PS5 action RPG adapts Pu Songling’s Strange Tales

A Chinese developer announced a single-player action role-playing game for PlayStation 5 that adapts selected stories from Pu Songling’s Strange Tales for a global audience. The studio confirmed plans for an international release with English text and voice options alongside Mandarin.

The game will retell several episodes from the Strange Tales collection through an action-RPG structure. Players will encounter fox spirits, ghosts and other supernatural beings in expanded quests and multi-stage boss fights. Developers said environments draw on Qing-era architecture and rural landscapes to reflect the settings of the source material.

Gameplay combines close-quarters weapon combat with spirit-based abilities derived from the original stories. Narrative-driven missions will include dialogue branches and choices intended to reflect the moral ambiguity and human drama in Pu Songling’s work. The team included costumes, rituals and period language in visual storytelling as part of its cultural references.

The studio plans broad localization, offering English voice acting and subtitle support for multiple languages. Literary scholars and cultural advisers were consulted on tone and themes while story structure and pacing were adjusted to suit a modern single-player experience, lead developers noted.

The title will launch on PlayStation 5 only, the developer confirmed, without giving a release date. A trailer and gameplay footage shown with the announcement demonstrated combat systems, environments and character models. The studio said it will share a release window, pricing and pre-order details in the coming months.

Design priorities include a narrative-first approach, save systems, difficulty options and accessibility features aimed at both action-RPG players and those new to the genre or the source material. No multiplayer modes, collector editions or post-launch content plans were announced.

“We wanted to bring these stories to players who may not know Pu Songling’s work, and to do that we rebuilt several of the tales around player-driven encounters,” the studio’s creative director said in a statement.

Pu Songling’s Strange Tales, compiled in the 17th and 18th centuries, is a collection of short stories mixing the supernatural, satire and moral lessons. The new PS5 title is among recent projects that adapt those narratives for interactive formats intended for international players.