Engeki Quest Macau: a gamebook to explore the city

1. I’m sitting in a busy tea restaurant in Macau, figuring out the menu and talking with theatre producer Erik Kuong. It’s the first time we’ve met since Covid so there’s a lot of catching up to do. Some old men sitting opposite us flick through newspapers and literally shout to one another. He hands me the book Engeki Quest with a faint smile. Do I open the book? (go to paragraph 3) or do I keep talking theatre with Erik? (go to paragraph 2)

2. We talk about what we have been doing and about the changes that have taken place during Covid. We talk about live events and face to face encounters and how there is a generation who have got used to living through their phones. We both wonder how to persuade them to put the phone down for a moment, step outside and go and see live shows. This leads us rather neatly to the book Engeki Quest, which is a sort of outdoor show for an audience of one. (go to paragraph 3)

3. I open the cover and start reading: it is a book about Macau. More specifically, it is a book that will guide its reader around Macau and tell stories at the same time. Unlike conventional tour books which take you on a fixed route from one point to the next, Engeki Quest is written in a “choose your own adventure” style. This means each paragraph is numbered and instead of reading the book from start to finish, you are offered many choices in the text and have to flick forwards and backwards as you go. (go to paragraph 7) 

4. I’m brought to the steps at the foot of St Paul’s where tourists compete with one another to take pictures of themselves in front of the famous facade. I quickly leave them behind and find a quiet space to the side where I’m brought into a story of Japanese migrants coming to Macau to escape the persecution of Christians back in Japan. It’s interesting to be given an identity and asked to imagine the space from someone else’s point of view. To now read about Praça de Luís de Camões (go to paragraph 6) If you’ve already read it (go to paragraph 8)

6. I set off and this route offers so many choices that I quickly become conscious not only of the path I was following but also, as in Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken, of what could have been if you had taken another path. Gentle but persistent rain starts to fall and this gives the walk a greater sense of purpose still. Most sensible people are now under shelter; continuing to walk in this weather is a commitment to finding meaning. If you’d like to read about the route around the Ruins of St Paul’s (go to paragraph 4) if you’ve already read it (go to paragraph 8)

7. The book takes me on a short walk outside the restaurant that introduces the overall theme of amnesia. The instructions are clear enough that I know where I am going while the stories are suggestive enough that they colour the way I look at the street and the buildings surrounding me. There are four separate routes that can be followed; I completed two of them. To read about the route around the Ruins of St. Paul’s (go to paragraph 4) or Praça de Luís de Camões. (go to paragraph 6) 

8. This type of journey could be done using a phone rather than a book but there is something rather engaging about it being in book format. It encourages us to put the phone away and concentrate on the here and now of walking in the city and imagining a story. It is best to do this alone as that gives you space for reflection. You have to be an active participant, not just following the instructions but looking curiously around you, using your imagination and making your own connections. As such, you get as much out of Engeki Quest as you are willing to invest in it. Will it lure the lost generation back outside? Probably not. Will it add some enchantment to Macau for those in search of it? Quite definitely.

Engeki Quest: Angel's Trick

Following the instructions in the game book Engeki Quest: Yokohama Passage, I went to the starting location of one of the routes, a metro station on the edge of Chinatown. 

Upon arrival the book invited me to imagine I had been told to go there to meet an ex-girlfriend who had not told me why she wanted to meet me: maybe to get together again or possibly something else... I thought of someone, scanned the station in vain for them, then was directed to a cafe where they were also not to be found.

I managed to follow the route as far as a park where a pair of hawks were being fed by an leather faced pensioner. They were both impressive and intimidating. How this scene related to my ex was left for me to decide. Was this a metaphor of a doomed relationship or was there a fresh hunt taking place, and if so, who was hunting whom?

At this point the trail went cold and I could not, for all my efforts, find the next point on the route. No matter, I thought, I'll continue the search on my own! I found what looked like a clue: she also had small feet.

This left me with the question, where to find her? I crossed over a bridge as I figured she being Chinese and it being the first day of Chinese New Year, Chinatown would be my best bet.

I scanned the faces of the steady pulse of people going back and forth. Doing this reminded me of the Situationist idea of the 'possible render-vous' a potential encounter with a stranger, though here the meeting is a one-sided one in which the other person provides a frame through which to view the city. That said, it was necessary to really try and identify her in this giant identity parade, without this genuine effort it would have been just another afternoon in Chinatown. 

Seeing this line of qipaos jolted me: I remember a picture of her in an almost identical one for a Chinese New Year dance. Even if I were not getting closer to her specifically, I was definitely on a parallel trail. What's more, seeing these bright colours, so alien to Japanese tastes, made me see China in a new way. China the land of loud voices and gaudy design. I was caught by a surprise nostalgia for Chinese bling.

I considered getting supernatural assistance as I had once visited a fortune teller with her. Could they tell me where she was? Maybe they could but they would do so in Japanese or, if I were lucky, in Chinese. Chances are, however, they would not even go there but stick to the safe topics of health, marriage and career. 

After completing a circuit of Chinatown I realised that this search was not so much a possible rendezvous, it more akin to a staged disappearance. I once worked with the collective Shadow Casters on examining the traces left behind by people who disappear like Lord Lucan's blood soaked car at Beachy Head so that we could then made trails using a similar logic. This trail, like the Engeki Quest book that started it and the search for Lord Lucan, was growing cold. I had come up with many associations but, predictably enough, no concrete leads. There was one final strategy. 

I sent her a new year's wechat greeting only to get a "XXXX" has enabled friend confirmation. This was a sad and unexpected ending to the tour as last time we communicated it was totally positive. What has happened since? I cannot tell and it is probably something more on her end, but in any case, it was time to bring this Engeki Quest to an end. Her story is an exceptional one that really needs telling; it is shocking, twisted, the stuff of movies even, and I now know I only ever got a very partial side of it. As a tool with which to see the city it is fine, but it deserves space to be told in its own right one day. I'm just not sure I'm the person most able to tell it straight so it might just come out in another way: as a possible rendez-vous, as a staged disappearance or, most probably, as a work of fiction.