The Scroll Of Taiwu

I've spent enough time with complex sandbox sims to recognise the specific shape of ambition that The Scroll of Taiwu is swinging for, and I'll say upfront: this one bites off more than most indie studios dare chew. You are the heir of the Taiwu clan across multiple generations, which means the game is less about one character's arc and more about optimising a dynasty - planning which martial arts disciplines to pass down, which NPC relationships to cultivate before your current heir ages out, and which sect among the fifteen available you want to draw your techniques from. That generational layer is the mechanical hook that separates this from a standard wuxia RPG, and it largely works. The system stack underneath is genuinely impressive. Combat resolves around weapon reach, counters, and technique chaining drawn from sect-specific martial arts libraries. Six distinct poison types interact with each other in a looping trigger system - each one activating under different conditions like movement or offensive action - which means building a poison-focused heir demands the same kind of build-order thinking I'd apply to a Paradox campaign. Outside combat, you are managing village construction, gathering resources, running crafting chains for weapons and medicine, forging alliances or blood feuds with NPCs who age and die on their own schedule, and optionally raising children to inherit your accumulated skill set. The procedurally generated maps and NPC rosters mean no two runs share the same geography or cast, which gives the game genuine replayability across dozens of hours. Here is where I have to be straight with you about the current state. The Scroll of Taiwu has been in Early Access since September 2018, and as of mid-2026 it remains there. The community has been vocal - and increasingly frustrated - about repeated delays to the official English translation. A fan-made translation mod exists and covers the critical NPC dialogue and most UI elements, but a portion of item names and some tooltip text remain untranslated or poorly localised. Mechanically you can progress, but crafting becomes trial-and-error when item stat descriptions are missing, and some tooltip logic for complex systems like poison interactions does not read cleanly even in translated form. Players who read Chinese will have a substantially smoother time. The overall Steam reception holds at mostly positive across its review lifetime, but recent sentiment has been more mixed, with the translation delay drawing the bulk of negative feedback. For the right player, none of that is disqualifying. If you have patience for discovery-through-failure, enjoy building mental models of opaque systems the same way Dwarf Fortress fans do, and are drawn to wuxia mythology as a setting rather than just a coat of paint, the depth here is authentic. The Workshop support means the modding community has been active in patching gaps the developer has not filled. Think of each run as a simulation campaign with a generational victory condition rather than a traditional RPG with a story to follow, and the learning curve stops feeling punishing and starts feeling purposeful. Newcomers should plan to lose their first two or three heirs to system ignorance - that is the tutorial, whether the game admits it or not. The honest caveat is that Early Access in year eight is a meaningful qualifier. The content present is substantial, but the product is unfinished, the English localisation relies on community effort, and development pace has been slow. If that combination bothers you, waiting for a 1.0 release is the correct call. If you can work with those constraints, there is a genuinely unusual sim underneath that you will not find replicated anywhere else.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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