Escape | 逃出去: A text adventure game for Chinese learners

Escape is an interactive graded reader where you need to both understand the text and make the right decisions to get to the end of the story. The story begins with the main character (you) trapped in a room for unclear reasons, and you must find a way to escape and avoid getting caught.

Throughout the game, you can read what’s going on through level-adjusted text (see below) and you’re then presented with options for what to do next. Depending on what you choose, the story develops differently. If you make bad decisions, perhaps because you don’t really understand the text, you will likely fail and need to try again. Don’t feel bad about that, though, failure is a necessary part of the learning process! Exploring the whole game should take several hours unless you’re already quite good at reading Chinese.

This is a much more active form of reading than just following along a normal text where you can’t change the story and where your understanding of the text is not tested at all. In this game, you need to actively engage with the text and understanding it well is rewarded.

If the game is suitable for you or not depends on how much effort you’re willing to put into it. The game only has little more than 400 unique characters, so…

…if you know HSK 1-3 or about 400 characters, you should be okay, even if you will need the built in dictionary when guessing from context is not enough.
…if you know only 100 character, this game will be very hard and is not recommended unless you really want to play.
…if you know 1500 characters, this will be a form of extensive reading for you, which is also good, but of course less challenging.