Phantom Blade Zero Director Explains What the ‘Punk’ Part of ‘Kungfu Punk’ Really Means

Ever since its reveal in 2023, Phantom Blade Zero has garnered tremendous attention. The dark “kung fu punk” action game makes a strong first impression, and after my hands-on earlier this year, it somehow plays as good as it looks.

After years, developer S-Game has revealed the release date at The Game Awards, officially starting a countdown. S-Game has taken a surprisingly transparent approach to showing off the game, and while the studio is confident it can hit the September 9, 2026 date, there’s some interesting words of wisdom they got from none other than the folks who took home the Game Of The Year award with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

“We actually got some pretty good advice from the Expedition 33 team, and I agree with it. Their advice is to delete things. To cut things off if we don’t have enough confidence in the content, and if we only have limited time,” S-Game CEO and Phantom Blade director Soulframe Liang tells Inverse, “We’re always looking back to our game, not only because time and resources are limited, but because if we have too much unnecessary content, it will dilute the core experience.”

With the big reveal, Inverse caught up with Liang to talk about the new trailer, digging into what “kung fu punk” really means, and what the award show sweep of Expedition 33 means for S-Game and the industry at large.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Previously, we’d talked about the idea of Phantom Blade being “kung fu punk.” I want to really dig into that. You have the aesthetic, like the steam of Steampunk, but what exactly makes Phantom Blade “Punk?”

Liang: Let’s take an example – the Dancing Lion in the release date trailer. The Lion, the original Lion, the spirit is supposed to bring good fortune, hope, something for celebration, like in spring festivals. So it’s very traditional, two guys are underneath and they dance with the Lion.

But our Lion is something different visually. It’s attacking and has machines installed in its head. It can spit fire and has this chainsaw on its side that can cut through people, and the dancer’s legs have blades on the shoe – so they can kick you. Also the spirit, you’ll realize, our version of the Dancing Lion is not very benevolent. It’s not about good fortune or an icon of goodwill – it’s doing something crazy that will be shocking in our story.

The punk part, even without the visuals, because this Lion has a backstory. I don’t want to spoil too much, obviously. It’s an enemy you have to take down, right? In the beginning, you use a very traditional way to activate this spirit, you draw the eyes on the Lion head to activate the whole thing, and when activated, it will attack you because the whole thing is driven mad.

Our story is about good things being ruined and good things gone rogue and wild – the basic idea is that you have to fight, and you have to come to a new point of “balance.” When you beat the Lion and pray to the gods, the problem is solved, and the power gets balanced.

So it’s the kungfu part, not only visually, but also in the spirit. Because with many things, if it’s the original image or icon, there are gods or blessings, or idols on the temple to accept your prayer, right? That’s something traditional – there are hierarchies, and differences between gods and people. But now things are coming together, getting messed up, and things are becoming villains.

Because of our setting and story, you have this fight and have to find a new level of balance.That’s also a good metaphor for our narrative and a new form of culture.

“We actually got some pretty good advice from the Expedition 33 team, and I agree with it. Their advice is to delete things.”

I know you’ve talked about how important Berserk is to you personally. But how important is it to the visual identity of this game, and more largely, to video games in general?

Liang: Obviously, Berserk is an inspiration for the Souls games; we see many direct inspirations. It’s a cold, dark, and intense story about revenge – and this is an important topic for many creations. And also the story about challenging gods, that’s another important topic from ancient Greece.

So the reason Berserk is inspiring the industry is that it combines many classical topics and wraps them in a story that delivers it in a very artistic way. So yes, this is a factor we’re inspired by, but also something like Vampire Hunter D or Claymore.

All of this is an inspiration for us, because we have this topic of a man challenging some unknown beings, or gods. But you know what, there are no gods, but there’s some kind of great being, something horrible and unknown to the physical world. That’s always an interesting topic, but we also combine it with our traditional Wuxia and kung fu movies to make something more.

“If you look at the reviews of Silksong, you’ll see the English reviews are like 90 percent positive, but the Chinese reviews are around 50-60 percent, because of the translation.”

I wanted to ask about the new trailer, specifically, one thing we see is a sort of Drunken Master style. Can you tell me a little about that, and if it’s a specific weapon in the game?

Liang: It is a weapon in the game, but actually, styles are bonded to the weapon. If you use different weapons, you will attack in different ways, like if you use dual blades, you move swiftly and become like an assassin. But if you wield a huge blade, you become a warrior in another style of fighting. Drunken Blade is featured as the highlight in our new trailer; we actually showcase it from both the boss's and the hero's side, as it’s a weapon that’s taken from the boss.

