I have to admit, Guangzhou in late June is truly hot. It's not just simple heat due to high temperatures; it's more like a "composite" heat caused by many factors. The subtropical high, consecutive days of heavy rain, and the dense crowds during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday severely educated every outsider who wasn't mentally prepared.
But during this holiday, besides "must-visit attractions" like Canton Tower and Beijing Road Pedestrian Street, there was another place conducting a "sightseeing activity" far exceeding facility capacity. In the past three-day holiday, a large number of players gathered at Guangzhou Meilin M·LIVE—a large commercial complex located in Tianhe District, wrapping the activity area in the center of the mall's first floor layer upon layer, all to verify one thing:
How does a studio rooted in Guangzhou plan to stuff the Guangzhou city they know into an open-world anime-style mobile game with traditional combat and pet-catching gameplay?
"Wangyue" Demo Event Site
"Chinese-style worldview," "Modern City," "Anime-style Beautiful Girls," and "Open World."
Just the combination of a few words is enough to cause stress reactions among many industry insiders—in recent years, open-world anime-style mobile games were recognized as the version answer in the operational game market. You would find everyone desperately burning money to make them. Then, when the traditional Japanese fantasy theme track was filled, big factories began to turn their attention to the undeveloped "modern city open world."
Shiyue Network's "Wangyue" entered the public eye at this time—however, the pure "modern city" track was already showing signs of saturation.
Perhaps to avoid direct confrontation with those big factories, "Wangyue" stitched on several mixed tags at its debut, including "pet catching" and "Chinese style city," which are now its biggest selling points.
But these two things are actually the hardest to do. Because they seem inherently incompatible with "modern cities." After all, it's hard to imagine wild monsters strutting around in a city made of reinforced concrete. And the more "modern" color a city has, the easier its cultural characteristics are diluted, and vice versa. Forcing these elements together would likely result in a poor imitation.
To put it bluntly, this was the most不可忽视 (unignorable) problem of the previous version of "Wangyue"—its portrayal of Chinese style elements was stereotypical, lacking refinement and empathy. Rather than a Chinese-style modern city, it felt like a fantasy city pieced together with Chinese elements.
The gameplay video released by "Wangyue" two years ago
But today, this awkwardness seems entirely in the past: online, the official "Wangyue" team has marked all ineffective early versions with "-0.1," signaling a farewell to the past;
Offline, players saw a "modern city" with genuine Chinese urban characteristics—the two versions looked completely unlike the same game.
These changes made many players gathered at the site, who were aware of "Wangyue"'s previous state, feel fresh and curious. Interestingly, this demo event was held in the central activity area on the first floor, adopting a semi-open format throughout. This means that even standing outside, you could clearly see the game's actual performance. Despite this, many players were willing to queue for several hours during the hard-won holiday just to personally experience dozens of minutes of gameplay.
The demo content provided in this offline event can be roughly divided into two parts: early story battles and free exploration of the game's stage, "Tianyue City." The former focuses on showcasing story performances and the combat system, while the latter focuses more on urban gameplay and the ecological shaping of "Moon Spirits."
In terms of results, the differences between the old and new versions of "Wangyue" are almost at the level of a project reboot. Trying to find elements from early versions is even more difficult.
Initially, this might have been reflected in visual design—as we mentioned earlier, the "negative version" of "Wangyue" had a certain obsession with traditional Chinese elements in its overall visual expression. It seemed eager to stitch heavily local-colored elements into an existing game genre, resulting in a counterproductive outcome. In contrast, the remade "Wangyue" clearly places more emphasis on the logic and rational arrangement of element combinations: the dominant yellow main tone, interspersed with flat elements common in modern cities, plus a slightly realistic 3D rendering mode, constitute the main visual style of "Wangyue"—a visual craft between traditional animation rendering and realistic character models.
For developers, the benefit of doing this is that it makes characters easier to integrate into different scenes and smoothly带入 (bring into) pre-rendered CGs without any cheap feeling. I personally really like this presentation method: Everythinggj visible to the naked eye maintains a sense of unity, and the flow won't be fragmented due to changes in scene elements.
In fact, the two segments of gameplay and content shown in this event, which are completely opposite,恰好 (precisely) confirm this viewpoint.
In the first half of the demo, which mainly showcased the combat system and performances, players were thrown into a deep blue space resembling both a forest and the seabed. To emphasize the game's bizarre worldview, the entire scene was filled with eeriness and non-daily vibes, seemingly unrelated to the so-called modern city.
