Tencent's New In-House Game Targeting Female Audiences Gives Its AI Agent a "Human Touch"

Yesterday, Tencent unveiled a new concept game aimed at female players, *Cat Immortal Chronicles*. Today, the game made its debut at the ChinaJoy booth, where the first round of in-person hands-on demos took place.

"Cat Immortal Chronicles" is a single-player narrative RPG that blends traditional Daoist culture with animal-themed elements and incorporates an AI Agent to create casual gameplay. The game is structured around a 49-day day-night cycle: the main story progresses during the day, while the evening marks a period of free exploration, during which the AI Agent’s casual gameplay unfolds.

Narrative RPGs aimed at female audiences are not uncommon, but those with strong storylines often lack rich gameplay interactions; once you’ve beaten the game, all that’s left is the aftertaste, and it’s hard to feel that sense of novelty again. *Cat Immortal Chronicles*, however, offers a different experience.

I also got to try out the chat feature in the game *Agent* during ChinaJoy, and even now, long after the experience ended, I’m still thinking about it.

As our conversation deepened, I gradually forgot that they were Agents—gentle, yandere, and free-spirited, yet each seemed to be hiding their own pain. Their different personalities and pasts made me curious to know what kind of stories had actually unfolded between us.

That’s also part of this game’s appeal—the AI Agent gameplay is built on a solid main storyline and well-developed characters. While playing the Agent demo, I also got a glimpse of the care and attention that went into polishing the entire game.

01

Solid plot and character development

The story of *The Cat Immortal’s Chronicles* takes place on Qingcheng Mountain. The immortal beasts live an enviably carefree life here—until the Immortal Lord’s birthday approaches, calamities begin to mount, and it seems that even their friends are each harboring unspeakable secrets. Players will step into this story as the Mystic Cat Immortal.

In the first promotional video, Xuan Mao Xian has slightly curly black hair, yellow cat-like eyes, and is clad entirely in black; with a slight downturn at the corner of his mouth, he looks just like a lifelike black cat that has taken human form.This image is derived from *Daofa Huiyuan*, specifically the Black Tiger, an attendant of Zhao Gongming, the Martial God of Wealth. In the folk traditions of Bashu, tigers are commonly referred to as “big cats,” and the Black Tiger is also known as the Black Cat.

In addition to Xuan Mao Xian, the eight companion characters in *Cat Immortal Chronicles* each have their own mythological origins. Of the three revealed so far, Luo Liangsheng is the blue magpie from *The Seven Scrolls of the Clouds*,Mu Qianqiu is the mount of the Goddess of Mount Wu from *The Nine Songs*, while You Lan is a white fox of obscure origin, whose prototype is hidden in the little-known historical notes *The External Chronicles of Yaoshan Hall*.

While the image of a white fox is not uncommon in literary works, You Yan from *The Chronicles of the Cat Immortal* is unique. She is neither a member of the Qingqiu fox clan from *The Classic of Mountains and Seas* or *Fengshen Yanyi*, nor is she the widely known noble fox immortal of Tushan; she is simply a white fox who escaped from a great fire.Though she possesses extraordinary spiritual power, this very quality has made her an outcast among her kind, forcing her to wander the mortal world alone. Without a dazzling background or the aura of divine lineage, this narrative—stripped of elitism and heroism—is all the more moving.

When it comes to character development based on mythological archetypes, *The Chronicles of the Cat Immortal* brings to life a cast of characters, each with their own distinct traits. You Yan is innocent and clever—there’s nothing she isn’t good at. Luo Liangsheng carves jade for mere pennies; though his craftsmanship is exquisite, he seeks neither fame nor fortune.Mu Qianqiu, with red hair and red eyes, half his face concealed by a mask, is a knife-maker on He Street who is too lazy to even hang a sign.

With different backgrounds and vastly contrasting personalities, the dramatic tension they create with the protagonist varies from person to person. You gave You Yan a place to call home, and she responded with passionate, all-consuming love. Luo Liangsheng is a man of few words, yet he is thoughtful in everything he does and always harbors a sense of guilt toward you.Mu Qianqiu is carefree, and spending time with him always makes you feel annoyed.

It is only through in-depth conversation that the depth of a character truly emerges.Luo Liangsheng said, “Jade is cold by nature, yet it warms the hand upon contact; the human heart is much the same.” Mu Qianqiu asked, “Can one sacrifice oneself for the sake of all living beings under heaven?” You Yan replied, “The ‘Heart’s Sin’ is an anomaly that the Celestial Court’s laws cannot tolerate, but how we view it is not determined by the Celestial Court—it is up to us.”

The protagonist of *The Cat Immortal’s Journal* is a mythical beast, yet the story explores human confusion.The rain on Qingcheng Mountain always falls ceaselessly, as if embodying chaos and indescribable emotions themselves. Over the course of 49 days, the story’s focus lies not in unraveling some grand truth, but in carrying out a lengthy inner dialogue—one that explores the tension between rules and freedom, engagement with the world and withdrawal from it, and clinging versus letting go.

It is precisely this storyline that makes the Agent chat in *Cat Immortal Chronicles* so lively.

Luo Liangsheng found a beautiful piece of jade and asked how he should carve it. I recalled the chick he had seen earlier in the mountains, so I suggested he carve it into a little chick. He hesitated slightly: “This is a rare and exquisite piece of jade; it would be a shame to carve it into a little chick.” In the end, he relented: “I had originally planned to carve an auspicious jade plaque as a gift for you, but upon further reflection, it simply isn’t as interesting as a little chick.”

While I was chatting with You Lan, peach blossoms fell all over the ground. She gathered them all into a pile and called me over to look. I asked her why she was collecting the peach blossoms, and she smiled brightly and said, “The peach blossoms will wither, but I will never leave you.”

