You know cyberpunk. Now let Nine Sols introduce you to ‘Taopunk’

digitaltrends.com:

A studio known for creating horror games pivoting to a new genre isn’t unheard of. After all, Tango Gameworks shifted from creating games such as The Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo to the goofy and colorful Hi-Fi Rush. The Taiwan-based studio Red Candle Games followed a similar trajectory on the way to its newest game, Nine Sols.

Red Candle Games was founded in 2015 and debuted with the side-scrolling horror game Detention in 2017. In 2019, the studio released Devotion, a psychological horror game that received quite a bit of attention after it was banned from digital PC storefronts like GOG and Steam for containing an easter egg referencing Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

Now, five years after that incident, Red Candle Games is getting ready to release Nine Sols. It was first announced in March 2022 and blew past its fundraising goal of three million Taiwanese dollars (approximately $93,000) within the first 24 hours. As an Asian fantasy action platformer, Nine Sols couldn’t be any further in tone from the horror-tinged Detention and Devotion. To create something fresh, the studio would bring in tons of inspiration and adopt a unique aesthetic: Taopunk.

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Myth becomes sci-fi

Producer Vincent Yang tells Digital Trends that there were several reasons why Red Candle Games wanted to create something different. The first was that after creating two consecutive horror titles, the development team felt burnt out from developing similar experiences. The second was that Nine Sols gave Red Candle Games the freedom to experiment with different topics, genres, and gameplay style. The studio also believed that it would help rejuvenate creativity.

“We wanted to leverage this versatility and explore new possibilities,” Yang explains. “We