Zhong Kui Black Myth
中文

Thirteen centuries of pestilence driven out by one face; today it sits in a Shenzhen studio’s engine, with no release date and no Steam page yet. This archive dates every official statement and marks what could not be found.

The player above is the studio's own upload. Upload record · 「captured in-game」 statement

The Dated Record of Black Myth: Zhong Kui

Official statements, the 2026 in-engine reveal, and 1,300 years of Zhong Kui imagery. Every claim dated.

Developer
Game Science 游戏科学, Shenzhen
Form
Single-player ARPG, PC and major consoles (2025-08-20 · FAQ)
Release date
None published Not found
Open the statement ledger 中文

Is there a Black Myth: Zhong Kui release date?

No. The game has no announced date or window yet, no Steam store page or store listing (checked the same day), no NPPA domestic approval record across thirteen monthly lists from August 2025 to August 2026, and no ESRB or PEGI entry that returns a hit (searched, and each register came back empty). The studio's published position on timing is its own FAQ line «As soon as we can!», and its director was quoted by GamesRadar+ saying that he himself «absolutely has no idea» when it will arrive (source). What does exist is 26 dated official statements and three official videos, the longest being a 952-second gameplay trailer from 20 Aug 2026.

47

days since the last official statement

last: 1 Sep 2026, 26 official statements in the ledger

26

official statements, dated

44 lines quoted verbatim, each tied to a dated record

31

press and trade reports

never allowed to stand in for a studio statement

13

negatives published

9 searches that found nothing, 4 claims turned back

52

public-domain images, local

from 19 institutions, 66 catalogued

51

classical passages quoted

35 works, 7 strata from 先秦 to 清, each with its captured edition

Engine I

The evidence hub

A pre-launch game is a set of claims, and most of them are somebody else's. The hub holds 62 entries on one screen, filterable by year, actor, grade and topic, with the quoted words kept beside the date and the link that produced them. It also holds the things that are not there: no store listing, no rating record, no approval line, no engine named by anyone official. When a rumour is contradicted it is marked Denied rather than deleted, so the correction stays auditable.

Ledger · Release-date dossier · Shot-by-shot reveal · Cast dossier

Engine II

The Zhong Kui tradition

Handscroll attributed to Su Hanchen, Zhong Kui Marrying Off His Sister (digitised roll, late-Ming argument)

The title has a thousand years of paperwork behind it, and none of it belongs to a game company. A Tang minister thanks the emperor for a painted Zhong Kui and a new calendar; a Song catalogue of the imperial collection concedes that the origin «cannot be verified»; a Ming scholar derives the demon-queller from a ritual club; a Qing antiquary assembles four proofs for the same reading. This engine presents the quotations, the paintings and the ritual calendar, each with its holding record.

Lore texts · Gallery · Method

Release

Every date claim, ranked by who said it.

Reveal

55 marks across 20 Aug 2026, with 11 declined.

Cast

15 entities catalogued from official footage; the studio has confirmed none by name.

Gallery

52 plates across 7 eras, 19 collections.

The handscroll of the record so far

Five knots in a thread that runs from a 116-second teaser to the present record. Read it left to right; the full version carries every dated statement.

Drag or swipe the scroll

  1. 20 Aug 2025

    A 116-second teaser appears

    Uploaded to the studio's own YouTube channel at 13:01 Pacific. The Chinese-dub cut is the primary upload.

    source

  2. 2025-08-20

    Announced with a FAQ, not a date

    Six official FAQ answers go up. On timing the answer is "As soon as we can!", and the director is quoted as having no idea.

    source

  3. 2026-02-10

    A 407-second New Year special

    In-engine, and explicitly labelled by the studio as non-canon entertainment.

    source

  4. 2026-08-20

    Fifteen minutes of combat, 952 seconds

    The reveal upload. The studio states all of it was captured in-game from a work-in-progress build at 21:9.

    source

  5. 2026-09-01

    Yang Qi's test-reel post, unverified

    Art director Yang Qi posts a character test-reel image on ArtStation; no statement ties it to this title. Filed as a note, medium confidence.

    source

  6. 2026-09-06

    Face-model identifications relayed by trade press

    A Game Science–adjacent developer's social post naming face models is relayed by Zhibo8; self-identification, not a studio casting announcement.

    source

  7. 2026-09-23

    No official statement; checks re-run

    Steam, ESRB/PEGI and approval lists re-checked; no record appears. Filed as a local verification note.

  8. 2026-09-25

    GMW carries Li Guangfu's facial-capture post

    Guangming Online relays the actor's own post identifying the chicken-leg old man as his facial capture; attributed, not confirmed.

    source

  9. Ongoing

    Ongoing Milestones & Release Tracking

    Game Science continues active development on PC and mainstream consoles; official release window, Steam store page, and gameplay updates will be tracked closely.

    source

Open the complete timeline

A thousand years of the same face

View complete gallery (52 plates) →

Rubbings, handscrolls, woodcut almanacs and Edo prints from public domain museum collections worldwide. Staggered by proportion from hanging scrolls to handscrolls, each linked directly to its institutional accession record.

The gaps between official statements, logged

A game that has not shipped yet leaves only two ways to look substantial: inflate what has been said, or invent a frame around it. Both are worthless to a reader trying to decide what is real. So the rules here are mechanical rather than rhetorical.

  1. I

    An official statement is only what the studio published. gamesci.cn and the studio's own YouTube channel qualify; a trade article paraphrasing a founder does not, and is filed one tier down even when the quote inside it is genuine.

  2. II

    Nothing is rendered without a source pointer. Every figure on this site is computed at build time from the same JSON that feeds the ledger, and each row names the archived record behind it. If a number has no row, the component prints nothing at all.

  3. III

    A failed search is a finding. «No Steam store listing found» and «the ESRB lookup returned nothing» are published as records with their own dates, because next month one of them will stop being true and the change needs a baseline.

  4. IV

    Seeing is not knowing. In the shot-by-shot reveal, a frame that shows a figure with a sword is graded 目见 (observed); that the figure is the protagonist is 推 (inferred); that he is a young Zhong Kui is somebody else's reading and is filed as 三方称 (claimed) beside the article that said it.

  5. V

    Attribution may be downgraded, never upgraded. A handscroll catalogued as «attributed to» a Tang master stays «attributed to» here, even when a blog calls it a masterpiece by that hand. The same discipline runs backwards through the tradition: the dream of Emperor Xuanzong survives in a book that no longer exists, and the 12th-century imperial catalogue already said the origin «cannot be verified».

How a claim here is captured, graded and quoted: the method and standing of this archive.

Latest analyses

All essays →
2026-10-18 · Fight anatomy

Giant Clam True Monarch, frame by frame

大蚌真君，一帧一帧 — the only named enemy in the reveal, read from the graded frame record.

 2026-10-18 · Iconography

The four talisman icons

符箓四印 — four small round HUD slots, and the fu/char tradition they plausibly echo.

 2026-10-18 · Identity

Who is the swordsman?

白衣剑客是谁 — no nameplate, no confirmation; three readings weighed against the record.

Compiled from 62 verified milestone statements, 55 detailed gameplay breakdown points, 52 curated historical plates, and 51 classical textual passages. Questions, feedback, or primary source citations are warmly welcome: contact@blackmyth-zhongkui.wiki.

An independent enthusiast resource and mythological research archive for Black Myth: Zhong Kui.