Chinese Parents, published by Coconut Island

Introduction

This is a charming and I found rather immersive little game which I found to be good value for money on Steam. The plot line is that you start as a new-born baby, and then learn skills as you grow up to become an adult. You go from school to school as you age, learning subjects and skills. The game finishes somewhat abruptly at age 18 when you take (and hopefully pass) your final exams. Post exam, you find a husband/wife, have a baby and start again. Except here is the nice little twist - you pass on some of your traits from one generation to another, so the better you do at raising your first child, the better start that the next one has. In addition, now that you are a parent, the better that you did as child the better the job that you will have, and the better the pocket money that you will be able to give your child. Money is important so that your child can purchase products that help them develop and relax.

Gameplay is a little different depending on if you are a boy or a girl. Relationships are managed differently, and there are different skills in some areas (girls like ballet for instance it seems). Relationships come into play after puberty and give some boosts while you are a teenager and will potentially lead to a husband or wife with which to make the second generation of your family. Finding someone appropriate while at school allows you to add their traits to yours when you produce offspring. otherwise you end up marrying a nobody who has no traits to pass on (=bad).

Game features get phased in as the game progresses, so this guide will explain them in the order in which they appear in game.

It takes 48 turns to play a generation of the game (birth to adulthood)

Family Stats

As a first generation new-born, you start out with the following family stats, with no inherited traits

These talents will increase by 5 points a turn initially, but as the game progresses you will be able to improve both the talents value and rate of growth - part of many choices that you will have to make with some luck thrown in as well. A second and later generation baby will inherit traits which will increase the default value of 5/turn growth rate.

IQ is Intelligence Quotient while EQ is Emotional Quotient. Constitution, Memory and Imagination are self explanatory.

Additionally there are two other skills that are not inherited. These and their initial values are

These may be improved over time as well, but there is never an automatic increase per turn so are harder to raise.

Charm is a measure of your personality and how well liked you are by your parents and those around you. Face is a measure of your esteem or reputation in the community. As with all skills, the higher the better.

The listed growth rate of a skill can only get better as you progress through the game, it can never reduce. However, the same cannot be said for the base stat itself which can go down depending on your actions and random events. Base stats cannot go less than zero, except for Face which can go negative.

Expectations

Every new parent has expectations of their children. In Chinese Parents is no different. On the right side of the game the initial expectation of the child is shown. It is revealed by clicking the Expectations button in the bottom right of the screen. At age 1 it is always the same and as shown. While later in life there are always school expectations, there are also parent career based expectations (based on the parents career). Meeting expectations is good - you will be rewarded with bonuses. The initial expectation introduced on the first turn, Healthy Growth, is almost impossible not to meet. This is saying that your current constitution is 10, and you need to raise this to 25 in 5 turns. Well, the talent naturally will rise by 5 points a turn anyway. So in 5 turns even if you try and ignore your constitution it will go up by 25. There are events that can make your constitution go down, but you would have to be exceptionally unlucky for you to not meet this expectation. Completing Healthy Growth is rewarded with a bonus of +50 to EQ and +20 Constitution. Different expectations give different rewards. Some of these rewards include action points (which we will get to later) but are capped values. As a word of advice, never complete an expectation when you are at or close to your cap of action points otherwise part of your reward may be wasted. Action points are the only parameter in the game that seem to have a cap on them.

Mind Map

Page last updated 23 Aug 2019