Last updated on January 3rd, 2026 at 06:30 am
Road to Empress I – Casual Game Review
Road to Empress I is a Casual/Simulation game from Sixjoy Hong Kong Limited, first launched in 9th September 2025.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 510+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Road to Empress I Stand Out
This work requires a constant internet connection. The full content consists of all 16 chapters, including chapters 1-2 (already purchased) and chapters 3-16 which need to be purchased to unlock.
You've never played anything like this before—Road to Empress I, a cinematic palace challenge where your move shapes the palace drama!
Full 4K Live-Action Star-Studded Performance
Watch real drama unfold through the eyes of talented actors performing on lavishly crafted sets. Featuring Kuan Hung, Evie Huang, Zeawo, Hana Lin, Zi Yu, Qi Xiaxia, and an ensemble cast who bring the imperial court to life in breathtaking 4K detail. Everything has been meticulously recreated to pull you deep into the heart of ancient China's most glorious palace.
Your Choices Shape History
This is where film meets gaming in perfect harmony. Every choice matters. One moment of misplaced trust could send you spiraling into betrayal and death. Who's manipulating you? Who can you manipulate in return?
Survive to Rule
Rising from obscurity to ultimate power out of multiple deadly story branches takes cunning, charm, and wisdom. The crown awaits… if you live long enough to claim it.
Uncover the Palace's Darkest Secrets
Behind the golden facade of the imperial court lies a web of forbidden desires, deadly conspiracies, and buried truths. The Prince's secret affair with the court bard, the Princess's hidden lover, the vengeful spirits haunting the abandoned Cold Palace… Every scandal of the ancient dynasty awaits your discovery.
Multiple Playthroughs
With over 8 hours of cinematic content, no two playthroughs are alike. Your choices don't just change the story; they define who you become. Earn a personalized Trait Sketch based on your decisions, collect beautiful traditional artifacts, unlock hidden storylines, and crown your favorite characters in global popularity contests!
About New One Studio
We are an independent creative team focused on crafting full-motion video experiences that blend Eastern culture with interactive storytelling. Our goal is to create immersive experiences that cross cultural boundaries. In 2019, The Invisible Guardian received BAFTA recognition and connected with millions through its non-linear narrative and deep exploration of moral choices. Now we return with "Road to Empress," weaving the ancient dynasty legends into an interactive experience that bridges cultures and centuries. Step into our world of palace intrigue, where ancient wisdom meets modern storytelling, and every choice echoes through history. Inspired by the ancient dynasty legends, we create Road to Empress I. Chapters 1-16 dive into the empress's legendary beginnings. Watch an unknown girl proceed with caution in palace crawling with enemies, using extraordinary wit and remarkable courage to outlast brutal power struggles, slowly making her name. These are the most nail-biting years—calm before storm, plotting rise while staying under radar. Every move sets stage for her ultimate climb to power pyramid's top. More chapters under development. Stay tuned!
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RoadtoEmpressOfficial
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@roadtoempressen
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roadtoempress/
X: https://x.com/roadtoempressen
Discord: https://discord.gg/roadtoempress
This Casual game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Road to Empress I is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 26th November 2025
Recent improvements include:
Interactive Palace Adventure
Download & Availability
Road to Empress I is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Road to Empress I on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Probably one of the best mobile games Ive ever played! 10/10, the storylines, the choices, the quality of everything like we were literally questioning if these people where extremely well designed 3d characters or actual humans and everything was so brilliant and well played out. We literally downloaded this game today and we finished it today thats how locked in we were bro like ITS WORTH THE MONEY.
Most exciting and fun game ever.
Beautiful scenes, beautiful story. We love how immersive it is. Felt like we were in a C-Drama. Love love love.
Dumb ways to die dynastic china edition.
Great game we love it so much and so much drama hehehe.
