Developer S-Game’s upcoming action title, Phantom Blade Zero, is trying to replicate the feeling of playing through a kung fu action movie. Director “Soulframe” Liang spoke about this in a conversation with Eurogamer at Game Developer’s Conference 2025. In this conversation, Liang also spoke about managing the scope of Phantom Blade Zero by taking cues from game development ideas of the 90s.
“We want to call back the golden age of Hong Kong kung fu movies from the 1970s, starting from Bruce Lee and then Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen,” said Liang. “The trend has faded out since the early 2000s so we want to go back to that and try to bring the trend back.”
Staying with this idea, Liang also brings up Sloclap’s action game Sifu as one of the inspirations behind the themes and gameplay of Phantom Blade Zero. He brings up the idea that, if a French studio can do it so well, why couldn’t a Chinese studio. “If a French studio can do something like that,” asked Liang, “why couldn’t we do something even more authentic from Chinese culture?”
Liang also spoke about wanting to develop games in the style of the past, back when games were being developed for the original PlayStation and the PS2. Games at the time used to be more narrow in their scope, and rarely did we see a game that tried to chew off more than it can handle, especially considering the hardware limitations of the time. Liang refers to the scope of Phantom Blade Zero as being “like a bigger indie game.”
“We want to get back to the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 era,” said Liang, “when the games were not so big, the budgets not sky high, the team manageable, and all the developers were passionate and creative and with experience. It’s like a bigger indie game, but with budget and with experience and with a stable hand, and everything feels so integrated from the starting point when you press down the Start button to the finish point of the staff list.”
Along with this, Liang also spoke about another major Chinese release—Black Myth: Wukong. Liang spoke about how the release of the title gave the larger gaming market the realisation that there is a big market for games made by Chinese developers on the global stage. “Everyone now realises there is potential for a Chinese-made game to make 30m copies in half a year,” said Liang.
Phantom Blade Zero doesn’t yet have a release date. The title is currently in development on PC and PS5. Rumours from last year have indicated that S-Game is targeting a Fall 2026 launch window for the upcoming action title. The studio revealed through an interview back in January that it expects players to take anywhere between 20 and 30 hours to finish the main story in Phantom Blade Zero.
A release date for Phantom Blade Zero is expected to be announced later this year. In the meantime, check out some uncut footage of a fight against one of the title’s bosses—Chief Disciple of the Seven Stars.
