I sat down for a demo of Chinese action game Phantom Blade Zero with two main curiosities. First was how its combat compares to last year's Black Myth: Wukong, and it turns out: pretty different. Second was the backstory of S-Game studio founder "Soulframe" Liang, who started his career with an RPG Maker game while studying architecture in college. Where did I go wrong in my life that I didn't end up adopting a pseudonym like Soulframe?
"Well, it was in high school—it was just some random idea," Liang told me in an interview after I'd played Phantom Blade Zero. "I just figured out something cool and not-so-usual, something fantasy and something solid coming together. Because my actual Chinese name is a little hard to pronounce in English."
