Development History

Development History

A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei has been in development since 2022 by CangMo Game Entertainment in Chengdu, China. The game grew from a six-person passion project into a PlayStation China Hero Project title with significant investment backing.

2019-2021: JianPo (Souls of Blades)

Liu Qiwei (离忧先生) was working at a casual games company when he saw the trailer for Lost Soul Aside, a solo-developed action game backed by Sony's China Hero Project. Inspired, he quit his job to independently develop Souls of Blades (JianPo, 剑魄), a Souls-like action RPG. It launched in Steam Early Access on September 30, 2019 and reached full release on September 22, 2021, published by CubeGame. It received Mostly Positive reviews (70% positive from 536 reviews).

2022: Studio Founding and Viral Demo

CangMo Game Entertainment was established in 2022 in Chengdu with initial investment from Hometown Interactive (家乡互动), who took an approximately 14.2% equity stake. The team started with six people. They spent nine months building the first demo.

In March 2022, a 16-minute gameplay demonstration was released publicly. It accumulated over 6.49 million views, far exceeding expectations for an unknown studio. The game appeared at a major Chinese gaming festival that year under the working title Project: Jinyiwei.

2023: Second Demonstration

In January 2023, a 23-minute gameplay demonstration was shown during a Chinese gaming platform's year-end rankings livestream. The developer's upload reached over 430,000 views, while a Chinese-language gaming outlet's re-upload hit 980,000 views. The footage showed expanded combat, traversal, and level design compared to the 2022 reveal.

2024: China Hero Project and ChinaJoy

As of January 2024, the studio still had approximately six members. In July 2024, CangMo joined Phase 3 of PlayStation's China Hero Project, receiving development support, technical resources, and global marketing from Sony Interactive Entertainment Shanghai.

The game was playable at ChinaJoy 2024 (July 26-29, Shanghai New International Expo Center), with a stage event on July 28. Sony and CangMo presented jointly on PlayStation Shanghai's stage with a simultaneous social media livestream. Early reactions called the demo scrappy and unpolished but showing real promise.

In August 2024, Shanghai Yingche Network Technology Co. (上海英澈网络科技) acquired a 25.8% equity stake in a second funding round. CangMo also recruited the lead programmer from Shanghai Runmeng Network's game Yiwenlu Lunhui (乂闻录轮回), expanding technical capacity.

January 2026: Official Re-Reveal

On January 29-30, 2026, the game was re-revealed under its new title "A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei." The reveal included a gameplay trailer, 10 screenshots, and Steam/Epic Games Store page openings. Press coverage noted significant quality improvement over the ChinaJoy footage.

February 2026: Hands-On Previews

Chinese media received approximately two-hour hands-on demo sessions in early 2026. Hands-on coverage called the Heavenly Deduction system the biggest surprise and praised the level design density, but noted combat animation transitions still needed polish. Limbs snapping between positions during action transitions and excessive trembling during continuous hit reactions were both flagged. Coverage described the combat system as one of the most complex in any non-indie game in years.

Team Growth and Production Scale

What began as a six-person effort expanded steadily as the project moved from a small independent operation toward a higher-budget production. Around 2024 the studio shifted to what Chinese coverage describes as a "2A" scale, bringing in motion capture and 3D scanning to lift the quality of animation and character work. That change required hiring, and by late 2025 the team had grown to more than thirty people. Counting from the studio's earliest Souls of Blades lineage, the studio has spent roughly five years reaching the point where the game could be shown publicly under its current form. The producer has been candid that the hard part was rarely the game itself: the development is straightforward, but the industry around it is complicated.

June 2026: Global Publishing Agreement

On June 18, 2026, 4Divinity, the publishing arm of GCL Global, signed a definitive agreement with Chengdu Cangmo for exclusive global publishing and distribution across PC and consoles. The deal followed an April 2026 memorandum of understanding and confirmed a target of a simultaneous launch on PC and game consoles in 2027, with 4Divinity leading worldwide marketing and localization.

Origins and the Quiet Period

The project was started in 2021 as an indie title, and the original plan was to finish it in roughly two years. Liu Qiwei gathered six developers he had met while streaming work on his previous game in July 2021, and that group spent about nine months producing the demo that became the first public showing. The company moved to Chengdu in August 2022, arriving during a heatwave and city power rationing that pushed the team into working from home until the restrictions lifted at the end of September.

After the July 2024 selection for Sony's China Hero Project and a further investment that August, the project went quiet for around eighteen months. The team has since described that period as a funding problem rather than a development one: the budget sat at a scale too large for the indie market the game had launched from and too small to attract conventional investment. The studio had grown past thirty people by early 2026, and preparing both the reveal trailer and the January hands-on build occupied roughly six weeks of parallel work over that winter.

July and August 2026: Two Public Builds

The game reached the public floor twice in a month. A combat-only build ran at a Shanghai fan convention from 10 to 12 July 2026, offering three difficulty tiers, both martial schools, and two boss encounters. Three weeks later a larger build ran at ChinaJoy from 31 July to 3 August 2026, on two separate stands: the PlayStation booth at N1G001 and the Shunwang booth at N1G102. The team built a PS5-specific version for that show, added daily stage segments and put costumed performers in period dress on the floor.

The ChinaJoy build extended the July one to five stages, adding a mid-boss fight against Li Nu ahead of Cao Zhong and Deng Yang. It again withheld the story, the exploration and the deduction mechanic. Asked why, the team said the branching narrative the ability rests on was still being polished and they wanted it finished before showing it. Reports from both shows noted the build ran without frame drops, and the recurring criticism across them was the lightness of the hit feedback rather than anything structural.

August 2026: gamescom Lineup Announcement

The Western push continued after ChinaJoy. On August 12, 2026, 4Divinity announced its gamescom 2026 lineup: six titles shown across three halls in Cologne from August 25 to 30, with A Whisper of Fall: Jinyiwei billed as CangMo Game Entertainment's Ming Dynasty ARPG. This is the game's first announced appearance at a Western trade show. Separately, the publisher's own Chinese channels presented the game as one of five titles in its ChinaJoy 2026 showcase.

2026 Showings