On July 17, 2026, Gujian held its first offline demo event at the China Art Palace in Shanghai. We were fortunate to be one of the invited media outlets. After an hour of gameplay, we joined other media representatives in a discussion organized by the Gujian project team. During the session, Xue Ling, the project lead for Gujian, shared detailed insights into the game's development philosophy and the challenges encountered during production.
According to him, the reason for releasing the demo at this stage is that the game development has reached the mid-process phase, requiring validation of completed parts. Thus, they created slices of finished content and organized this demo. What they wanted to validate in this demo was whether certain "baselines" of the game were met, such as controls, combat systems, art, and technical foundations.
Among these topics, he focused on sharing their approach to boss design and the "strange tales" atmosphere they aim to convey through it. As an ARPG, Xue Ling believes that boss design and character shaping are integrated. His battles also need to serve a narrative function to ensure the overall coherence of the game.
For example, Wu Yang, also known as "Hu Ge" (Pot Brother) from Changsheng Ju, was designed with a very distinctive look, wearing a teapot on his head and wielding a long-spouted teapot as a weapon. Yet, he was also given a very "orthodox" martial arts style, fighting with the demeanor of a master. "Why would such a person merely be a waiter in a tea house?"—This is the question they wanted to embody in the story CGs and boss battle designs, portraying Wu Yang as a character with a story.
All characters appearing in this demo version have corresponding designs. For example, "Ox-Head" is a simple and straightforward person, somewhat talkative, but becomes silent and turns red all over when he gets angry during fights.
Regarding the portrayal of the protagonist, they chose to reflect it through the design of the combat system. They provided the protagonist with various weapons, magical artifacts, and companions. By offering a large amount of combinable content, they strengthen the player's immersion in actively playing as the Sijian (Underworld Judge), integrating character role-playing with the game's story and gameplay to ensure the overall coherence of the game—
This is also one of the qualities the game ultimately aims to express.
Beyond specific character designs and gameplay systems, Xue Ling also discussed his understanding of the "strange tales" atmosphere of this title. He believes that in Eastern-style fantasy, "life and death" are not completely opposite or isolated. Based on this, they shaped "Wangchuan" (the boundary between the underworld and the mortal world) to be quite aesthetic and romantic.
To present this romance means Candle Dragon needs to use more local cultural elements. According to Xue Ling, it was precisely the challenges encountered in integrating cultural designs into bosses that led to the poor performance of the previously released combat gameplay demo.
The boss "Caiyi Hou · Kongkongzi" incorporates many elements of ancient Chinese magic tricks. Ultimately, they chose silk painting cloth as the main body of this boss. However, designing a boss primarily made of cloth caused many problems during physics calculations. It was very difficult to make a piece of cloth provide the impact feel players desire during combat.
But conceptually, after fully completing "Caiyi Hou · Kongkongzi," Xue Ling felt that this character effectively presented the "strange tales" flavor desired by Gujian. Although he is merely a piece of cloth, he still possesses his own loves, hates, and obsessions, exhibiting strong human qualities through a non-human form. Just like in previous entries of the "Gujian" series, the game features gods, immortals, demons, monsters, and humans, but their interactions ultimately tell human stories.
We do not know the full story of "Caiyi Hou · Kongkongzi," but according to Xue Ling, this will be a story about "humans" that they wish to express. This is a characteristic of Gujian—therefore, Xue Ling decided to make it the subject of the Summer Game Fest trailer. After seeing generally negative player feedback, they further optimized many aspects, such as adding details of cloth threads bouncing out when hit.
