Arthurian Action

China has always been a massive gaming market. Its biggest sector for years, however, has been the mobile side, which inadvertently silos it off from other gaming-heavy regions that primarily play on consoles and PC. There’s been a shift, though. Black Myth: Wukong, which launched in 2024, sold more than 30 million copies, spotlighting that the console- and PC-forward market for Chinese-developed games has extreme potential. It’s why a lot of Chinese developers who spent years carving out a space for their names in the mobile market are transitioning to triple-A experiences – Black Myth: Wukong bolstered a lot of confidence throughout the country, from what I’ve learned from various developer interviews there. Look no further than October’s Phantom Blade Zero, an exciting Chinese-developed action game coming from former mobile developer S-Game.

All of this is to say that I recently traveled to Chengdu, China, to bear witness to another Chinese studio breaching into the larger triple-A gaming market, this time at the hands of newcomer studio Eclipse Glow Games. Though it’s a Tencent-backed studio formed just a few years ago, many of its developers have experience on series like Assassin’s Creed, Persona, For Honor, Like a Dragon, and more. That pedigree was on display during my two hours of hands-on gameplay with Eclipse Glow’s debut game, Tides of Annihilation.

Tides of Annihilation features all the spectacle and grandeur many recent action games coming out of China wow players with; however, it’s intentionally setting its sights on Western markets more than previously mentioned games like Black Myth: Wukong and Phantom Blade Zero. Eclipse Glow is purposefully doing so by blending the pageantry of Chinese action games with the Arthurian legend – the medieval tales about King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, and Camelot.