A Chinese studio sold 20 million copies of a monkey epic in a month
Black Myth: Wukong picks up where the classic novel Journey to the West ends: the Monkey King has refused heaven, been sealed in stone, and scattered into six relics. Players guide a staff-wielding monkey to gather them, and within its first month the game moved 20 million units, among the fastest sales ever.
Game Science, the developer and publisher, decided on 25 February 2018 to make a single-player title, and later that year moved its team from Shenzhen to Hangzhou. Choosing the genre came from an internal survey: action role-playing games were the ones staff had logged the most hours on in Steam, and director Feng Ji argued the team would understand players better if they built what they themselves loved. They weighed wuxia and xianxia settings before settling on the Monkey King's story. The series name, Black Myth, signals the darker side of Chinese mythology it explores.
The premise is a sequel to the novel. Having escorted the Tang Monk west and become a Buddha, Sun Wukong prefers the simple life of Mount Huaguo to the Celestial Court. Heaven sends Erlang Shen to force him into line; the tightening circlet on Wukong's head cripples him in the duel, and his six senses split into relics. Centuries on, the Destined One, one of the mountain's monkeys, sets out to reunite them.
Play borrows from the Soulslike tradition: third-person combat, checkpoints at keeper's shrines, and no difficulty setting to lower. The hero's staff grows and shrinks mid-fight, echoing the novel's Ruyi Jingu Bang, and players juggle stamina with a focus meter earned through light attacks and precise dodges. Spells include transformations into defeated foes, such as a wolfman carrying a flaming glaive.
Six chapters move from Black Wind Mountain to the Flaming Mountains and finally Mount Huaguo, with real landmarks such as the Dazu Rock Carvings and Kaiyuan Temple in Quanzhou reproduced as scenery. The game reached PlayStation 5 and Windows on 20 August 2024, Xbox a year later, and collected Game of the Year awards. A follow-up, Black Myth: Zhong Kui, is in development.
Source: Black Myth: Wukong