At the end of the sharing session, Xue Ling briefly expanded on the emotional journey during the development of Gujian. He believes—
"In this title, players will assume the role of a Sijian (Underworld Judge), traveling to disordered realms in the mortal world to gather wandering spirits, resolve karmic ties, and dissolve obsessions. The theme we truly wish to explore is not just the heavy concept of 'life and death,' but rather, through the perspective of the Sijian, experiencing a journey of adventure, meeting many people and witnessing many events. There may be many regrets, or even remorse, but only by truly walking this path can we clearly see the road we must take and proceed with determination. I believe games are like this, and perhaps life itself is similar. I hope, and I believe, that our team has found the path we want to take and will continue to walk it steadily."
That concludes the sharing session. Next is the interview segment:
Q: Regarding the overall development scale, team size, and budget of Gujian, what can you disclose? What are your expectations for this title?
Xue Ling: This question covers a broad scope. During the initial PV reveal phase, the team size was not large. The project was first announced between 2021 and 2022, when we only announced the start of new development. The team was small, mainly conducting technical verification and preliminary preparations. After receiving investment from Tencent in 2024, the team began to expand gradually, and the project officially entered the full development phase. To date, the team's overall growth trend is very healthy, continuing to expand with excellent new members joining constantly.
The project is currently in the mid-development phase. Choosing to release completed content as a demo slice at this point is also intended to widely gather opinions from all sides during the mid-stage, digest the feedback, and polish the project to be better and advance more steadily.
Regarding scale and volume, this title is a standard large-scale Action RPG. The main storyline takes approximately 20 to 25 hours—while the time for full exploration varies from person to person. This is the current overall plan.
You might have noticed while experiencing the level that some paths were blocked, and you took a relatively direct route. The official game will have numerous side paths and quests to explore. The exploration content also echoes the growth mechanism mentioned earlier—if you cannot defeat a certain boss, you can explore more areas first to obtain better equipment and experience, which will naturally lower the difficulty. The total time for full exploration depends on the player's own pace.
For the team, the most important thing at this stage is to perfect the product itself. We hope to refine the product through player feedback and continuous iteration. As for final sales and achievements, we leave that more to time and the players' judgment.
Game Title Screen
Q: How many types of weapons and companions are expected in the final version? In this demo, the Golden Snake Spike (a type of light sword) has different animation sets compared to other light swords. Will this kind of design be common in the official release?
Xue Ling: We cannot disclose specific numbers at the moment. This player has a keen eye; indeed, there are some special animation sets even within the same weapon category. The game will also feature certain weapons with exclusive animations and unique functions, and such designs will be retained in the official release. While we cannot give exact figures for weapon variety, the richness of combinations will definitely be higher. We hope players can collect different companions to adventure with, pairing various weapons and magical artifacts to freely build their own combat styles.
Here, we'd like to leave a suspenseful question: Which characters from the Demo you just experienced will become collectible companions? Everyone noticed that the system has two tabs for Star Essence and Companions, but the Companions tab is currently locked—the clues are actually quite obvious, so feel free to guess.
We'll leave this question for players to discover and explore in the game after the official release.
Golden Snake Spike Weapon Interface
Q: Most of the wandering spirits the protagonist needs to reclaim are those attached to the mortal world. Several bosses are subdued through combat. Are there non-combat methods of exorcism, such as fulfilling their wishes to resolve their obsessions?
Xue Ling: The answer is yes. Some companions will join directly during the main storyline, but as the plot progresses, the bonds between players and them will deepen. The settlement screens after defeating the bosses in this demo are actually different for each. Some lingering souls are evil spirits that need to be exorcised; others carry obsessions, love, hate, and stories, requiring players to help them resolve their inner conflicts and problems. This process will involve combat, storylines, and other forms of interaction.
Q: The current Demo mainly focuses on combat content, and map exploration is almost entirely tied to combat. Does this mean that this title, unlike Gujian III: Beyond the Dream, will not have large-scale peaceful towns such as Qixia and Yangping?
Xue Ling: This point should be understood in the context of the core themes this title aims to express, including the companions mentioned earlier and the overall setting of the game. The overall narrative of this title leans more towards a gradually unfolding journey of exploration and adventure. Therefore, we suggest experiencing these aspects personally after the official launch, and we won't spoil too much here.
