Last month, Chinese indie studio Game Science revealed a trailer for Black Myth: Wukong, a soulslike title based on characters from famous novel Journey to the West. The 13-minute trailer showed the game off in plenty of detail, but in a recent interview with IGN China, its developers confirmed that it’s merely the first entry in a planned trilogy of games.
Journey to the West is one of China’s best-known literary exports, but Game Science is hoping to use Black Myth: Wukong to kickstart a “universe” of games, in a manner similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As well as the story of Sun Wukong, the ‘Black Myth Universe’ is currently being built around two other Chinese myths, but Game Science has revealed what those stories are.
Whatever the studio’s plans may be, we’re unlikely to see them realised for a long time. The footage shown last month was only one small part of a game that has already been in development for two years, and the team is currently hoping to release the full experience some time in the next three years.
The studio will need to expand in order to reach that deadline, but producer Feng Ji suggests the team is likely to “go quiet for a long time” while they attempt to finish the game. Fortunately, the attempt to drum up some attention seems to have worked - Game Science says it received more than 10,000 job applications after it released its footage of the game - but either way, don’t expect to hear much more about Black Myth: Wukong for a while, as the studio doesn’t plan to reveal any more of the game until it’s sure what it has to show off is better than the original trailer.
