Oracle 5000

Oracle 5000 is a single-player card-building game inspired by the Book of Changes. You play as a mysterious hand guiding people across Chinese history, choosing character cards, giving them abilities and building a deck to face challenges from the Xia Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty. The game includes 48 historical events spanning sixteen dynasties, and lets you try to rewrite the course of history.

Face the heavens

In each game, you play character cards to meet a target destiny set by Tianmu, your opponent. Tianmu randomly generates negative states to obstruct you, and you also face a random boss. Your choices and card combinations shape each run as you try to overcome these challenges.

Build your deck

The game features over 100 cards that draw on Chinese traditions and history, including the sixty-four hexagrams, five-element characters, heavenly stems, earthly branches, constellations and the Big Dipper. The available cards include 63 hexagram cards, 28 star cards, 12 zodiac cards and 12 immortal cards, alongside seven-star destiny signs, immortal-family methods, hand talents and their second-level advancements, and elephant seals. Hexagram cards have abilities derived from the Book of Changes, while the other cards provide further options for building a deck.

You can use divination values on the Favorites page to obtain new hexagram cards, then upgrade or downgrade them. These changes affect the chance of a card appearing in the store. The page also provides detailed descriptions of the different card types.

Historical events

The 48 events cover Chinese history from the Xia Dynasty to the Eastern Han Dynasty in the current version. They include stories such as Yu the Great’s flood control, the tyranny of Xia Jie, the adoption of oracle bone script, the social changes associated with Zhou Gong’s rites, the influence of the Hundred Schools of Thought and the Qin King’s campaigns. The game presents history through the lens of the Book of Changes and gives you a chance to alter its course.

Progress and play options

Your progress in a run is recorded by dynasty, and your best records are saved for the corresponding historical events on the level-selection page. The game saves automatically when you leave through the main menu, and you can continue your last run later. Quick Mode lets you set the global animation speed, and you can choose between windowed and full-screen display.