Today, Chinese developer Pathea Games, known mainly for the 'My Time' series (though they also recently launched the 3v3 sports game Superball), announces The God Slayer, an intriguing open world steampunk action roleplaying game.
Wccftech had the opportunity to watch a one-on-one media presentation where founder and creative director Zifei Wu introduced the game and answered our questions. Wu told us that this project has been in full production for about a year and a half, and now the studio feels the time is right to unveil it to the world.
The setting is a fictional, Ming-inspired Asian metropolis named Zhou, which blends Chinese cultural aesthetics with steampunk technology and a Qi-based elemental magic system (earth, metal, fire, water, wood). The world of The God Slayer was created long ago by powerful beings known only as Celestials. They didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts, though: they simply needed living beings to cultivate Qi that they would then harvest to keep themselves eternal.
After the humans learn to channel Qi for their own gains, and right in the middle of a technological revolution (imagine airships, steamboats, and poor people toiling in factories for the good of the noble and wealthy), the Celestials quickly retaliate, destroying the strongest kingdom and its best Elemancers in a single night. This cataclysmic event would later be known as the God Fall, and it also kickstarts the story of the protagonist, Cheng, whose family is slaughtered during this fated night.
His ultimate goal is to slay the Supreme Celestial, but before that happens, he'll have to defeat his minions. The game, estimated to last around 40 hours of gameplay in an average playthrough and probably a lot more for completionists, will consist of seven Chapters, each featuring a pivotal boss fight at its conclusion. During a Chapter, the world is freely explorable, and the world simulation keeps going, but the main storyline won't advance until you've defeated the end boss.
The game is also deeply systemic, a bit like Pathea's previous titles. For example, you could distract a dog by throwing them some meat, or if you kill a secondary character, they won't show up later. Missions in The God Slayer will allow players to approach them in multiple ways. For instance, players are free to attack all enemies head-on; they can bribe guards to look the other way, activate elemental powers to create diversions / distract enemies, pathfind usually hidden side routes, and utilize alternative means to achieve their objective.
As an example, a player could go directly to fight a boss, but the boss would have an army around him and it would turn into a hard fight. The player can level up the character's skills to fight him more effectively, but it will still be challenging. Or, the player could create a diversion by setting up a bomb somewhere, attracting a lot of the boss's army so that the enemies protecting him are gone or lessened. Or, the player could spend some money, buy some poison, sneak into this location and somehow feed this poison to the enemies and the boss and then still explode the bomb somewhere as a diversion. Now, when the player faces the boss, he is going to have a poison-based debuff and the enemies are going to be missing because they've been distracted.
The developers of The God Slayer also promise a thrilling story-driven campaign filled with interesting characters and intriguing twists and turns, where players choose their allies, inspire people across the city, and overthrow scheming gods to bring justice to the world. The combat is melee-focused and based on the marriage of classic Chinese martial arts and elements. Cheng can combine water, earth, metal, and fire to create powerful attacks and weaponry, to be used both in direct combat and to exploit the environment. The elemental powers also logically interact with each other; for example, using fire on a water puddle creates steam and dries up the water.
The game, which is powered by Unreal Engine 5, doesn't have a release date yet, but based on what we learned in our exclusive interview with Zifei Wu, 2027 seems a likely bet, probably toward the latter half. PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S and X have been confirmed, but by then, there could be new consoles, too, and Pathea has suggested they'd make the game available on those as well.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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