Phantom Blade Zero Will Get A 30-Minute Playable Demo In 2024

Chinese developer S-Game appears to be working on a solid hack-and-slash action RPG project in the name of Phantom Blade Zero. This game’s sub-4-minute reveal back at the PlayStation Showcase had everyone gasping for air, considering its absolutely slick combat, and a menacing overall setting. If you’ve been awestruck by the title’s reveal ever since, the developer’s got some good news coming for you. 

Taking the stage at the currently ongoing ChinaJoy 2023 event, which is being held in Shanghai and providing a platform for Chinese developers to come forth with their works, the creator behind Phantom Blade Zero—S-Game—has said that a playable demo for the game with a length spanning 30 minutes or so will be available sometime in 2024. That said, there’s no concrete release date for the title as of now.  

Director of Phantom Blade zero confirms a 30 minutes playable demo of the project will be available on 2024! pic.twitter.com/4ifrQojGTp

— Phantom Blade Zero (@pbzero_official) July 30, 2023

Although the announcement trailer, in all its glory, listed only PlayStation 5 as its front-running platform, the official website of the project has shed some more light on that. Phantom Blade Zero won’t be a console-exclusive and will be making landfall on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store as well. What fans are only hoping, for now, is for the gameplay of the title to truly deliver and not be just some two-button redundancy. 

Phantom Blade Zero’s Chinese developer is otherwise known for having started their career as a mobile game developer. A related title to the latter is Phantom Blade: Executioners, and although it’s on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC as well, a mobile port on Android and iOS is prominent as well. In an interview with Wccftech, the devs have stated how they “relied” on mobile games to build their community. 

In other news, Phantom Blade Zero has been developed using Unreal Engine 5, and the PlayStation 5 version of the RPG will come with different playable presets. As for a mobile iteration of this otherwise grand project, S-Game has said that porting an Unreal Engine 5-built game to mobile platforms is simply not feasible. Of course, the studio would have to rebuild the title from the ground up for that matter.   

Yes, if everything goes as planned, we intend to offer two modes: 2K at 60fps and 4K at 30fps. However, I agree that this is still a compromise.  Our team is actively seeking ways to achieve 4K at 60fps on PS5, or at least a stable 45~50fps, to provide players with the best possible gaming experience,” says a representative of S-Game. 

For PC players, though, it has been confirmed that Phantom Blade Zero will sport ray tracing on both PC and console as well, and that AMD and Nvidia have been supportive throughout the development process to S-Game. With all of that being said, we’re all yet to see how the rip-roaring action along with the traversal combat of the RPG translates into actual gameplay. 

Phantom Blade Zero does not have a release date currently and the developers also remain unsure as to how long it’ll take the project to complete. What we do know, however, is that the game is coming to PlayStation 5 and PC, with no port planned, at least now, for the Xbox Series X|S consoles.