The open city "Tianyue City" in the second half of the demo is a realistic city full of life. You can see office workers hurrying through intersections and elderly people resting under red-brick buildings. These are two worlds completely different in constituent elements and narrative roles, yet connected through the protagonist, making you feel like you're not in two different games.
But the downside of doing this is also obvious: it may bring unimaginable cost pressure to the development team, because players will be more sensitive to the three-dimensionality of visuals from a sensory perspective, thereby pursuing character models and scenes with richer details.
Everythinggj players saw in this demo is the result of "Wangyue" piling on details—including layered and decorative character clothing models, clear materials with distinct physical properties, and performance effects achieved through character body movements and dynamic camera work rather than relying solely on special effects.
On the day this offline event started, the official "Wangyue" team also extracted some scenes from the first half of the demo to create a video less than six minutes long for those who couldn't attend in person.
However, aesthetic issues in anime-style mobile games are known as an eternal unsolvable problem. Some people think the game is good after watching this video, while others dislike this style. But in my opinion, what can be seen through the video is still just the surface. Its purpose is more to let players see the true face of the game's combat, without deliberately emphasizing details, and deliberately avoiding certain things, such as the wonderful performance specifically placed in the middle of the boss battle.
During the demo, the protagonist group followed traces to explore the alternate space. After defeating an elite monster, they finally encountered the only "final boss" of this demo—a female character standing on a loom. After a fierce back-and-forth battle, just when the player seemed sure of victory, the boss suddenly transformed into her second form: the woman turned into a marionette, with the enemy's true form manipulating threads to launch a second round of attacks.
Also in this state, the true boss first sealed the protagonist's actions with puppet strings, then manipulated the woman in puppet form to literally crush the protagonist with her thighs, causing internal injuries.
But while some appreciate the heart, others appreciate the flesh. The whole performance looked scary yet strangely arousing. This magical contrast unsurprisingly became the most talked-about part of the entire event. If you say the production team doesn't understand this, I certainly don't believe it.
But this "understanding" precisely requires support from details and action design.
When the camera zooms in as an enemy wraps their thigh around the protagonist, you'll be surprised to find that "Wangyue"'s handling of character skin textures is so close to reality—from muscle deformation during movement to expressions of pain, Everythinggj is portrayed quite accurately. I believe it's precisely because the protagonist feels like a real person in these scenes that it appeals to certain players' fetishes.
And this is not even the most technically demanding part of this battle—perhaps players who frequently play games already know what I'm going to say—yes, "marionette" style boss battles have always been one of the favorite tropes for single-player game developers to show off skills and concepts. Because it is indeed very difficult to make, both in attack patterns and the design logic of enemy-player interactions, which fundamentally differ from traditional enemy designs. No wonder this demo chose it as the final boss.
Of course, there is a premise here—although "Wangyue" has strong technical capabilities, its gameplay still cannot escape the beloved "anime-style mobile game combat" flow... This means that even the most difficult "marionette" type enemies will not have additional interactive relationships with players. In actual combat, it remains an independent fighting "individual."
Speaking of which, let's briefly discuss "Wangyue"'s combat design. But... honestly, compared to the stunning refresh in visuals and concepts, its combat system looks very familiar. It still follows the standard template of "break guard then deal damage" plus "character switching." Each character has one skill and one ultimate. If you're not new to anime-style mobile games, there's virtually no learning curve.
So, is there really no novelty in the combat experience of "Wangyue"?
Not entirely. At least, it has a "Moon Spirit" concept tied to pet-catching gameplay that can be used in combat.
"Moon Spirits" are the "pets" in the world of "Wangyue," usually appearing in various corners of the city and living alongside humans. In the game, players can explore the city, capture Moon Spirits labeled as "Chaos," and equip them as combat partners for assistance in battle. When this system is integrated into the anime-style mobile game combat template, it creates a combat mechanism called "Moon Spirit Co-Strike."
Simply put, "Moon Spirit Co-Strike" is an extended design that manually integrates Moon Spirit attacks into character moves. Taking the protagonist's "Moon Spirit Co-Strike" as an example, holding and releasing the skill button triggers a Moon Spirit attack. This sequence allows the character's attack to more effectively inflict "guard break" damage on enemies. Although the foundation of the combat system hasn't changed, it adds a rare extra turn to the homogenized combat loop of anime-style mobile games, moving beyond mindless button-mashing and dodging.
However, compared to the "Moon Spirit Co-Strike" which attempts to change the combat rhythm, I personally prefer the combat action designs of many characters in this demo.
