Phantom Blade Zero went from an odd student made game to a heavy hitter on the scene, showing how passion can really bring home the bacon. Now this game is a serious contender for the Game of the Year title. A huge achievement for the developer.
S-Game's martial arts action game evolved from a student project to a major contender
This is important for the audience to know because it's a really rare example of how an indie game can make the cut and get noticed at the AAA level. So for those of us who love martial arts action done right, this is a new gold standard in quality that breaks all the rules of budget!
So first of all, Phantom Blade Zero is developed by a studio called S-Game, but the game really grew out of the founder Soulframe Liang's own student RPG Maker game called Rainblood: Town of Death. That initial game idea he created as a student, he made it with no professional experience or budget. The version we're getting now is the evolved version of that original creation that's been turned into a proper commercial game.
When it comes to the development details, they really tried to use as much authentic cultural material as possible to bring those visuals and audio to life. Thousands of hours of motion capture were recorded with Chinese martial arts masters and Shaolin monks. Art director Michael Chang has created hundreds of unique concepts for characters and locations to shape the overall visual identity of the game.
Music director Caisheng Bo composed over 10 hours of original music. He played most of the instrumental tracks as well.
Those development decisions give it a very unique identity compared to regular action games. You've got super detailed martial arts moves, plus all this original music that just ties it all together. Soulframe Liang mentioned that game development isn't always the most logical thing.
He stressed the idea that passion and a bit of madness is what really adds the best flavor to the game. So they're really all about artistic purity instead of just going by the books of the market.
In our last writeup for the latest update of Phantom Blade Zero we talked about the continued balance and stability work going in. Looking at where it's at now, you can see how that iterative development has really added to its critical buzz. So it's still out there if anyone wants to jump in and experience martial arts action with all that traditional performance capture.
Source: IXBT
The motion capture work with Shaolin monks sounds insane.