Phantom Blade 0's Action, Horror, And Tragedy Makes For The Ultimate "Kung Fu Punk" Experience: Preview

Published Oct 10, 2026, 12:30 PM EDT

Brandon Zachary is a Lead Writer for Screen Rant's New Movie Team. He also writes or has written for Comicbook.com, CBR, That Hashtag Show, Just Watch, and TVBrittanyF. Brandon is an Emerging Screenwriters Semi-Finalist, co-writer of a Screencraft Quarter-Finalist, a seasoned on-screen interviewer, and a MASSIVE nerd. You can reach him at bs.zachary@gmail.com

Phantom Blade 0 is one of the most anticipated action games of 2026, blending tense combat with haunting world-building. The massive action game sends players against hordes of corrupted warriors as they try to solve a mystery, in a slowly expanding world that builds a compelling setting.

During the extended preview of Phantom Blade 0, the assembled players got to face off against massive bosses and explore a stunning sandbox full of gorgeously rendered monstrosities. Screen Rant also sat down with game director Soulframe Liang to discuss the game's inspirations and how it embodies "kung fu punk."

Phantom Blade 0 Is A Tense And Tight Action Game

Phantom Blade 0 feels like a descendant of plenty of games, with clear inspiration from the likes of Ninja Gaiden and Dark Souls. That's not a complaint, either. The game refines that style of quick combat, deliberate dodges, and precise counters to an artful degree, bolstered by the vivid enemy design and arresting world-building.

While the combat is easy to learn, the variety of weapons discovered (not to mention the copious opportunities for unique upgrades) across the journey adds a level of customization to the player's journey. Each weapon feels impressively powerful when wielded properly, but that doesn't mean the enemies aren't up to match blades.

The challenge to the combat that, thanks to its focus on powerful enemies and precise controls, will likely require multiple attempts to overcome. Only once during my playthrough did I get past one of the later bosses in one try as everyone else around me struggled, but they made up for lost time while I got reduced to smitheries by the subsequent boss.

Finding the right balance between the inherent power fantasy and the punishing learning curve was crucial to the development of the game, according to Qiwei "Soulframe" Liang. The seasoned game director and S-Game founder explained that the approach meant pulling elements from both the horror genre and the legacy of kung-fu films.

"Normally, when you start a game, your hero is pretty weak. That emphasizes your weakness and the power of the enemy. In our game, the fantasy is that both you and the enemy are powerful. That's the foundation of everything. That's the spirit of kung fu from the movies, because in all the golden age kung fu movies, the heroes are powerful but their enemies are powerful too.

"You have that interaction make all the drama come out. There are lots of dangers, but because of the setting, your movements are fast and swift, and your combos are powerful. It's not like many other like horror games, right? You're a powerful hero. If you see something dangerous in a horror game, you will feel fear.

"You will feel scared because you yourself are very weak. The purpose here is if you see something creepy, you feel excited because that means there's a powerful enemy ahead, and you will go toe to toe with that enemy. It's a way to turn the [tension] of the horror into excitement."

The Magic Of Donnie Yen In Phantom Blade 0

The game's movement and action have more than just the developers to thank for their fluid motion and weighty impact. The team at S-Games also worked with legendary actor Donnie Yen. Yen and his team of stunt performers helped define the game's choreography and provide motion capture for the action.

"Donnie's [style] is a combination of modern and traditional, compared to other kung fu stars. He is famous for his choreography and his special aesthetic in kung-fu. He has this very fast pace... We were influenced by a lot of his classic moves. They were very fast and cool, powerful and clean. That influenced us a lot and made it easy to implement him and it into the action of the game."

This also wasn't entirely new ground for Yen. While he wasn't in the game proper, Onimusha 3: Demon Siege featured a lot of input from the action star when it launched in 2004. Onimusha and Phantom Blade 0 share a creative DNA, so seeing Yen's distinct stylereflected in both gives the latter another connection to gaming's past.

"Donny is probably the coolest figure and the most modern figure among all these kung fu masters, because he didn't refuse to be modern. He will show up in Star Wars and John Wick. These are obviously not traditional Chinese topics, but you can see the spirit he brings from the broader cultural scope. It's actually similar to what we're doing now. I've been describing the game as "kung fu punk".

Kung fu punk is a mixture of modern elements and traditional Chinese kung fu culture, which is exactly what Donny has been doing for 40 years. That all made Donny the best candidate for us if we are going to pick a master to help us. Donny gave us a lot of cool feedback and directions to make the movement cooler. He taught us how to combine the traditional, authentic Chinese swordplay with something creepy and modern. When we put all this together, it created our unique style.

What Kung Fu Punk Is (And How It Defines Phantom Blade 0)

Beyond the unique setting and tight gameplay, what really stands out about Phantom Blade 0 is its somber inevitability, which gives the worlda distinct sense of self. Soul's work for the Order has led to him being fatally wounded by his former friend Zuoshang. The mysterious Flesh Sculptor restores Soul to life, albeit with a corrupted soul that only has 66 days left.

This gives Soul a limited amount of time to unravel the conspiracy that wrecked his life. Each defeated boss or new chapter's beginning pushes the timer down, giving the game a ticking clock that feeds the narrative without distracting from the action (except in the game's hardest mode, which S-Team teased will only give players 66 chances to respawn during their lengthy adventure).

Soul is soft-spoken and somber, while the characters he encounters are in mourning for deceased family members, destroyed homes, and a crumbling world. That underlying somberness gives the game a soulful touch that helps separate it from other games that play with this style of fantasy.

While peers like Onimusha: Way of the Dragon and Where Winds Meet are impressive in their own ways, there's a sense of bittersweet triumph and innate tragedy to the world that gives Phantom Blade 0 a unique and effective flavor that only becomes more pronounced with each tragic piece of lore players discover or delicately designed piece of world-building presents itself..

Reflecting on what makes that tone so exciting to him as a developer, Soulframe Liang noted that the blend of inspirations and authenticity is something that's always been true to all his games, going back to his indie game debut, Rainblood: Town of Death. "That was a reflection of the influences I grew up on. I grew up with all these kung fu movies as well as Hollywood and Japanese animation.

"My co-creators and I are all influenced by different cultural influences, because our generation is the first generation to grow up when China opened to the world. We were heavily impacted by a mixture of different cultures, and we're trying to assemble these cultures to make something new but coherent. We don't want our culture to become a stereotype.

"If someone not so into Chinese culture wants to borrow some Chinese culture, they will end up stereotyped. The thing will be brought into another setting, and sometimes not so naturally. What we're doing now is to represent what modern Chinese people are actually thinking. That's the idea of kung fu punk. Everything is naturally assembled together to become something coherent and natural."

In the end, that sense of cultural inspiration really grounds the world. The characters feel vivid and authentic, while still tonally connected through a narrative and setting running low on hope. "The stories and the world are a coherent fantasy world, but everything still feels integrated. Even though there is this huge steampunk tower, it was actually inspired by and scanned from an old, deserted steel factory in Beijing. We actually used that as a venue in our last year's play demo."

Phantom Blade 0 aims to make an entrance: "Everything has a story, has story elements underneath, so the whole world is driven by some set and concrete philosophy, which is why there are these creepy steampunk elements throughout. You just have to be authentic with the ancient China influence, and things will grow naturally together. It lets us blend the elements together to make something special."

Phantom Blade Zero

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