I have personally always had a problem with Visual Novel series because in my opinion, they aren’t real games. However, Shuyan is doing something very different by adding actual 3D beat’em up gameplay for their action scenes.
Developers Mark Media have come up with a graphic novel story that they decided to turn into a video game, making it a Visual novel adventure story that will take place over the course of several chapters. The story follows Shuyan, a princess that wants to become a warrior and break free from the boring life that is in store for her.
Shuyan ends up learning martial arts and becoming the keeper of a powerful and ancient magic. When General Ganbataar rises up an army and threatens her hometown, it is up to Shuyan to defend her people and stop the evil General. The story will have full professional voice actors for the story, with multiple choice scenes that will lead to three different endings.
Unlike standard Visual/Graphic novel games, Shuyan has a pretty heavy emphasis on combat and gameplay, and the developers even has an entire webpage dedicated to Chinese martial arts, Kung Fu, and the development process of the making of Shuyan, where they show how they came up with an authentic story and their Kung fu combat system.
It appears that Shuyan saga first started as a mobile Smartphone game a few years ago, and since then the developers have been working on making a new game, with a more detailed combat system for PC to add a more hands-on gameplay experience. They also say that they have motion captured animations that were done by Longfei Yang, who is a master of the Shanxi Praying Mantis Kung Fu style, which will give the game a more detailed Kung fu combat system.
Shuyan really reminds me of The Last Airbender and Legend Of Korra in terms of story and its basic concept, so for me this game looks really interesting. The developers released their first Steam Greenlight teaser trailer that I linked down below, that explains a bit of the story and shows off some of the combat.
The concept seems really cool, so I’m really looking forward to seeing the game come together and move forward with development.
Shuyan doesn’t seem to have an official release date yet, but you can visit their official website to sign up for early beta testing access, and if you are lucky you’ll be able to test out the game and help the developers work out the major bugs before release.
For additional information and details, or to cast your vote, make sure you also check out their Steam Greenlight page to learn more.
