
In July, Bagong Mountain Scenic Spot carried out cultural tourism linkage with the original IP of *Shaosong*. The 100,000 average subscription celebration of the original work was held in Bagong Mountain, the author Liudan Paishui was present for book signing, and offline fan gatherings were also held. The scenic spot set up theme check-in points, comic exhibitions, IP inflatable models, etc. Although the activity was a novel IP activity, the core users of *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* are basically IP fans. The novel IP activity accumulated the emotion of book fans in advance for the launch of the video game, and completed the exposure of the IP in real scenarios.
In addition, the mobile game *No Regrets in the Chinese History* carried out a script linkage with *Shaosong* on August 20, which is the same day as the launch of the interactive video game *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land*. It is expected to realize mutual diversion, further reach the player group of historical strategy mobile games, and expand the audience base.
(4) Summary of Marketing Strategy Characteristics
Overall, the project team progresses by circle dimension: original book fans → history enthusiasts → interactive video game players, first capturing the stock IP fans and then spreading outward. In terms of social media content, it continuously launches IP-related content to maintain exposure, and at the same time directs traffic to the Steam wishlist to strive for high user reservations and increase the absolute value of conversion.
In addition, the project team uses the pre-linkage method to preheat the IP popularity in advance, so that the launch of the video game can take over the traffic.
The promotion actions of *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* are relatively stable. The core reason is to hope to stabilize IP fans and achieve a smooth launch. However, judging from the current promotion data of the project team, it can also be clearly seen that male-oriented historical national-themed works lack social currency.
DataEye Research Institute believes that discussions on this type of themed products are mainly concentrated within vertical circles. For example, original work fans pay attention to the restoration degree of the plot, history enthusiasts research the costumes and props, and gameplay fans delve into the game mechanism. Although this type of topic can firmly lock core fans, it lacks mass entertainment and cannot achieve breakout in the social communication layer. This means that it is difficult for products with male-oriented narrative themes to replicate the large-scale breakout of *Flourishing Dynasty*.
A Stress Test for New Attempts of Capital
*Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* has been officially unlocked, and the market performance still needs to pay attention to the subsequent "battle report" of the project team. However, DataEye Research Institute believes that *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* is essentially a new attempt by capital parties and IP holders. Its market performance may affect the future development of the track, including theme layout, product form and IP secondary development logic. What is new about this new attempt:
First, the large channel of IP adaptation. As a top IP adaptation, *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* quickly verifies the channel of IP adapted interactive video games, which means that the development link of "online novel/short drama → interactive video game" can be recognized by the market.
Second, the exploration of the male-oriented market. If *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* succeeds, it will effectively expand the track, verify the commercial feasibility of male-oriented interactive video games. Capital and manufacturers will accelerate the layout of male-oriented themes, market supply will increase, and the market size is expected to further increase.
Third, the feasibility of integrating medium and heavy gameplay into interactive video games. At present, the overall interactive video game takes a lightweight route with a single gameplay, and has long stayed in the shallow interaction stage of "watching videos by choosing options". Integrating diverse and playable content may become an opportunity for the diversified development of the track. But how to achieve high-fit integration is naturally an important topic that the track needs to pay attention to in the future.
DataEye Research Institute always believes that the real market significance of *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* may lie in whether it can broaden the theme boundary of the interactive video game track, and prove that interactive video games can not only carry lightweight narratives such as romance and palace fighting, but also have more phenomenal space and stronger commercialization capabilities.
Because for the entire track, if you want the market cake to continue to grow, the track ecology must not be a uniform hit template, but more differentiated products are needed. The emergence of differentiated products such as *Shaosong: Restore Our Lost Land* essentially blazes a new path for interactive video games. When the track steps out of the female-oriented comfort zone and begins to cover more crowds, more themes and more gameplay, it truly has the possibility to become a mainstream game category.
This article is from the WeChat official account "DataEye" (ID: DataEye), author: ohzyh, published with authorization from 36Kr.