During the announcement trailer for SOL Shogunate, MeinMMO editor Niko was able to ask the CEO and the Game Director of the sci-fi action game some questions about the new title. Even though it involves an alternative sci-fi world, the developers do not want to overlook real scientific concepts.
At the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted 2025, a trailer for SOL Shogunate was shown for the first time. This is the first game from the studio Chaos Manufacturing, which includes industry veterans who have been involved in games such as League of Legends and Witcher 3.
The focus of SOL Shogunate is supposed to be on action. The game is not intended to be a Soulslike, but rather an action-RPG. When I first saw the trailer, I immediately noticed the mix of styles. There are classic sci-fi elements, but also aspects that you visually associate with feudal Japan.
During the announcement, I was able to speak with Guy Costantini, the CEO of the studio, and Leszek Szczepanski, the Game Director. We discussed not only boss fights and the visual style, but also scientific concepts that have been incorporated.
MeinMMO: After I have seen the trailer, the first question that came to my mind was what is the intention of the gameplay, as it seems to me like a character action game.
And I find that very exciting nowadays because this genre has been pushed out of the mainstream due to Soulslikes. Are you trying to let the player make decisions in combat […] What you do first, who you kill first
, or is it more like the style system in games like Devil May Cry, where I have all these tools and can do the coolest or most creative combos.
Leszek Szczepanski: Honestly, that’s a great question, especially because finding a suitable combat system for the game is a central part of our work. We are trying to combine elements from various areas to create something new. I wouldn’t say it’s super new, but at least fresh. The combat relies heavily on multifaceted expressions. We want to provide players with as many tools as possible, all of which are not quite optimal, and then present them with complex problems on the battlefield to see how they move and solve these problems.
SOL Shogunate is therefore more of an action-RPG. While there is a small element concerning player progression, upgrades, weapons, and so forth, we are highly focused on action and fast, agile movements. Regarding combat, we wanted to answer the question: “What does it mean to be a future samurai in space?”
And as we explore this, we find that you want to be someone who moves super fast and in very interesting ways. Therefore, the combat system is heavily focused on melee. […] There is much to discover. You can change the distance to your opponents, attack multiple enemies simultaneously, and use special abilities in combat. We are in a low-gravity environment, so we play a lot with gravity. So, you find yourself often in the air. You fight enemies in the air and pull them down. This brings us back to your original question. We are very much moving towards action-RPG, where we are trying to explore a sort of action-plus version of what one would expect from a combat system here.
Guy Costantini: I believe Leszek often referred to it as a “Movement Slasher.” The reason for that is that we are much more inspired by tactical movements than by the more methodical, reactive play style of a Souls game. We are big fans of Souls games. It’s a long topic, but we believe that there are many people developing great Souls games. Therefore, we leave it to them to advance this genre. And you’re starting to see some really interesting examples from people saying, “Yes, these are really good lessons from this genre, but let’s improve genres that have not been improved in a while. And let’s really fulfill fantasies.” And I think one of the areas we really want to explore, this rich and engaging world, is that we want battles to draw you through this story moment to moment and be really responsive.
[…] It should be well thought out and realistic, not so far into the future that it feels magical. Let’s base it on technology. Let’s make sure there’s a reason why our protagonist has bioceramic skin, making them impervious to radiation, cold, and the temperature fluctuations in space. There’s a reason they have mechanical grippers so they can move quickly in an environment with different gravitational forces. And there’s a reason they also have a sword, as the soul of every samurai is the sword, right? And so, all these puzzle pieces fit together into something that we found to be a really enjoyable sandbox to play in.
Combat System and Character Progression
MeinMMO: Speaking of sandbox. You’ve written about these elemental infusions for the sword. Do you mean more that you can “use what you want,” or rather that “these enemies” are weak against fire and “those enemies” are weak against another element?
