How a mobile game is reopening a hidden chapter in Taiwan’s history

Enlarge / Some imagery from the mobile game, Unforgivable.

Thirty years ago, the grandfather of a Taiwanese-American NYPD detective named Danny Lin was thrown off a cliff in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. The killing took place during what is known today as the White Terror, a 40-year period of violent political suppression and martial law in Taiwan in the middle 20th century. The killer was never identified. Bent on solving his grandfather's cold case and prompted by the admissions of a mysterious Japanese-Taiwanese woman in a Manhattan ramen restaurant, Lin travels to Taiwan. He knows little about the place, only that, somehow, he must find answers.

Until the last couple of decades, this kind of story, focused on Taiwan's brutal authoritarianism under military rule, would have been a touchy topic in Taiwan. Today, though, Detective Lin's saga is the fictional plot behind Unforgivable: Eliza,a popular augmented reality game played on a smartphone, similar to Pokemon Go. The game unfolds as a digitally enhanced tour of New York and then Taipei, with bright manga-esque presentation.

Unforgivable was penned by the Taiwanese-American crime novelist Ed Lin (Incensed, Ghost Month, One Red Bastard) and developed by Allen Yu, the 34-year-old Taiwanese founder of Flushing-based Toii Inc. For these game makers, Lin's story has been a way to get a new generation to engage with the country's past. Their efforts parallel a larger trend of younger Taiwanese people exploring their parents' and grandparents' lives under military rule.

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