Overview
A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei (Chinese: 一盏秋声：锦衣卫) is a single-player wuxia action RPG set during the late Ming Dynasty. The game is developed by CangMo Game Entertainment, a studio based in Chengdu, China, and built on Unreal Engine 5. It was previously known as Project: Jinyiwei (代号：锦衣卫) before receiving its official title in January 2026.
Players control an ordinary boatman forced into the world of the Jinyiwei, the Ming Dynasty's feared imperial secret police. The game blends melee combat built on a three-resource system (True Qi, Health, and Inner Breath), wuxia parkour, stealth infiltration, and detective work. Its most distinctive feature is Heavenly Deduction, a time-rewind mechanic that allows the protagonist to jump back to earlier decision points while keeping items and knowledge from abandoned timelines.
Platforms and release
A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei is confirmed for PlayStation 5 as a console exclusive, alongside PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and WeGame. No release date has been announced, though the game's publisher has stated a target launch year of 2027. In August 2026, publisher 4Divinity announced the game as one of six titles it will show at gamescom 2026 in Cologne, the game's first announced appearance at a Western trade show. Language support includes full voice acting and subtitles in English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.
The game is part of Phase 3 of PlayStation's China Hero Project, a program run by Sony Interactive Entertainment Shanghai that provides Chinese studios with development support, technical resources, and global marketing assistance.
Gameplay Pillars
Combat centers on the Martial Arts Styles system, where players equip multiple fighting styles per weapon and switch between them mid-combo. The posture-break system rewards aggressive parry-focused play. Resources are tightly interconnected: True Qi (真气) rises with successful attacks and falls when hit, directly controlling the cap on Inner Breath (息), the dodge resource. Offensive play fuels defense; passive play starves it.
Levels use a sandbox box garden design rather than an open world. Each mission area is a large, self-contained space with multiple routes, hidden items, and several ways to complete objectives. The Deng Yang demo mission alone had five distinct endings depending on the player's approach. Hands-on coverage of the same demo described spending the full two-hour session exploring branches in this single mission without seeing all possible outcomes.
Setting
The story takes place during the late Ming Dynasty, as the empire crumbles under court factionalism, eunuch power struggles, and border threats from Oirat forces. The protagonist operates as a double agent: officially a member of the Northern Commandery of the Jinyiwei, secretly reporting to the Black Market criminal underworld. Player choices determine whether he becomes a knight-errant fighting for the people, a bureaucrat content with stability, or something else entirely.
Development
CangMo was founded in 2022 with around six people. The studio's lead, Liu Qiwei (离忧先生), quit his job at a casual games company after seeing the Lost Soul Aside trailer from Sony's China Hero Project. He first developed Souls of Blades (JianPo) independently, then assembled CangMo to build Jinyiwei. The team spent nine months on the first demo, which was released publicly in March 2022 and accumulated over 6.49 million views. The game joined PlayStation's China Hero Project in July 2024 and was playable at ChinaJoy that same month.
The Divine Mechanism Manuals
Official store copy frames the story around a specific object. The dynasty has stood for more than two hundred and fifty years and its mandate is running out, and the copy states that only by gathering the forty-nine scattered volumes of the Shenji Yaoshu (《神机要术》) can the dragon vein be reforged and the dynasty's life extended. The same passage sets the tone the game aims for: the empire is failing while the streets stay prosperous, so the late-Ming period is presented as the afterglow of a golden age and the opening of a collapse at the same time.
The copy also names the protagonist's position precisely. He is a planted mole among the Jinyiwei's arresting officers, working inside a system defined by factional prosecutions, and the grievances buried by old cases are described as the current strong enough to overturn the court.
Public Demo Builds
Two public hands-on builds have been shown. The first, in January 2026, was a branching side mission built around deduction and level exploration. The second, in July 2026, was exhibited in Shanghai and covered combat only, with story, exploration, and deduction removed, three difficulty tiers, two selectable martial schools, and two boss fights.