What else can you do during the Spring Festival holiday apart from eating and drinking and having fun with relatives? Well, in an old town near Chengdu, some people are steering away from traditional family games like majiang and Chinese poker and engaging in a murder mystery game inspired by the town's history. Positioned in an ancient setting, players can fully immerse themselves into the suspense-driven plot.

The ancient town on the outskirts of Chengdu has more than 1,000 years of history. Once in decline, the emergence of kung-fu-themed murder mystery games has proved a hit with tourists.

If you want a full experience of the kung fu world, you have to be a part of it. Players can choose characters with different stories and different outcomes. In the game, they can practice martial arts, complete missions and experience ancient China.

If you get a bit tired of solving puzzles, you can use the ancient money you've earned from the game to buy cakes baked in the way they were hundreds of years ago.

Besides activities like this, the town offers other ways to experience intangible cultural heritage.

While on a mission, players can also enjoy Cuju – an age-old style of football and "fifteen-pin bowling" – a popular sport of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). A game can last anywhere from three hours to two days. Young players say it's both fun and an escape from their daily routines.

The murder mystery game originated in the West, but it is gaining popularity in China. As an emerging offline entertainment project, it is popular among young people. Last year, the market size exceeded 10 billion yuan ($1.57 billion) in China.

Players say they release the pressure sustained at work in a virtual environment and feel the joy of life.

Some players made suggestions for improving the game. From the script design to the professionalism of the actors and the quality of the participants, the more immersed people are, the more likely they'll have a perfect experience.

The plot in this town was designed based on its history. For example, Lu You, a famous Song Dynasty (960-1279) poet, who once served as a vice-prefect here, often appears in the script.

Xie Li, the CPO of the related company, said both the murder mystery and tourism are about storytelling and fit very well together. The project's revenue in the last six months of 2021 reached the highest level in the past ten years.

Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, has many other immersive tourist towns, where stories and characters are linked together to form an entire kung fu universe.

Because of its rapid expansion, the murder mystery format in China has faced greater regulation. This year, Shanghai became the first city in China to put the genre under municipal supervision. Murder mystery companies must strictly review the content of scripts, the sets of scenes, costumes and props. Teenagers are barred from games.