Marielza Oliveira, the director of UNESCO Cluster Office in Beijing, speaks at a conference for the Open Digital Library on Traditional Games project at the UNESCO headquarters in January. [Photo provided to China Daily]

In the VR game, there are six pots of different colors, appearing to be made of bronze, gilded or wooden materials positioned across the chamber. Every time an arrow lands in a pot, a lamp lights up, revealing a portion of the chamber's interior. When the player succeeds in scoring all six shots, he or she will gain the full set of pots, which will fully illuminate the room.

The team wants players to relive the ancient Chinese way of life and revel in the gameplay.

"It's much harder to throw an arrow into the cast pot with a game pad than with your bare hands," says Feng Weiwei, 21, one of the project's programmers who is studying game design.

To improve the gameplay in a VR setting, the team has designed the pots to look wider and shorter than the original ones. They have also programmed the gameplay so that the arrows leave a trail of their trajectory behind for a few seconds to help players make adjustments between shots.

"This was my first time designing an ancient Chinese-themed game," Liu says." I was able to learn more about China's traditional games."

The Open Digital Library on Traditional Games project was first launched in 2015 by UNESCO with help from Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, aiming to safeguard and promote traditional sports and games in an effort to pass them down to future generations.

"Preserving China's traditional games certainly helps with reviving Chinese culture," says Gao Jinyan, an art teacher from the Communication University of China who has been studying Chinese traditional games for more than a decade. Gao pitched the idea of recreating pot game to Feng Weiwei and Liu Ting's team because it appeared to be "VR-friendly".

In her book titled Traditional Folk Games, now a text book for Chinese students majoring in games design, Gao defines traditional games as "the gaming and leisure-related activities and behaviors that are spread and passed down generations by word-of-mouth".