Half a century after the advent of modern gaming, a Chinese studio has captivated the industry for the first time.
On Aug. 19, Shenzhen-based developer Game Science released Black Myth: Wukong, an action game loosely based on the 16th-century classic Chinese novel “Journey to the West.” In the game, players assume the role of a descendant of Sun Wukong, a simian-humanoid figure of Chinese mythology who, the story goes, accompanied a Buddhist monk on a continent-spanning journey to retrieve sacred scriptures from India and return them to his homeland.
In Black Myth, religious piety takes a back seat to combat. As players embark on a quest to revive their mythical ancestor, set against (and occasionally aiding) them is an impressive rogues’ gallery of yaoguai (semi-human creatures in Chinese folklore). As of the time of writing, I’m just over halfway through the game — I have bested a several-meter-tall, sword-wielding tiger in a pool of blood, a wolf with a flaming halberd whose spirit I now command and a gargantuan scarab beetle whose shell had subsumed the detached head of a Buddhist statue.