April 16, 2015

Qin: Tomb of the Middle Kingdom

Learn Technologies Interactive, 1997


Qin, Tomb of the Middle Kingdom is an excellent educational adventure game that sheds light on the ancient Chinese culture and heritage. The game starts in the year 2010, where an international group of archeologist is excavating the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi, the first Emperor of China. You play the game as a young member of this group and somehow, you get trapped inside the tomb. Now, the only way to find your way out of Qin’s tomb is to unravel all its secrets and mysteries. The tomb consists of five realms: the Palace, the Crypt, the Plaza, the Garden, and the Mountain. Each realm is full of mind-boggling puzzles and traps, which the player must solve or cross in order to get access to next realm. Educationally, solving the puzzles in the game provide you immense amount of information on the ancient Chinese mythology, culture, medicine, religion and architecture, put together in the encyclopedia available in the game.

Visually, Qin exhibits state of art graphics spiced up with exuberant music and sound-effects. Game controls are mouse-driven with a point & click interface mended in a 1st-person environment. I do recommend this game but not whole-heartedly as it contains more educational input than adventuring but if you want to learn about ancient Chinese heritage then you will definitely like Qin.