Game Exploration Scene
Q: Gujian draws from Chinese strange myths and legends, involving many local cultural symbols, folk concepts, and ethical logic. How do you plan to tell these Chinese stories well to overseas players?
Xue Ling: We have thought about this question thoroughly. Our team excels at exploring local Chinese culture, and many of our creative ideas and designs are inspired by Chinese cultural heritage. Therefore, the primary goal of this title is definitely to serve Chinese players well, allowing them to resonate culturally.
As for the overseas market, there are mainly two considerations:
First, solidify the game's "baseline"—that is, game quality, including core experiences like control feel and gameplay systems. Gameplay is a universal language; overseas players often recognize the quality and fun of the game first, before further understanding the cultural connotations within.
Secondly, and more importantly, we need to do localization well. We are creating content rooted in our own culture, and what is national is also global. We will tailor localization for different regions so that local players can better understand the game content. This is one of the important goals of this title.
Older players may know that Gujian III: Beyond the Dream had some regrets regarding its international release. The engine used at the time was very outdated—the same Havok Vision engine used in Gujian II and Gujian Online, which no longer supports console platforms. Since consoles hold an important position in overseas markets, the inability to launch on consoles made promotion very difficult. Coupled with various other reasons, other language versions were added only after the game's launch, resulting in unsatisfactory outcomes.
We hope to consider both console and PC versions simultaneously during the development of Gujian. You could also see PlayStation 5 demo units in the demo area this time. Meanwhile, we are developing global multi-language versions, including multi-language voiceovers, aiming for a global simultaneous release covering both console and PC platforms with multi-language support.
Ox-Head Character Storyline
Q: What is the approximate proportion of storyline in Gujian? Will the narrative style be similar to the fragmented storytelling found in Souls-like games?
Xue Ling: First of all, the storyline is always very important to us. Developers often discuss storyline, combat, and exploration separately, but the player's experience is holistic. This title also aims to organically integrate storyline, combat, and exploration as much as possible. Although we have discussed combat-related topics extensively without specifically elaborating on the storyline, behind every boss design lies the origin and story of the character. We hope to make this entire experience complete and unified.
Regarding the point you mentioned, I explained it during the initial release as well: our game is not difficult for the sake of being difficult, nor does it use fragmented storytelling. This title will have a clear main storyline and narrative thread, while comprehensively employing cinematic presentation techniques. Many boss designs are backed by rich details and cultural research, which is one of the characteristics of the "Gujian" series, and we will fully leverage this aspect.
Q: When the second PV for Gujian was released, general feedback indicated poor combat performance, but today's demo experience has changed perceptions significantly. Relatively speaking, however, the map exploration part lacks a sense of surprise. Could you share any currently disclosable map exploration elements and the overall design philosophy for maps?
Xue Ling: Indeed, the trailer shown at Summer Game Fest didn't perform well, and I take full responsibility for that. It was because I personally loved this boss so much that I chose to showcase it there. At the time, players provided a lot of feedback, mainly focusing on the impact feel. Implementing cloth-based bosses is extremely challenging; the responsible team has been polishing every detail repeatedly. We believe that through this demo, everyone can feel the significant improvement in basic experiences like impact feel.
Regarding map exploration, the map serves as the stage for narrative content, characters, and combat, so we place great importance on map exploration.
This demo only lasts one hour, and many paths in the levels are blocked. The area you experienced is just a small part of the complete map. Here's a slight hint: the area where Caiyi Hou resides is actually connected to the "Changsheng Ju" inn area. However, due to the limited demo duration, we temporarily blocked the connecting path to allow players to reach the boss fight faster. In subsequent polishing, we will place great emphasis on map explorability, including the sense of surprise you mentioned, as well as the integration of narrative, combat, and other elements.
Wu Yang Boss Battle Scene