It looks to be quite the departure from the studio’s previous two games, Detention and Devotion, both of which were firmly psychological horror games. With Nine Sols, though, Red Candle Games are calling it “Taopunk” – “we had a clear goal of combining Taoism with cyberpunk, melding sci-fi elements with Eastern mythology.” Red Candle have also put out a trailer with a bit of gameplay to promote Nine Sols’ crowdfunding campaign. It’s got a banging electronic soundtrack, too. You can check that out below. Red Candle says their reason behind crowdfunding is to get feedback directly from the people buying and playing their games. “Nine Sols is far larger in scale than anything Red Candle Games has produced in the past. It is therefore crucial that we find out what the market thinks of it during the development phase.” There’s a couple of interesting stretch goals for the campaign as well, like in-game cutscenes and hidden bosses. Red Candle Games have had a troubled history getting their games out into the world in recent years. In 2019, Steam scrubbed Devotion from the store after some Chinese players became upset by some of its art assets comparing Chinese president Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh, causing its publisher Indievent to lose their business license. GOG then promised to release it a year later in 2020, before changing their minds just a few hours later. Finally, last year, Red Candle Games took matters into their own hands, announcing they were going to sell the game themselves on their own online store. As such, crowdfunding Nine Sols definitely seems like the way to go.