Taking the protagonist "Zhao" mentioned earlier as an example, as a "jack-of-all-trades" living in a modern city setting, she has the ability to freely change and combine the shapes of matter. In combat, she strikes enemies by changing the form of her weapons. Meanwhile, this transformation does not detach from her cultural and identity background, leaving considerable room for "free play" in the game's action choreography.
Thus, the game introduces some attack patterns rarely seen in the anime-style mobile game market. For example, the protagonist transforms her weapon into a giant wrench during combos, or leaps high before smashing enemies ahead with a long staff, reminiscent of the standing stick attacks in "Black MYTH - Steam Edition: Wukong." Combined with fluid action design and move transitions, it left a deep impression on me at first sight.
In fact, besides the "jack-of-all-trades" protagonist, the other three characters released in this demo mostly follow this character design rule. Especially another high-rarity character, the tennis player "Ling Beijing"—her design incorporates many modern tennis elements, and her moves are all related to tennis.
Besides launching lethal tennis balls, Ling Beijing can perform additional attacks by chasing the landing spots of tennis balls on the ground after using her skills. If you've played any tennis-themed games, this mechanic will feel familiar—she is currently the only character with special combat mechanics in the game.
Having discussed combat, we can finally talk about another major selling point of "Wangyue": the modern city with a "Chinese style" background.
As we said at the beginning, "Chinese-style modern city" has actually been a very vague proposition for a long time.
Looking at today's domestic anime-style mobile game market, we don't lack excellent Chinese-style themed stories and fantasy cities, but we still don't have a true "modern city." This is largely because, without precedents, it's hard to control the boundary between fictional narratives and realistic backgrounds. How to shape a city that can carry the narrative attributes of video games while gaining recognition from local culture and ensuring modern gameplay and aesthetics is enough to make most developers scratch their heads.
Ultimately, what kind of city counts as a Chinese-style modern city? Gray tiles and white walls, or red lacquered pavilions? But for most Chinese players, these traditional Chinese buildings are hard to equate with urban life.
So how did "Wangyue" solve this problem?
It's simple. After the failure of the -0.1 version, it no longer tried to forcibly solve the problem but found a smoother way: drawing inspiration from real Chinese city streets.
The city in "Wangyue" is named "Tianyue City." If you are familiar with iconic elements like "Canton Tower" and "Pearl River," you will easily discover that its prototype is actually the real-world city of Guangzhou.
At first, I thought they chose this because Shiyue Network is based in Guangzhou, making it convenient to use local materials. But after walking around in the game for a few laps, I realized things might not be that simple.
"Tianyue City" indeed resembles Guangzhou, so much so that many local players could name places near their homes at the event site. But apart from those iconic buildings and cultural symbols, this city brings them a奇妙 (wonderful) experience of blending reality and illusion. This blurred feeling, as if it truly exists at your doorstep yet detaches from reality, is "Wangyue"'s most powerful weapon in shaping Chinese-style cities.
During this demo, free exploration was limited to an "old town" area in the bottom-left corner of the map, which surprised me. The game did not rush to release the previously praised "Beijing Road Pedestrian Street" and "Pearl River waterfront." Instead, it featured a cluster of red-brick Republic-era buildings based on Guangzhou's real-life "Huiji Xi" district. This area appeared unexpectedly and became one of the biggest surprises of the demo.
Let me briefly introduce "Huiji Xi" to those unfamiliar with Guangzhou: it is a cluster of modern buildings constructed by returned overseas Chinese in the 1920s, characterized mainly by red-brick Western-style houses. The style blends Chinese and Western features. Like many historic modernized districts in Guangzhou, modern commercial models have not completely permeated this area. What you see here is more about Guangzhou's lifestyle and cultural heritage.
As a modern city with a long history, Guangzhou's greatest characteristic is its absolute inclusivity and diversity. The city features traditional Chinese old houses, Western-style buildings remaining from the concession period, modern Western-style buildings resulting from the collision of Chinese and Western cultures, and skyscrapers full of modern temperament. On one hand, you see people in suits rushing in and out of various business occasions; on the other hand, ordinary people don't detach from the daily life we know. Street food stalls and shared bicycles remain indispensable parts of people's lives.
This is why players can immediately recognize the city in "Wangyue" as a familiar "Chinese city," even without traditional Chinese pavilions and towers.
Huiji Xi
It is precisely because these characteristics were accurately captured that "Wangyue" could depict street scenes that resonate with all Chinese players without abusing "Chinese style" elements. However, in this demo, the city did not leave players with deeper interaction options. Whether it's the claypot rice restaurants on the street or the dessert shops in the alleys, they remain superficial. Whether it can truly vitalize modern city gameplay under a Chinese-style background still requires repeated verification in later versions.
