Hero image: Phantom Blade Zero. Image: S-GAME
Phantom Blade Zero — S-GAME’s wuxia action RPG, out on Steam since 28 October — began with a hobby project made in RPG Maker, according to a letter from the studio’s creative director published on launch day.
The letter, titled “Reason and Madness”, is signed by Soulframe Liang, Creative Director and CEO of S-GAME. “Twenty years ago, while I was still a student, I completed my first indie game, Rainblood: Town of Death,” he writes. “It was a hobby project made with RPG Maker.”
From Rainblood to the Phantom World
That game built what Liang calls the Phantom World, “rooted in traditional Chinese wuxia but infused with elements such as body modification, parallel worlds, and more.” Making games was a comfort while he studied abroad, he writes, before it became one of the most important parts of his life.
The turn came more than three years ago, when the studio took its first trailer to a PlayStation Showcase. “We probably looked like a new studio being a little too bold,” Liang writes, “putting an unfinished game out for the whole world to judge.”
After that, S-GAME cancelled its other projects in development and kept expanding production. The letter lists thousands of hours of motion capture, 3D scans of towns and mountain villages across China, lion dance choreography guided by masters from Guangdong, sword formations from sword masters of Mount Emei and hand-to-hand techniques from monks of the Shaolin Temple. A team of martial arts performers led by action director Yang Liu built the moves, with guidance from Donnie Yen.
Settings for every screen
Liang says the team spoke with players at shows from Beijing and Shanghai to Los Angeles and São Paulo, and some of that shows up in the options menu. The audio settings can adjust the tone of clashing blades. PS5 has three button layouts, PC has more flexible remapping, and the game is adapted for 16:9, 16:10 and ultrawide displays beyond 3:1.
He also credits individuals by name. Art Director Michael Chang drew the concept art for every character and most of the environments, according to the letter, and Music Director Caisheng Bo created more than ten hours of music almost entirely by himself.
“A suffocating decision”
The letter is frank about rework. “Today, I have a suffocating decision to announce” was something Liang says he often told the team — usually meaning that something already built and polished would be taken apart, rebuilt or abandoned.
The point of all of it, he writes, is the player’s sense of power: “Phantom Blade Zero exists to make you feel powerful and incredibly cool.” Even the story’s countdown of sixty-six days left to live is meant to serve that feeling.
Three launch notes
The letter ends with three updates from the team. A day-one patch of approximately 5 GB “significantly improves ray tracing and path tracing performance”, and anyone who pre-loaded needs to install it before launching. The rasterised visuals were refined for play with ray tracing off, and tested on mid-range and lower-end PCs and on handhelds.
The third is a driver warning. S-GAME has seen performance instability with NVIDIA’s 621.01 driver and recommends rolling back to 617.42 with a clean installation until NVIDIA’s next driver arrives.
The game is A$84.95 on the Australian Steam store, and it was the top seller on Steam in Australia early this morning. Our pre-launch story has the PC requirements, including the SSD. From a studio that calls itself “a small group of gamers who just happen to be developers,” the letter is as much a production history as a launch note.
Source: S-GAME – Reason and Madness, letter from Soulframe Liang (Steam), Steam (Australia) – Phantom Blade Zero