Disclaimer: You have to pay 99 cents to try out 2 chapters of the game and then an additional $5 and some change to unlock all the chapters and theres 16 chapters. From the first two chapters, we were already hooked. The game is an interactive game where you make the decisions. For someone who loves period C-Dramas, this game is amazing. Ive already died and gotten branded with the peony flower lol but you can retry which is great. Its like watching a show and you make the decisions for the protagonist. 8/10!! Amazing.
We love this game! Its so different from all games Ive played. The storyline and the actors are fantastic! Looking forward to next part.
Beautiful gameplay and the story is very immersive. Will keep playing and cant wait for part two.
This game is so unhinged but so entertaining! We love it.
Do you like Chinese Dramas??? Have you ever wished to change the fate of your MC??? How about watching your enemies dig their own holes? Palace power struggles are brutal, do you have the guts to drag yourself into the position of Empress!? There are so many things you can choose, so much to discover, and so much content and amazing acting to enjoy. Loosely following the history of Wu Zetian, this fictional world is pretty amazing and is quite immersive. Yeah, maybe youll have your fair share of some poisonous endings, but literally in the end its all worth it! Where is Road to Empress 2!? Ahhh, we cant wait.
We are so enthralled with this game. The story is amazing and the gameplay is very cool. The choices are tough and it really feels dangerous while playing.
When we open the game and try to login, the login application is on the side horizontal and cut off half way. We really had high hopes for this game it is such a shame we cant play. We spent a dollar to play we want a refund. We opened the game and closed it multiple times, the app still refused to work. Im severely disappointed, please fix your app.
Its a good quality game but we would not have bought it if we knew you needed to buy the other chapters after the first 2.
Youll need to pay $6 to unlock chapters 3 to 14. The initial $1 only unlocks chapters 1 and 2. Animation good and plot is fun.
We love C-Dramas and palace dramas, this game we have been SEARCHING FOR its so good omg. The endings the interactive choices! Everything! Props to the actors also! Thank you for this.
This game is absolutely amazing as someone whos always been obsessed with harem drama games like Royal chaos or rise of the empress for example this one just takes the cake! 10/10 recommend for those who want a more complex experience.
This game is super fun! We love how interactive it is.
Amazing game. Makes you feel a part of an epic historical drama that has a twist at every corner. We cannot wait to see what comes next.
The only bad part of this game was when it ended, Im so invested we never wanted it to stop.
Boyfriend encouraged us to play and now its the best game weve ever played together. These choices getting intense and its making us rethink our life. Boyfriend now has ideas. Has anyone seen our hair pin.
It's really nice!! Just that our humanity leads our fl to die in every single possible way >< we die four times just to save Bianji alone and GouYang still ended up hating us after all that! Devs R U Even human TAT Why must that little princess had to bear such pain.
The game is good but the price is misleading. The starting price ($0.99) only unlocks the first 2 chapters. You need to buy more in game to continue.
This game is far surpassing all Harem games that have been around for years. We highly recommend if immersing yourself into the Harem and experience a true Royal experience this game is for you.
The production values are amazing and the plots? Ruthless. Im in love. We already bought another copy on Steam and signed up for the newsletter for the next installment. Just try it. Seriously.
We never write reviews but we had to for this. Ive never watched a Chinese historical drama before, and clearly Ive been missing out! This game had us so gagged. Died like 1000 different times and enjoyed every minute. Our only complaint is that we wish we couldve gotten the full storyline, but we cant wait for Road to Empress 2. Shout out to the incredible cast and writers.
Great work . This game is addictive. Beware thesoup.
Im a few hours into the game, and its been so so fun! We like to play a lot of otome games and watch k + c dramas, so this was right up our alley. We were really surprised by how unique the game was compared to other empress games. Most of the time theyre 2D dress up games where story and choices arent the main focus. But with Road to Empress its live action and you get to fully immerse yourself in the story. We were really impressed! Especially for the price, since we only payed 99 cents for the game and 5 or 6 dollars to unlock all the chapters. Its an amazing game and we highly recommend.