Leszek Szczepanski: Yes, exactly. It’s a combination of both. Regarding the combat system in relation to your enemies, a large part of the logic is that you know all your enemies’ weaknesses. The elements you use are part of those weaknesses, but also various status effects that the enemies are particularly susceptible to. And certain weapons you can use make your enemies especially vulnerable. This way, you can optimize different enemies and figure out which ones you can eliminate the quickest. Part of your understanding of how this process works is part of your progress in the game.
But here’s a complication. The thing is that all these elements do not just constitute a kind of “weakness system”. Each element has a defined status effect it applies. Sometimes, you may want to use an element that is not optimal for a particular enemy because for some reason you want to apply that status effect to that enemy. Also, you can use multiple elements on a weapon. The idea here is that these status effects and elements interact with each other. So, there should also be a kind of relationship matrix. If you apply a certain status effect, for example, fire, to an enemy and then attack them with a toxic element, you get a kind of added effect. Navigating through these kinds of relationships is part of the role-playing component of the game.
Guy Costantini: It’s also about mastering it, because imagine nested weaknesses where something seems impossible at the beginning of the game, but once you master the weaknesses, you can easily obliterate your enemies. So, we wanted to create something that requires very deep mastery but is also heavily based on the “personality of the character.” So, this is a great opportunity to talk about Yuzuki.
She is the heir of a powerful family. The family is, spoiler alert, brutally massacred as a premise for the title. And she must find out why this was allowed to happen because they had so much power that they should have been able to take over everything. As a small child, she was saved and had to undergo a very painful transformation process called “Ascension” […].
And this “Ascension” essentially makes you a god among humans, but it also involves a very painful sacrifice, especially for [Yuzuki], as she has to go through it for various reasons that she will discover much earlier than most others. And that grants her this incredible power that you have to reckon with, but it also affects the genetic system. She is able to collect gene splices, which allow her to explore how they can be recombined. And each time you evolve Yuzuki, you go through a different modification process that you wouldn’t go through in another playthrough. We’re not pretending there are no favorites. But there’s going to be a lot to discover when you decide: What kind of space samurai do I want to be? What different ways can I face this “theater of war” in front of me? And then, I think, we’ll be surprised what people come up with to master the various challenges related to the environment and combat we throw at them.
Leszek Szczepanski: The genetic system is pretty much the core of our character development logic. And as Guy already mentioned, the idea is that through battles or exploration you find gene splices. You can then integrate these gene splices into your DNA to gain certain abilities, buffs, or improvements.
With this, we wanted to reflect the narrative aspect of genetic alteration, how it affects the world around Yuzuki. On the other hand, we wanted to create an upgrade system that is not just an upgrade trick. The idea is that, as a player, you don’t really know what’s going to come out of it in the end. You’re meant to explore, discover, and experiment. This is why I mentioned that two playthroughs can actually end differently because you can find different genes, integrate them in different ways, and make different decisions. You’ll probably never see all the possibilities available because we want to build a little randomness into the system to emphasize again and allow players to explore and discover very different gene combinations.
Guy Costantini: I wanted to say, discover your preferences for murder
[laughs]. You know, that’s how I see it: like it’s your own music video about murder, […] [because] everything is intertwined with our music, because we particularly enjoy playing a game that is really good at firing up your adrenaline, or we both had our various escapades in the music scene and wanted to really incorporate that into our game development, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself, so I’ll let you continue to ask what else you’d like to know.
MeinMMO: Yes, I have a few questions about the music later. Regarding player expression and different playthroughs: I love replaying action games. Are you working with different difficulty levels or is there only one?
Leszek Szczepanski: Yes, we will offer various difficulty levels for you to play. We want as many people as possible to be able to play the game with a bit of fun. A lot of work is currently going into how exactly we should design those difficulty levels.
Guy Costantini: I think the intention is that you should be challenged, but the difficulty system should be adaptable. We believe that’s quite normal nowadays, but our approach really is that people should feel like they are overcoming a challenge, and not just walkin in the park. We know that different people have different preferences regarding challenges, and we see no reason why we shouldn’t give them the possibility to adjust the slider, so to speak.
