Black Myth: Zhong Kui gameplay trailer shows 15 minutes of combat, bosses, and mythology

Game Science dropped a 15-minute gameplay trailer for Black Myth: Zhong Kui, the follow-up to Black Myth: Wukong, giving the clearest look yet at the new protagonist in action. The footage arrives roughly a year after the game's reveal at Gamescom 2025.

The trailer covers a lot of ground. The new protagonist — Zhong Kui himself — fights a string of grotesque forest enemies in combat that looks very familiar to Wukong players: rolling, parrying, and heavy weapon strikes against oversized bosses. Outside of combat, he builds a raft with an old man, dives to the bottom of a lake to retrieve a mysterious woman, and teams up with either a companion or a powerful summoned form to take down a boss. A late montage throws in lighter moments — fishing, getting his makeup applied — before the tone darkens again. Game Science also tucked a poem into the video description, referencing the Underworld and themes of memory, love, and unfinished scores.

Zhong Kui is a figure from Taoist mythology with a genuinely strange origin story. According to Game Science's own synopsis, he was a top scholar in the Tang Dynasty who aced the imperial examinations, only for the emperor to reject his appointment on the spot because of his intimidating appearance — thick eyebrows, large eyes, and features the emperor found repulsive. Zhong Kui responded by headbutting a palace pillar hard enough to kill himself, which is one way to lodge a complaint. The emperor, presumably feeling guilty, posthumously appointed him an evil-dispelling judge, and he eventually rose to become the King of Hell's marshal for pacifying ghosts — which lines up neatly with the poem's Underworld references.

Black Myth: Zhong Kui still has no release date and no confirmed platforms, though Wukong launched on PC day one. Given how much the new trailer leans into the same action-RPG DNA as its predecessor, the wait is going to sting for anyone who burned through Wukong already.