FOR young urban Chinese struggling with the anxiety at work, weekdays are long and stressful. Yet weekends could also throw many into a dilemma of whether to idle at home or take the trouble to go out and socialize. For some people, they have found a perfect solution in the jubensha game.

Jubensha, or “script murder,” is a role-playing murder mystery game highly popular among China’s post-1995s generation as it offers a wonderful way to make friends and break away from the stress of real life.

In a script murder game, players are each required to play a character and then work together to find clues and solve puzzles for a murder crime. The game, which has six to eight players in a session, usually takes place in an escape room-style venue and takes four to seven hours.

While escape room games allow the players to solve puzzles as they experience real-life adventures, a script murder places more emphasis on sleuthing. “Script murder is role play plus hide and seek,” said A Hui, a script murder game host.

Dabai is a veteran player of script murder. One of his major weekday activities is making an appointment for the weekend for a script murder session. He has always been a big fan of mystery solving games such as Werewolf. Now he plays script murder twice a week, and sometimes even plays a non-player character in a session for the game store he frequently visits.

“That’s something I can look forward to for the weekend. I got to know a lot of people while playing script murder. Some are game hosts, and some are players. I also know some people who made new friends from the game. It’s a nice choice for young people to socialize,” said Dabai.

The first time Dabai went to a script murder store, he did it out of curiosity. It was the game host who helped him discover the fun of the game.

“I was shocked by the atmosphere the host created as well as the way she played her role,” said Dabai.

In script murder, a game host is referred to as a DM. It is short for Dungeon Master, a term originating from “Dungeons & Dragons,” a popular paper-and-pencil role-playing game, and referring to the organizer of a game. A DM’s work includes briefing the players on characters, distributing scripts, leading the players into the story to find clues and solve puzzles, and wrapping up a session with an analysis of the process.

“A DM is not just a game host who gives orders and observes the players. He or she is also one of the characters, and should be absorbed in the story to help the players to relate different plots and tasks and find clues without being obtrusive,” said Laoqi, a script murder DM.

The key to successfully kicking off a game session and walking the players into the story lies in the performance of a DM.

“Script murder has become a mature industry. The players have seen a lot of scripts. Currently, the competitions between script murder venues rely on whether they have exclusive scripts or scripts released in certain cities. But for the future, it will depend much on DMs,” said Menmen, a colleague of Laoqi.

Nowadays, one of the most popular genres in script murder is an “emotionally immersive” script that allows the players to emotionally experience other people’s life stories. The curiosity to find out the truth leads the players through the game, but as the story unveils, they get to savor another being’s love and hatred.

“The chance to live a different life is the biggest fun that an emotionally immersive script offers,” said A Hui.

According to Brother Long, the manager of the venue A Hui works for, most stories for script murder were thrillers and mysteries when it was first introduced to China, but the growth of female players has brought more genres, and one of them is emotionally immersive scripts. “That’s when real script writing, or even literature creation, creeps into the game,” he said.

So far, Shenzhen has more than 200 script murder venues. Trade events for the industry, which used to be held quarterly, now take place on a monthly basis.

The blossoming industry is attracting more writers as an average of more than 200 new scripts are created each month. Brother Long said that such a multitude of scripts means that the needs of various players can be satisfied.

“For green hands, we have easy-level scripts; for those who are nostalgic for the ancient times, we have stories set in an ancient-time background; for female players, we have emotionally immersive scripts; and for detective story lovers, we have pure mysteries,” said Brother Long.

Yet as there are more new players, and the old players are becoming more experienced, writers have to be more creative. Tricks frequently used in a story, such as a parallel universe, or a character with dissociative identity disorder, are no longer surprises.

To accelerate writing and to spark more creative ideas, the writing process is even streamlined in some studios. A writer would develop a storyline before others would add crime cases to the story and elaborate the details.

A number of script writing studios and online trading platforms are now developed. At a promotion event held June 18, over 6,000 sets of scripts were sold at a single trading platform.  (Lin Lin)