Boss Fights and the Focus on Music
MeinMMO: Regarding difficulty: In the press information, you mentioned the boss fights. And you spoke about the music. One of the best moments in the trailer is when the song begins and then the action kicks off. How do you approach the design of boss fights to provide the desired cinematic experience while also creating, as you said, a challenging player experience?
Leszek Szczepanski: So we have two angles, right? One is more mechanical in nature. Essentially, we want boss fights to be puzzles. For example, if you think about Metal Gear Solid, these boss fights often go: “Okay, I need to figure out how to defeat this particular boss.” We are currently delving into this idea. So, the idea is that each boss or each type of epic scene has a trick contained within it, and you need to observe your environment as you engage with that scene or boss fight to gather clues and understand what you need to do, and as you interact with the boss, you must understand what the puzzle is and solve it.
So we are approaching bosses very much from this mechanical perspective. But the other aspect is that we really want them to feel like epic grand events, something that truly blows you away. And in that regard, we are simply trying to imagine what the coolest things are that we can do on the moon in the future, and fortunately, there are plenty of possibilities. I can’t go into detail about what we have planned, but we definitely want you to take a moment after each boss fight and ask yourself: “What the hell did I just experience?” But what you wanted to mention in this context: One of the most important aspects we keep in mind with boss fights is that we are very much trying to make them feel like music videos. Music is a very important part of the game.
And because we’re talking about these epic scenes, it’s impossible to ignore that. The idea is that we want to collaborate with specific Japanese rock bands to compose a special song for each particular scene. And this is how it should work: We aim to synchronize action with music, not in the sense that the player has to do anything rhythmically, but the idea is that the game itself makes sure that the intensity of a certain phase matches the intensity of the music, or that there is a strong beat when, for example, the boss transitions from phase one to phase two, exactly in sync with the music. If, for instance, an enemy roars, the singing comes in. We want all these beautiful vignettes that incorporate visual elements, so all these spectacular scanners, the challenges you’ll have to face, and the soundtrack that should be playing and synchronized with everything at once. I’m trying to describe it as us trying to present the player with an overwhelming cocktail of emotions, and we’re trying to achieve those emotions through imagery, sound, and interactivity. Guy, is there anything else here?
Guy Costantini: It’s a music video where you are the star and fighting against a giant puzzle that wants to kill you. That’s the kind of player fantasy we aim to fulfill. It should feel like you’re really there. And again, as Leszek mentioned earlier, we used to get stuck a lot because we called them music video boss fights. Boss fight
suggests something big that wants to kill you. It will feel that way, but it’s more about encounters.
And we say encounters because a boss fight revolves around a single individual. Sometimes you’re fighting things that are much larger and more problematic than a single person. Since we develop the music first, it may happen that you find yourself in an encounter without realizing it. It simply feels like a really atmospheric moment, and before you know it, you’re immersed in this handcrafted puzzle pleasure that we really enjoy. Again, we’re playing a little around when we think of a puzzle. People always think: “I’m going to sit back calmly and think it all through.” However, this is a puzzle that actively tries to kill you. So, you must remain vigilant.
Leszek Szczepanski: The fundamental aspect here is that a good piece of music always tells a story. There’s a beginning, an end, a climax, a resolution – all the things you expect from a story. Even if there’s no singing, there’s always something. A good encounter, a fight, a key scene, a boss fight – all of this always tells a story as well. You want to introduce the challenge, you want to explain the challenge, and you want to increase the difficulty, you want to have a final climax and a resolution, of course with some deviations. We’re trying to ensure that all these processes, all these stories being told at the same time, are perfectly synchronized and tell a single story, but in reality, they will be much larger than the individual elements.
MeinMMO: I mean, if you look at platforms like YouTube, there are tons of videos from action games, and people love to overlay rock music or similar. I think this combination works really well.
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