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Music and Sound
August 6, 2026 at 08:53 PM
Initial version: music direction, instrumentation, trailer score iterations, and first public performance of the main theme
Music is one of the few parts of Black Myth: Zhong Kui that Game Science has described in any concrete detail. The studio's music director, Li Jiaqi, who led audio on the studio's previous game, set out the direction for the new score in an interview published in early August 2026. He framed it as a deliberate change of register rather than a continuation, and it is currently the clearest public statement about the tone the finished game is aiming for.
Li described the music written for Black Myth: Wukong as an attempt to carry passion and courage, reaching at times for aggressive ways of expressing emotion. Zhong Kui, by his account, asks for something else. The character's story sits closer to street life and ordinary daily routine, so the score is being written to feel lighter and more humorous than the one that came before it.
The shift applies to pacing as much as tone. Where the previous score ran on heightened, surging emotion, the team wants this one to unfold at a measured pace and tell its story gently rather than declaim it. Li presented the change as the team deliberately trying out a new working state rather than repeating a formula that had already succeeded.
Aspect | Previous game's score | Direction described for Zhong Kui |
|---|---|---|
Emotional register | Passion and courage, at times aggressive | Lighter, more humorous |
Pacing | Heightened and surging | Measured and unhurried |
Scale | Large forces | Small sound spaces, smaller instruments |
What the music serves | Mythic confrontation | Street life and everyday routine |
To reach the everyday, market-town atmosphere the team is after, Li said the score leans on small sound spaces and smaller instruments rather than the large forces that carried much of the previous game. The choice follows from the setting: a world of markets, kitchens and ordinary streets asks for a more intimate arrangement than a celestial battlefield does. Nothing has been said publicly about which specific instruments are involved.
The music behind the game's trailer took several attempts to settle. Li said the team worked through five or six versions before arriving at one that felt right for the new project. The first attempt, in his own description, still sounded too much like the previous game, carrying a "monkey flavour" that had to be written out before the piece read as Zhong Kui rather than a leftover from the studio's earlier work. The anecdote is a useful illustration of how strongly the previous score shaped expectations inside the team, not only outside it.
The game's main theme has already been played in front of an audience. During the series' 2026 global concert tour, which took the studio's music to venues in China and abroad, the programme finished with the main theme for Black Myth: Zhong Kui. The appearance was short and arrived with no new footage, no gameplay and no announcements attached, which matches how early the project still is. It remains the only piece of the game's music that has been performed publicly.
Li described himself as still in a gathering phase rather than a writing one, reading widely in folk custom and in the classical Chinese tradition of strange-tale literature to build up material for the score. He placed the project in early preparation at the time of the interview, which is consistent with how Game Science has described the game's development status elsewhere and with the studio's own line that the project had "only just created its folder" at announcement.
Most of the game's audio picture is still blank. The following have not been announced or shown:
A full credits list. No composer, arranger or performer credits beyond the music director have been named for this game.
Any soundtrack release, track list, or streaming plan.
Any in-game audio, combat mixing, ambient design, or voice work.
Whether the lighter register applies across the whole game or only to particular regions and sequences.
Which language or languages the game will be voiced in, and whether dubbing will ship at launch.
Until the studio shows gameplay, the music direction remains a stated intention rather than something players have heard in context. See Platforms and Release for what has been confirmed about the game's development timeline.