It’s a very romantic element in Chinese Kung fu culture; the drunken feast or drunken words are some very classic moments in Chinese Kung fu movies, like Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master.

So we wanted to express that romantic and iconic thing from our culture, but do it in a cool kung fu punk way. So we add some extra layers to Jackie Chan’s movements. It’s not so realistic. You can do some incredible movements like floating in mid-air very slowly, because he’s in drunken mode, the whole person starts floating. The expression is actually trying to emulate what you feel at the moment you’re drunk, you feel you’re floating – but you’re actually floating in mid-air to use the sword. It’s very fun to play.

And, actually, it has a system where you have to charge your drunken meter. You have to drink wine to charge the meter, and when it’s full, you enter another mode – drunken mode. All the movements become slow, but you can dodge in the “illusion.”

Watching this trailer, it seems like you’ve reinvested in the English voice and localization. Is that true? And has that become a focus for you now that the release date is out there?

Liang: Localization is very important, but it’s always a big and tough issue when you translate an Eastern topic. Before it was Japanese, and now it’s Chinese. Games also have a similar problem when doing English or other Western languages. So we’re working to have a better localization, and hopefully we’ve made progress in the new trailer. We actually have an example – the Chinese version of Silksong.

We’ve learned a lesson because we didn’t realize where the problem is, because we don’t actually know all the subtle differences. We can’t do the quality assurance, we have to rely on the localization team, but we didn’t oversee it too much until we saw the Chinese version of Silksong. That’s when we thought, oh, if we’re doing a not-so-good English version, it will influence the experience so much.

Because we played the Chinese version of Silksong and experienced some similar problems. If you look at the reviews of Silksong, you’ll see the English reviews are like 90 percent positive, but the Chinese reviews are around 50-60 percent, because of the translation. Not only about the story, but even clues about the gameplay – it’s very confusing. So then, we realized what the problem is, and we realized how bad the problem could be if we don’t get a good localization. So we’re trying to reorganize our location teams and have more talent join us. We have different partners working together, so we have several passes.

With the release date out there, I have to ask, how confident are you that you can hit the date?

We have confidence we can deliver the game on time. But the prerequisite is that we have to be very clear about what the most important thing is. What’s our first priority in the game?

We actually got some pretty good advice from the Expedition 33 team, and I agree with it. Their advice is to delete things, to cut things off. If we don’t have enough confidence in the content, and if we only have limited time trying to figure things out and find our priorities.

Maybe there will be some unimportant parts and unnecessary parts we may leave for the future, or cut them off and polish the stuff left. I think that’s great advice, even though we’ve had the idea before. We’re always looking back to our game, not only because time and resources are limited, or the pressures, but because if we have too much unnecessary content, it will dilute the core experience.

For instance, what should a hero do? The hero should seek revenge right? Or protect the weak, or kill some bad guys. That’s a good thing the hero should do, not help the old nanny find her cat or help unclog a toilet. So we don’t pack the game with sidequests in this direction.

Soul only has 66 days to live, and he has unfinished business; he has to get revenge. He doesn’t have time for casual exploration, that’s the point. So in this case, I think keeping the core pillars very clean and building systems and narrative, and content supporting the core pillar is good for us.

With Expedition 33, looking at how it swept The Game Awards, and the talk that’s come up about smaller teams and controlled budgets. How does all that make you feel? What kind of message do you think it’s sending?

First, I feel proud for Guillaume and his team, because Guillaume actually visited our Shanghai motion capture studio a couple of months ago – and we had a great time. The trip was planned for like two hours, but it ended up being the whole day, and he enjoyed our demo very much.

And this obviously sends a very clear message to the world and industry, and to gamers, that maybe we are all on the new trend of people looking for something new and fresh. We’re seeing many new games come out from many new studios, and there’s a trend of someone with experience and a steady hand, and also the ambition to explore new things. When these two come together, it may have some effects that give something unexpected and unseen before.

And I don’t think that’s a bad sign for very indie games or very AAA studios. Because normally, you would think inexperience in indie games would lack the resources or experience, or AAA studios would lack the ambition to try something new and stick to established IPs – but only these ideas coming together can make good games.

We are happy to see this is a trend this year, including what’s happening in China. We can see Black Myth Wukong in the same situation. Or in Korea, we see Stellar Blade or Lies of P. But also with us, we’re not some rookies without any experience, but we also have investment. So we have the resources, we have the experience, but we’re still new to the overall industry, and I think that makes us ambitious and willing to have something new.

Of course, we can still talk about love and passion for games, which we have. But even from the business side, from the rational side, doing something solid and creative is still our way to compete.

Phantom Blade Zero launches on September 9, 2026, for PS5 and PC.