Nine Sols game review — ‘taopunk’ twist on classic 2D action-platformer

The suffix “punk” has become one the most overused in all pop culture. There is steampunk, dieselpunk, solarpunk and hopepunk alongside the dystopian daddy of them all, cyberpunk. A common criticism of this naming convention is that the speculative futures of these microgenres often lack punk’s anti-establishment and anti-capitalist sensibility — that they are little more than politically inert aesthetics. 

Now we have the “taopunk” of Nine Sols, a 2D action-platformer, developed by Taiwanese studio Red Candle Games, that feels both strikingly fresh and comfortingly familiar. Here, long-standing cyberpunk tropes meet south-east Asian mythology. The combining of these elements yields a procession of exquisite images: towering futurist pagodas twinkling in subterranean darkness; a dragon that doubles as a boat, controlled by giant wires perforating its scaly neck; a pristine sci-fi interior set against a painterly backdrop of red ash trees. This is a future that feels as if it is constructed as much from bamboo and jade as steel and microchips. 

Nine Sols makes you work hard for these visual pay-offs. You play as a catlike warrior named Yi who is able to turn the elemental life force of chi into bone-crunching martial-arts moves. You must bide your time in each encounter, parrying attacks before unleashing quick counter-manoeuvres, similar to the deflection mechanic in the masterful 2019 action game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Should you fall in battle (a near-certainty in this challenging game), Yi is transported back to a root node where he is able to rest and regain health. But these are placed too far apart, often causing frustrating backtracking through the serpentine facility that our feline hero is breaking into. 

At times, Nine Sols plays like a linear 2D action-platformer; at others, it is more free-form, letting you loose in larger spaces. These contrasting approaches lead to occasional confusion. Does the game want me to poke about in every nook or barrel along its primary narrative path? Sometimes the question is simpler: which way actually propels the story forwards?

Yet even if the level design doesn’t hit the heights of recent genre classics such as Animal Well, the worldbuilding is fresh, distinct and attention-grabbingly grim for a game of otherwise cute anime aesthetics. Early on, you learn that humans, referred to as “apemen”, are essentially subservient to another race of creatures and ritually harvested for their body parts. These people live as premodern peasants, tilling the land, falling in love and having children, but their existence is a sham, constructed and controlled from afar by their tyrannical masters who reside beneath the soil.

It’s tempting to read this as an analogy for the imperialism of neighbouring China, but the game’s Taiwanese makers haven’t commented on this aspect of the story. Regardless, Nine Sols works without such a subtext. This is a vivid and vital expression of south-east Asian identity in a sci-fi genre that has long been captured by the orientalist gaze of cyberpunk. In this way, and in the ways that the game is unafraid to shock, all while peering beyond the deceptions of everyday life, the “taopunk” Nine Sols proves itself more than punk enough. 

★★★★☆

On PC now, consoles forthcoming