I’m not ready for the furry flesh spider in this Chinese Elden Ring-like RPG

Through the medium of a Wes Anderson-esque stop-motion trailer, publisher Game Science has announced the release window for its upcoming action-RPG Black Myth: Wukong. A game that looks a little like Elden Ring if it was set in Chinese mythology.

We can expect Black Myth: Wukong to launch around mid-2024. It may seem like a while to go for those who still have their 2022 hats on, but in reality, it’s only 18 months. Which isn’t all that long, unless you’re a rabbit.

That’s the spin Game Science is putting on things with the Black Myth: Wukong release window trailer. The animated video shows a rabbit spend its entire life waiting for the game. Look, it kind of defies explanation, and you should just watch it to see what I’m going on about.

While it’s clear from the trailer that Black Myth: Wukong is coming to PC, Game Science still hasn’t confirmed what consoles the title is coming to. Hopefully, we’ll see Black Myth on PS5 or Xbox Series X|S as the game will be coming to “other major main-stream consoles” according to Game Science’s website (opens in new tab).

The bigger picture 

Black Myth: Wukong takes place in an Eastern-inspired fantasy world, where you will play the legendary character Wukong as you travel around the desolate and unforgiving landscape, defeating fantastical enemies. Inspired by the 16th Century Chinese novel Journey to the West, Wukong will meet many strange and mythical characters along his path.

While the new trailer only has a snippet of gameplay, back in 2020, Game Science announced Black Myth with 13 minutes of in-game footage (opens in new tab). The new clip resembles Elden Ring in its weary and grayscale landscape; we can see Wukong fighting what looks to be a massive tiger that wields a menacing long sword. In this short fight, it seems like the best way to take this tiger down is by striking it and then getting the hell out of there before it lands a hit. In this sense, the attacks also mimic Elden Ring in the hit-and-evade fighting style. 

Inspired by Chinese myth and recreating the world of Journey to the West, which is a fantasy epic in the vein of Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey, we can expect a humongous landscape filled with strange monsters. Exploring these stories in an RPG will let us get up close and personal with those monsters, for good and ill: there’s a giant fleshy spider somewhere in there, and, honestly, it’s already creeping me out.

 Long time coming 

While to me, it seems like 2024 isn’t too long to wait, that may be because I’ve only just learned about Black Myth. The project has been in development since 2011; it has taken Game Science 12 years of painstaking work to get this far. 

Game Science talks about the struggles of completing this monumental task on Black Myth: Wukong’s information page (opens in new tab); it questions whether it’s done enough work or even if it was all worth it. “On countless nights of working overtime, exhaustedly, we asked ourselves half-jokingly – how much did it matter?” says Game Science. 

Luckily Game Science has faith in its long-awaited RPG and is pushing full steam ahead to hit the targeted release window in 2024. In the meantime, we can sit back and wait for more news about Wukong and where he will head next.