Game Science dropped a 15-minute gameplay video for Black Myth: Zhong Kui with no warning, and it is the first real look at how the second Black Myth game plays. The footage lands exactly one year after the character was revealed at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025, back when the studio admitted it had almost nothing playable to show. This time there are boss fights, combat systems, story beats, and a handful of strange side activities.
Quick answer: The trailer confirms a sword-based single-player action RPG with four equippable skills, default blocking and parrying, elemental weapon imbuing, lingering summons, and enemy transformations. It is still early in development, has no release date, and is planned for PC and major consoles.
Black Myth: Zhong Kui trailer: what is confirmed so far
Before the mechanics, it helps to separate what the studio has actually stated from what the footage merely suggests. Game Science labelled everything in the video as captured in-game from a work-in-progress build, so anything here can change.
| Detail | Status |
|---|---|
| Developer | Game Science |
| Genre | Single-player action RPG |
| Engine | Unreal Engine 5 |
| Platforms | PC and major consoles (consoles unannounced) |
| Release date | Not announced; no Steam or Epic Games Store page |
| Build state | Early development, work-in-progress capture |
| Capture format | PC footage at 21:9 aspect ratio |
| Source material | Chinese folklore surrounding the demon-quelling figure Zhong Kui |
What happens in the 15 minutes of footage
The video opens on a young swordsman moving through a forest with an elderly companion. He sets off an explosion under some rocks, escapes on a raft, then carries the old man on his back before putting him down to fight a group of grey armoured enemies.
The old man then breaks apart into a swarm of insect-like creatures, which sends the swordsman on a chase that ends at the water’s edge. A creature with enormous clam-shell wings rises out for a boss fight, and partway through, control appears to shift to a hooded figure carrying a long jian before returning to the original protagonist. Game Science has not said who that second swordsman is or whether the swap is a second playable character.
Combat: blocking, parrying, and counterattacks
This is the clearest break from Black Myth: Wukong. Wukong pushed you toward dodging, and parrying only existed if you invested in the Rock Solid ability. Zhong Kui appears to have parrying built in by default, and the player parries and counters constantly throughout the fights.
Counterattacks look like the timing-based variety, where you strike just before an enemy blow connects. Straight blocking is also on show, cutting incoming damage rather than negating it. The protagonist fights with a sword, martial arts, and heavier strikes instead of Wukong’s staff and acrobatics, and paper talismans show up as well.
Sword techniques and the charge bar in the HUD
The bottom-right corner of the screen holds four skill slots, the same layout Wukong players will recognise. The difference is what fills them. Rather than flashy spells, these read as sword techniques tied to the weapon itself.
Sitting next to those slots is a bar that fills as you land hits, parry, and dodge. It behaves much like the heavy attack stance bar from Wukong. None of the four skills display a cooldown timer, which points to the bar acting as the resource you spend to use them.
Elemental imbuing: pulling fire and lightning into the blade
Wukong handled elements through spirits, weapons, and transformations. Zhong Kui hands that control to the player directly. In one moment the protagonist draws fire out of the environment and channels it into his sword, then uses it to clear out a group of minions.
He later does the same thing with a boss ability aimed at him, effectively stealing the attack and wearing it. Another sequence shows the blade carrying lightning, and a tougher boss fight has him coating it in a black material. The takeaway is that your damage type is meant to change on the fly based on what the fight throws at you.
Summons, transformations, and a rideable beast
A spirit is summoned mid-fight and then keeps fighting alongside the player. That persistence matters. Wukong’s spirits fired off a single borrowed ability and vanished, so what is shown here works more like a proper summon than a one-shot move.
Later in the same encounter, the protagonist transforms into that summon and starts using its moveset directly. This part looks close to Wukong’s transformation system, where a defeated enemy becomes a temporary form.
Mounts are strongly implied but never played. Cinematic sections repeatedly show a rider on a large beast, the trailer closes on a figure crossing the landscape on a tiger-like creature, and the official art of Zhong Kui puts him on a giant beast as well. It is possible mounts are wired into the summoning system so the creature fights with you, though nothing confirms that yet.
Music, fishing, and the odd non-combat moments
Not everything in the video is a fight. One short scene has the protagonist performing traditional Chinese music inside a skeleton ensemble, with each member on a different instrument. That points toward some form of playable instrument activity rather than a purely cinematic flourish.
Another cutscene shows him fishing with a simple wooden rod and hauling up an enormous sea monster. Whether fishing is a system you can use freely or just the trigger for a boss fight is unclear.
Elsewhere the footage cuts between more potential boss encounters, a woman applying make-up to a man, what looks like a spirit-catching activity, walking mushroom creatures, and a small spirit sitting in a boiling pot. None of these are explained.
Release date, platforms, and what is still unanswered
There is no release date, and no store page exists on Steam or the Epic Games Store. Game Science has said the game is coming to PC and major consoles without naming which consoles, and the studio has been open about refusing to rush development or lean on AI to speed it up.
Gamescom 2026 runs later this month, with Opening Night Live on 25 August. Game Science has not confirmed that it will be there, though the character was first unveiled at the same show a year ago.
Note: The single most consequential unknown is the hooded jian user. If control genuinely switched to a second character mid-boss rather than playing out as a scripted cutscene, that would be a structural change from Wukong’s single Destined One. Nothing official addresses it yet.
Taken together, the reveal reads as a deliberate shift from a staff-wielding monkey with spells to a human swordsman who defends, counters, and borrows whatever element the arena hands him. The systems are recognisable to anyone who finished Wukong, but the moment-to-moment rhythm is not the same game, and Game Science is clearly in no hurry to put a date on it.
