CHINA:Our hero is an upright Chinese bureaucrat in ancient China, who follows the rules, obeys the powers that be, and tortures and kills the mistresses and families of corrupt officials. The Incorruptible Warrior is not a history lesson, but a free, multiplayer video game, which has taken the online gaming community in China by storm.
While the game is set in imperial times, there are glaring parallels with present-day communist China, which is currently waging a campaign to weed out corrupt cadres who have taken advantage of the country's growing wealth to enrich themselves and their families and to take on mistresses.
The brainchild of the Communist Party disciplinary committee in the Haishu district of the eastern city of Ningbo, The Incorruptible Warrior is working wonders in spreading the anti-corruption message.
The graphics are rough, with crude visuals and a lot of material borrowed from other games, and the server is unstable, but it has become the most unlikely success story of the year.
The game went live on July 25th, when 300 people registered to play, but local media coverage turned it into a huge hit, with more than 100,000 downloads on the popular Sina.com website.
At one point, when more than 1,000 people were logged on and playing the game, the server overloaded and the designers had to close the game down while they upgraded the technology.
The hero of the game is an "honest and upright official" whose task is to weed out corrupt officials, along with their children and mistresses. And the hero "weeds out" with extreme prejudice - players use a combination of wizardry, weapon skills and torture to kill the corrupt officials.
The characters include real historical figures from many dynasties right up to the Qing dynasty, which collapsed in 1911. They include famously upright civil servants such as Hai Rui and Lord Bao, as well as those who are famous for taking graft, such as the eunuch official, Wei Zhongxian.
The ultimate goal of the game is to reach a corruption-free paradise, filled with love and harmony.
The government's anti-corruption campaign is focused on creating a "harmonious society".
The game comes against the background of a massive anti-corruption campaign, which is part of President Hu Jintao's efforts to consolidate his grip on power at a key party congress in the autumn that should give him five more years as national party chief.
The campaign has claimed some high-profile scalps. The former head of the Shanghai Communist Party, Chen Liangyu, was forced out after an investigation into his involvement in a high-profile pension scandal in Shanghai that saw dozens of people arrested.
The highest-level party official to be dismissed in more than a decade, Mr Chen has been condemned for "totally betraying" party principles.
Zheng Xiaoyu, one-time director of China's state food and drug administration, was executed on July 10th. The game's designer, Hua Tong, told Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper that the game was an effort by the government to educate people about ethics.
"We initially thought the game might attract about 500 local students in Ningbo. Now we can confirm that online games are a very good way to encourage the young to embrace a culture of incorruptibility," he said.
"Through the game, they will be more positive and braver about fighting against corruption in the real world."
Players are assessed on their integrity, morality, capacity to kill corrupt officials and ability to help honest people. To upgrade their weapons, warriors need to study at an anti-corruption college, and they gain credits as they learn more about fighting corruption.
Reaction online has been mixed.
"Even if an official is corrupt, is it necessary to kill their children?" wrote one blogger, while another questioned the need for the mistresses of corrupt officials to walk around in bikinis.
One anonymous blogger on Baidu Bar said it was the officials who were corrupt, not the teenagers who played the game.
Wang Long described the game on the Redweb website as a kind of "anti-corruption show".
"The aim is to educate young people and to build a harmonious society online. The 'weeding out corrupt cadres' campaign is a crucial matter for the public. But we have to find more effective methods to root out corruption," he wrote.