These lines are incredibly emotionally charged, delivered at just the right moment and with perfect build-up—making it hard to believe they came from Agent. Underpinning all of this is a solid foundation of character development. Games aimed at female audiences are not short on sweet nothings; what they lack is an understanding of where the speaker comes from, what they’ve been through, and why they care so deeply.Every character in *Cat Immortal Chronicles* has a backstory and emotional wounds, and their emotions are traceable. When Agent speaks, it doesn’t feel like they’re carrying out a command—it feels more like a person pouring out their heart.

02

Behind an agent's emotions lies human work

The fact that Agent can achieve this level of emotional expression is due to the proprietary model developed by *Cat Immortal Chronicles*. However, refining this model required far more effort than the team had initially anticipated.

The challenge begins with the worldview. While general knowledge from AI agent databases is easy to access, large language models have no prior knowledge of a completely custom-built worldview—they can only learn it bit by bit through the team’s input.

Simply feeding the main storyline text into the system didn’t yield ideal results. The initial chat responses sounded awkward and didn’t sound like something this character would say.The production team had no choice but to hand-write the text for the AI Agent’s dialogue and have the AI Agent learn from it. Whenever the dialogue flowed awkwardly or the character’s persona strayed, they would hand-write more text to optimize it. It took repeated cycles of inputting text, testing, and refining to achieve natural and fluid dialogue.

Now that the overall worldview is set, we still need to ensure that the AI agent’s emotions don’t feel jarring. A common flaw with standard AI agents is that no matter what you say, they just go along with it. If you say you’re happy one moment and sad the next, they’ll respond to every sentence—making the conversation feel like you’re talking to a yes-man with no stance of their own.*Cat Immortal Chronicles* aims for characters that can sense shifts in emotional context, truly understand what you’re saying, and then provide a response that builds on it. For example, if you’re happy one moment and sad the next, the character might say something like, “You’re quite an interesting person.”

Achieving this effect isn’t easy, and Luo Liangsheng is a case in point. In the game’s character design, he is portrayed as a reserved and hesitant person; in the handwritten script, his lines contain many ellipses to convey the rhythm of his speech.The AI agent identified this as his most important linguistic trait, resulting in 80% of the output sentences containing ellipses—which sounded very strange. The production team had no choice but to manually write more samples while instructing the AI not to overuse ellipses. Only after multiple rounds of adjustments were they able to refine the character to its current state.

Traditional RPGs may also include dialogue segments with characters, which are typically written by a human writer and then finalized—and that’s usually all it takes. Now, however, to train the AI, the same scenes must be rewritten several times over. Between the main storyline and the training data, the total text volume of the entire game exceeds 1 million characters. Behind every line spoken by an agent lies countless moments of copywriters and game designers working late into the night.

After talking with the development team, I realized that the AI Agent gameplay in *Cat Immortal Chronicles* goes far beyond that. In addition to chatting with Agents, other leisure activities—such as playing cards at dusk, drawing fortune sticks, and visiting teahouses—also incorporate AI Agents.During card games, each character has their own playing style—some are aggressive, some are defensive, and some just play haphazardly. As the game progresses, characters will chat with you or even deliberately distract you. There are also two spectator slots reserved for bystanders who offer their two cents, such as, “That was a really lousy move.”

Evening interactions, along with the choices made during the main storyline throughout the day, collectively influence each character’s affection level toward the player. However, affection is not a fixed value; rather, it is the result of a comprehensive assessment by the AI Agent. Even if two players make the same choices in the main storyline, their final affection levels will differ based on their evening interactions, leading to different plot developments.

This also means that *Cat Immortal Chronicles* breaks free from the limitations of traditional RPGs, which rely solely on fixed story choices—where the story unfolds in a predetermined way, and the experience tends to lose its novelty after completing the game once. By incorporating the “Agent” gameplay mechanic, *Cat Immortal Chronicles* ensures that every playthrough is unique for each player, making it a game worth playing again and again.

03

Games for Women: There's So Much More to Explore

After the demo, I was even more excited about this game than I was before I arrived.

There are two unavoidable pain points in narrative RPGs aimed at female audiences. First, the storytelling is often shallow, tending to be confined to romantic plots and lacking well-developed characters and a fully realized world. Second, interactions are rigid; many dialogues and side quests are pre-scripted, making it difficult to have a fresh experience after completing the game.

*The Cat Immortal’s Chronicles* is unlike any other. It strives to tell a moving story in which each character experiences both confusion and personal growth.Rules versus freedom, engagement with the world versus withdrawal from it—these dilemmas unfold in a fictional world, yet they mirror the reality of everyone’s situation: the struggle between ideals and compromise, belonging and rootlessness, clinging to the past and letting go.

This perfectly aligns with the expectations that female gamers have for storytelling today. Rather than grand narratives, they place greater value on nuanced portrayals of human nature and authentic personal growth.The characters in *Cat Immortal Chronicles* are not one-dimensional tools for companionship, but independent individuals with their own dilemmas and choices. This complexity, along with the self-reflection revealed in the story, is far more moving than romantic platitudes.

Building on this foundation, the Agent is integrated into the experience as a gameplay element, adding depth to the interactions themselves. With a more immersive storyline and a more flexible interactive experience, players can’t help but feel like they’ve “hit the jackpot” once again.

For works aimed at female audiences, this may be a new approach worth considering. AI Agents push the boundaries of the experience, but what truly moves us are still the carefully crafted storylines and flesh-and-blood characters. Technology is the gateway, but the ultimate focus remains on people—and *Cat Immortal Chronicles* conveys the most touching emotions through this very approach.