At the 2020 Chongqing Digital Publication Annual Conference held on November 13, YingLoong Interactive Entertainment released Memories of Hometown: Weiyuan. As the fruit of YingLoong's year-long effort in combining Chongqing's local culture and nature with gameplay under the theme of "Chongqing Scenery," this educational game aims to carry forward Chongqing's excellent traditional culture and give players an immersive introduction to Chongqing's infinite charm.

Its planner is Zuo Qiqi, a '90s girl from Chongqing who graduated in Game & Interactive Media Design from the USC School of Cinematic Arts as a first-class student in 2020. With a year of effort, her team successfully brought Memories of Hometown: Weiyuan to fruition.

Hope players know to Chongqing through the game.

"As a Chongqing girl, I'm always proud of my hometown. I hope there can be diverse ways to make more people all over the world know Chongqing, especially its profound history and culture." Feeling sorry about the lack of Chongqing-themed games compared with plentiful films and televisions set here over recent years, Zuo Qiqi said, "It has strengthened our team's resolve to develop a game set in our hometown."

"We hope to create a world brimming with Chongqing elements so that born-and-bred players can get an immersive experience and out-of-town players can have an opportunity to know a different culture," said Fu Anping, producer of the game. Graduating from China Academy of Art, Fu has worked in the industry for 13 years.

Give players an immersive experience of Chongqing's charm.

According to Zuo Qiqi, the main storyline of the game is set in Chongqing. The protagonists are many youngsters who didn't grow up in Chongqing but now return to their hometown to discover this fantastic 3D city and embark on a unique food adventure with clues offered. Notably, players can open their own food businesses and innovate dishes, which is a big feature of the game.

In Zuo's eyes, most foreign indie games encourage players to explore at will and engage in the story to ensure that players can enjoy maximum freedom. When designing player experience, the team has combined different narratives like fragmented narratives. Chongqing's historical and cultural elements, especially folk cultural ones, are embedded in all localities to be discovered by players exploring Chongqing's unique geography, food, and customs. In this way, players can enjoy an immersive experience of Chongqing at home.

Chongqing boasts colorful intangible cultural heritage, such as Shu embroidery, Qijiang farmers' prints, Liangping woodcut New Year's pictures, Rongchang grass linen weaving crafts Chongqing lacquerware decoration technique. These cultural elements are added to the game's visual design to create a kind of beauty unique to Chongqing, promoting Chongqing's intangible cultural heritage and improving players' aesthetic taste. Besides, Chongqing's traditional music elements, such as folk music ones including Pengshui Miao folk music, Youyang folk music, Xiushan folk music, Liangping bearers' working song and Longgupo bearers' working song in Wushan County are added to the music and sound effect design, which can make the game more unique and introduce players to Chongqing's vibrant traditional culture in the background of beautiful and dynamic music.

Besides, YingLoong plans to develop another game to promote Chongqing's over 200 newly added scenic spots. This game will use consumption coupons as a reward to attract people to play the game and visit these scenic spots. Meanwhile, bold, graphic, and vivid art, planning, and programming will be used to make the game as easy-to-play as possible to draw players from different age groups. As a result, more and more people will visit these scenic spots, thus realizing an improvement in their footfall and branding and advancing Chongqing's cultural tourism.