Yīn Yuán

Yīn Yuán is a story-driven puzzle game set around a dilapidated cinema in a remote small town. After receiving a strange text message during a film and having a coffin delivered to your home, you solve a series of unsettling mysteries and discover that you have forgotten part of your family’s past. The search leads you toward your hometown, where the story behind these events begins to emerge.

The story

The mysteries include a cinema where you become trapped in a loop, a coffin delivered to your home and two overlapping worlds connected to a watch. As you solve puzzles, you uncover the past and question what debts you owe, whether you are alive or dead, and what happened to your parents and family. The game raises the possibility that the events stem from the harm of traditional social conventions or from someone pulling the strings.

Setting and puzzles

The game draws on the look and objects of a bygone era, including an old cinema and projection room, enamel basins and standard-issue matchboxes. Its Chinese elements include Sichuan opera face-changing, a child’s first-birthday object-selection ceremony, the five elements and bagua, wordplay in couplets, and tricks based on superstition.

Puzzles include mechanisms, an observational Russian-doll puzzle, a hands-on Tower of Hanoi and a disentanglement puzzle for logic-minded players.

Mouse interaction

You use the mouse to select and interact with objects, collect items and drag them to change their states. Random clicking can be penalized. The game includes hint and skip options, each with a cooldown.