How did the "romantic companion script"role-playing game become so popular?
The immersive romantic companion role-playing game originated from the script-killing game, which began as a collaborative mystery-solving game before expanding into emotional and theatrical formats.
The script-killing game originated from the Western board game "Murder Mystery". Against a set story background, six to 10 players sit around a table, each taking on a different role to solve a murder mystery. In 2013, a British script Death Wears White was introduced into the Chinese market, becoming the first script-killing game in China.
In 2016, Who's the Murderer, a hit reality series produced by a leading new media platform under China’s Hunan Broadcasting System, Mango TV, became a nationwide blockbuster.
The show brought the script-killing game into China’s mainstream spotlight, and kicked off the industry’s first round of rapid expansion, according to a thematic research report from Southwest Securities.
According to data from iiMedia Research, China’s script-killing game market surpassed 10 billion yuan in 2019, representing a year-on-year increase of 68%. Although impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the market continued to expand, with its growth rate slowing to 7%.
Based on content, script-killing games are categorized into seven types of scripts, including “hardcore” (focused on challenging deduction), “reconstruction” (using deduction to piece together a twists story), “comedy-style”, “horror-style” ,“emotional-style” , “faction-style” (where players are divided into opposing factions), and “mechanics-style” (incorporating game mechanics into the script).
The industry grew rapidly between 2020 to 2022. According to the 2022 Development Report on the Scripted Entertainment Industry by Meituan Research Institute, the number of active players was 1.24 million in 2020, and it had rapidly increased to 5.17 million in 2021. By 2022, the number of offline scripted role-playing stores had exceeded 30,000 in China.
As early as 2019, the script Qingping Diao first experimented with romantic plotlines, but many people couldn't accept it at that time, according to 36Kr, a leading Chinese tech and business media.
It was not until 2021, with the breakout success of two hit emotional-style scripts — Nine Heavens and Dawn — that romantic relationships between DMs and players became hugely popular, prompting stores across the country to follow the trend.
Later, in 2025, the release of two hit romantic companion scripts Rogue Narrative 流氓叙事 and Lihuo 璃火, significantly elevated the prominence of romance roles within the script, ushering in the era of romance-focused role-playing games.
On RedNote, many players post that they had finally “gotten their life character” after playing Rogue Narrative, and the mentions of #Rogue Narrative has already achieved nearly 2 million mentions.
According to the report by Entertainment Capital, the scripted role-playing industry underwent a major reshuffle from 2022 to 2023, with nearly 60% of stores permanently closing amid tighter government regulation.
The new rules added “script entertainment” to official business scope categories and standardized fire safety requirements. All script-killing venues had to update their business licenses and follow strict safety standards. Many stores operating in residential buildings were forced to shut down as they caused noise disturbances and failed to meet fire regulations.
However, against such difficult market conditions, stores started involution to keep players and romantic companion scripts became the main way for stores to profit and survive. Eventually, the dedicated players still increased instead. In 2025, the script-killing market size exceeded 44 billion yuan, according to the 2025-2029 China Emotional Economy Consumption Trend Insight Report by iiMedia Research.
According to the 2023 Development Report on the Scripted Entertainment Industry by Meituan Research Institute, the two most important factors for users when choosing a venue are the professionalism of the DM and the quality of the script. Professional DMs in romantic companion scripts, who play the player’s lover, perfectly fit this key demand.
Created by LIU Yutong
Yuan Silu, a dedicated player with 5 years of experience and who has worked part-time as a female DM, said that Rogue Narrative made her switch from traditional script-killing scripts to playing romantic companion scripts.
"The script is logically coherent with rich emotional build-up, making people have good text reading and the plot experience, and easier to immerse in it,” Yuan said.
She added this script also extended the standard runtime of a script murder session from the original 6 hours to 8–12 hours, as it spends hours immersing players in the story’s worldview and forging emotional bonds with their DM and fellow players to make later plot twists and emotional impacts truly resonate.
The romantic companion script format has also evolved rapidly. What began as a single romantic companion role per script expanded to one each for male and female players, then to four dedicated roles. The 2025 hit Divine Ruins (Shen Xu) even features a full 1v1 romantic companion setup for all eight players, priced at 698 yuan per person.