We love this interaction game so much! Especially since Im into historical/romantic cdrama, those we like the most! As this game has drama, romance, making important decisions which you can look back to if you had made the wrong choices, it really helps us and others especially as we tend to overthink the decisions & atleast we can see what will happen if we made the other choices. Also we finished the game, and we love it so much! We wonder when Road to Empress 2 is gonna come outttt, haha like we really want it out now, but we also dont want the game to rush much, its just that Im so hyped for the second part. :) also evie huang (lead/main character) is beautiful, cute, and her acting is very good! And the male actors who plays the princes are handsome, and attractive. The roles for this game is very well done, as it pleased our outlook on this game.
Its so good we dont regret the 99 cent that we spend we love games like this and we hope they make more.
Super well done and worth every penny.
We cant believe we finished this game in one day, its so immersive and you just want to click on every single option to see all the outcomes! The outfits are beautiful, voice acting is beautiful, the actors themselves are beautiful! We cannot wait for the sequel, easily the best $6 Ive ever spent.
This is such a fun and immersive game if you love palace dramas! We need the second part now.
Its pretty cool, enjoying the story. Its like a choose your own adventure story. It seems pretty linear, feeling like we have multiple paths, but find Im only trying to choose the best answer so we can move forward with the movie. Am enjoying it though.
What an amazing game. Amazing graphic and we love everything about it. We wish the storyline was more flexible as there is only one storyline we have to follow so there are wrong answers which leads to your death haha, but we enjoy it so much. We even recommend it to all our friends and family. We wish they make more of these type of game. Please make more!!!! Where is part 2.
That was awesome omg we cant wait for the next story.
This such a good concept we love it we thought we could make it since we watch ancient Chinese dramas all the time but omg we got killed twice in chapter one. We would not live a day if we were transmigrated into the ancient world haha.
This game is so addicting. We pre-ordered originally and then we bought all 16 episodes. We are on episode 11 right now and we cant wait to see how it ends. You can really see that this game is in early stages like we have no idea what to do with the coins,eggs,or roses. That being said, we love the story overall.
First time playing this type of game, just passed this first chapter, really enjoying it so far.
These are the kind of games that we really enjoy. A great visual novel experience with twists and turns. It does really make back tracking to previous choices very very easy.
We absolutely love this, this is the type of game we love we finished it so quickly, the drama was insane we couldnt stop watching and the characters are so good.
We finished the game and we need more!!! Very immersive gameplay. You forget it's a game and get completely wrapped up in the storyline. We did notice between chapters 7 through 10, there were times where the english captions stopped working. Other than that, we need 100 more chapters immediately!! The actors in the game are top notch as well! All in all, we would highly recommend this game! Game creators you did a wonderful job with this one! Please keep the chapters coming quickly.
Very good quality, interesting story, we died two times with in the first five minutes, which is fun! Recommended.
If you love historical dramas then this is your sign to start playing Road to Empress we died twice already in the first chapter lol.
We need more game apps like these! Also a big fan of Asian period dramas! We think this is a fantastic concept and we hope the develop and evolve this idea more. So much better than another matching game. We would pay more for this.
We really enjoy this game! It feels just like stepping into a Chinese palace drama, full of intrigue, strategy, and unexpected twists. The atmosphere, characters, and storyline are very immersive, and its exciting to experience the kinds of challenges and rivalries often seen in historical palace TV series. Its both entertaining and engagingI feel like Im part of a real palace drama.
Could not put this game down, it felt like we were inside a C-drama. Cant wait for them to release part 2.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.5
- Size: 608.99 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: EN, JA, KO, ZH, TH, ZH
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence
- Developer: [Sixjoy Hong Kong Limited]()
Last updated: 26th November 2025 | Genre: Casual, Simulation | Developer: Sixjoy Hong Kong Limited