We’re not monkeying around – sorry – but you definitely could be on October 17 in Monkey King: Hero is Back. The game is inspired by the movie of the same name, which became the highest-grossing animated film in China on its 2015 release. The movie – and thus the game – continues the story of the all-powerful Monkey King, Sun Wukong, one of the main characters in the beloved 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West.
In the movie, Sun Wukong is exiled and imprisoned after angering the gods. Five centuries later, the legendary simian is accidentally released by Jiang Liuer, a curious child whose village is under attack by monsters. Adventures ensue, and you’ll be able to play them in the game as Sun Wukong himself, beating up bad guys and getting to know your new and teeny friend.
Two of the developers at Japanese studio Hexadrive, Tatsuhiro Kitagawa and Tatsuya Hattori, chatted with us about the world of Monkey King and explained how they used Unreal Engine 4 to bring this colourful, legendary realm to life. Their previous experience with Unreal made it an obvious choice to stick with the tech they knew, but so did the nature of the project.
Hexadrive says it wanted to make something light-hearted. The devs feel that many “recent game releases have been serious, and covered topics that are not suitable for all audiences,” so something more upbeat and family-friendly had immediate appeal. And who doesn’t like a good story about a magical monkey?
When your game is based in a movie’s world, the cutscenes have to be perfect. Unreal’s Sequencer tool was a great help in scene development and cutscene realisation, enabling multiple developers to work in parallel on the same scene, and to immediately play their work back as they went.
Monkeys are hugely significant in Chinese culture, being celebrated for their cleverness and featuring prominently in literature beyond just Journey to the West. And yet, as in most of the rest of the world, their comic, playful aspects still come to the fore – we can’t use the monkey-ing around joke again can we? – anyway, the team wanted to “show the obvious characteristics that people expect from monkeys, but also properly display [Monkey King’s] relationship to the other characters as well”. This meant animation and movement, as well as writing, were essential in the game’s development.
You can easily achieve comedy through writing and relationships, the devs say, but the mechanics and gameplay have to mirror that humour. They use the Unreal Engine to create comedy through tension and distortion of characters. For example “through recession of the body after impact, like the ripples in rubber when an object bounces off it”. Unreal’s AnimGraph was used for motion transitions, and Blend Spaces helped in blending multiple motions together to ensure character animations felt natural and funny.
If you’ve seen the movie – either the original, or the one with the Jackie Chan English dub (we know right, pretty cool to have Jackie Chan in your film) – you might think you know everything about the story. However, the videogame of Hero is Back comes with some new ideas and characters. The story of Sun Wukong has been told hundreds of times in movies, books, and elsewhere, so the newer medium of videogames provides an exciting opportunity to refresh and rediscover this age-old legend.
“Because we are working with an important Chinese IP,” the devs say, “we were able to frequently communicate with October Media [the studio that made the Hero is Back movie] to get all of the details right.” This meant they could talk to them about more than just the scenes and setting of the game, but could also “make sure the Chinese, history, religion, clothing, food, mythology, and values played out correctly throughout”.
Don’t worry if you haven’t watched the film. Kitagawa and Hattori reassured us saying “the story and content will absolutely apply to the western world today, and will resonate with players who are familiar with the movie, and new players alike”. They even say that making the game was as fun and exciting as watching Dragon Ball Z, so if that doesn’t give you an idea of the fun they want you to have the game, we don’t know what will.
Monkey King: Hero is Back will be released on October 17. Here is its Steam Page. Unreal Engine 4 development is now free.
In this sponsored series, we’re looking at how game developers are taking advantage of Unreal Engine 4 to create a new generation of PC games. With thanks to Epic Games and Hexadrive, Inc.