But for now, this inclusivity ingrained in Guangzhou's bones happens to resonate with another core element of the game: the symbiotic relationship between humans and "Moon Spirits" in the worldview of "Wangyue."
There are people in Tianyue City, and there are Moon Spirits living alongside humans. In the game's worldview, Moon Spirits are not just pets for players to capture and assist in combat; they also hold citizenship in Tianyue City. They work and live like humans... If you look closely, you can even find that many vehicles on the road are driven by Moon Spirits. It was only then that I realized: they are not only part of the gameplay but also a means for "Wangyue" to shape its fictional city.
Although the urban ecology content released in this demo is still limited, you can see interesting hints from its design of Moon Spirit-related gameplay. In fact, Moon Spirit-related gameplay in "Wangyue" might occupy a larger proportion than traditional anime-style mobile game combat. You could even understand that Moon Spirit-related gameplay might be the key to the late-game loop.
Starting with the game's pet-catching gameplay, because Moon Spirits in Tianyue City also have "citizen" attributes, this determines that players cannot capture whoever they want, whenever they want. In the game, only Moon Spirits in a "Chaos" state can be captured. Although the game hasn't explicitly explained it yet, you can understand it as a pollution state that might pose a threat to daily life.
To confirm if a Moon Spirit is in a Chaos state, players need to activate a scanning mode called "Moon Eye." In this state, you can freely observe the status of surrounding Moon Spirits and check if they can be captured.
It's worth mentioning that even native Moon Spirits that cannot be captured have their own interactive attributes. During the demo, we found that many Moon Spirits were marked with unique reward tags. Players can trigger these rewards by consuming independent energy... Actually, this system feels very similar to the hacking system in "Watch Dogs," except the targets you hack change from people's phones to various strange Moon Spirits.
And in this demo, "Wangyue" also showed players another function of Moon Spirits: extending urban exploration capabilities.
Since the layout references the architectural arrangement of Guangzhou's old town, the map in "Wangyue" presents a sense of irregularity close to reality, filled with winding alleys and uneven terrain. This indirectly encourages players to explore the entire city from a more three-dimensional perspective.
Like almost all open-world structured anime-style mobile games, exploration in "Wangyue" also relies on the trio design of "jumping, wall-climbing, and stamina limits." But its difference lies in integrating Moon Spirits into this process, making them an indispensable part of city life.
Taking the content we saw in the demo as an example: in the game, players can see a cow-horse type Moon Spirit named "Jiujiu Niu." It can not only serve as a "mount" carrying the player character around but also provide an extra jump boost point for characters in mid-air, completing a more powerful double jump. With this ability, you can more easily jump onto some not-so-high buildings.
Another Moon Spirit useful for three-dimensional exploration is the deer-like "Floral Deer." Although it cannot transform into a mount, it causes plants to grow under the player's feet, allowing characters to ignore gravity and run up ninety-degree walls.
With these abilities, the cost of urban exploration in "Wangyue" is significantly reduced. Once familiar with each ability, you can execute moves smoothly. Moon Spirit cultivation and management will naturally replace stamina management, which doesn't fit the modern city setting, becoming the core of the entire exploration gameplay.
However, as mentioned earlier, the current version of "Wangyue" still depicts the modern city superficially—aside from Moon Spirits, there are few other interactive gameplay elements. It's conceivable that Moon Spirit gameplay could become the core of an open world, but it cannot completely replace life simulation gameplay.
In response to such doubts, the game's producer gave us a reasonably satisfactory explanation during the post-demo chat session: Moonlit Blade is still in a very early stage, and most of its gameplay features, especially the simulation and management elements essential to an urban setting, have yet to be released. However, whether it's urban life or simulation management, Moon Spirits will be an indispensable part of Moonlit Blade. In fact, every Moon Spirit in the game has specific traits, which determine the urban scenarios they are best suited for.
Perhaps these Moon Spirits could become employees in your shop, helping you serve customers and deliver packages. Doesn't that fit well with the world of Moonlit Blade, where humans and Moon Spirits share a city?
In fact, if they really manage to bring all of this to life, I truly wouldn't have any complaints.
Fortunately, during this demo event that turned things from negative to positive, we did see that possibility—
I mean, if a game dares to completely overturn Everythinggj it has done before, making its core gameplay self-consistent shouldn't be too difficult, right?
So, for today's Moonlit Blade, I'm willing to give it even more patience—who knows what it will look like the next time we meet?