Game Science, the Chinese indie studio behind strategy game Art of War: Red Tides, has announced a new single-player action RPG titled Black Myth: Wu Kong. The ambitious game is based on the Journey to the West mythology and is planned to release on PC and unspecified consoles in the future.
The studio unveiled the game with a 13-minute gameplay trailer that reveals a Dark Souls-influenced action-adventure laced with Chinese martial arts and mysticism. This small slice of gameplay also showcases protagonist Wu Kong (the Monkey King) and his bevy of special combat abilities. There are 72 abilities in total, as reported by senior analyst Daniel Ahmad, who also shared more details about the game on Twitter.
The gameplay demo was created using Unreal Engine 4 and is the result of two years of development. While it already looks mightily impressive, the footage is from a pre-alpha stage, but a short Q&A on the studio’s website assures us that Black Myth “shouldn’t take 500 years” to finish. “We will release it when we are satisfied as a player, but we will also consider marginal effects and cost-effectiveness,” the studio says. “After all, more works in the Black Myst series are also carefully planned in our dreams.”
Game Science was founded in 2014 by ex-Tencent Games employees who previously worked on an underperforming Journey to the West MMO. So far the studio has worked on three small-scale mobile and PC games, so Black Myth is undoubtedly the company’s most ambitious endeavor yet. In response, the studio is ramping up by hiring more developers to expand on its 40-strong staff. Hopefully, it receives additional funding and strikes up some publishing deals to make its way to Western shores in the future.
