Overview

DokeV is a creature-collecting open-world action-adventure in development at Pearl Abyss. The game blends real-time combat, free-form traversal, and creature befriending in a lively modern setting steeped in Korean folklore and K-pop aesthetics. Players gather and bond with Dokebi, small spirit creatures who fight alongside them, while exploring a seamless open world filled with festivals, coastal towns, mountain ranges, and bustling cities.

DokeV first surfaced in November 2019 as the codenamed Project V at a Korean industry show, then exploded onto the international stage in August 2021 with a music-driven gameplay trailer that became one of that year's most-watched game reveals. After several quiet years, the studio's main team began transitioning onto DokeV in March 2026, immediately following the launch of Crimson Desert. A firm release date has not been announced.

Quick Facts

Premise

DokeV is set in a contemporary, K-pop-tinged world that mirrors the look and feel of modern South Korea, with cityscapes, neon-lit night markets, mountain valleys, and seaside resorts woven together into a single open map. Living quietly alongside humans are the Dokebi, playful spirit creatures drawn from Korean dokkaebi folklore. In DokeV's fiction, Dokebi gain strength from people's dreams and live harmoniously with humanity, helping to encourage and protect those dreams in return.

The player's role is part collector, part explorer, part fighter. You travel the world to discover Dokebi, befriend them, store them inside small prismatic discs, and call them out during combat and traversal. Around that core loop are layered systems for movement, social activities, mini-games, and special gear, giving each region multiple ways to spend time beyond grinding battles.

Pillars

Three design pillars repeatedly stand out in everything Pearl Abyss has shown:

• Creature collecting.

  Players catch, raise, and battle alongside

  Dokebi

  of every shape, from alarm-clock-headed sprites to plush-toy bears to llama mounts. Each creature has its own moveset and role.

• Open-world traversal.

  The

  open world

  is seamless and built around movement variety. Trailers have shown toy cars, jet-powered skateboards, inline skates, jet skis, bicycles, llama mounts, and parasol gliding, with the explicit goal of letting players choose how they get around.

• Real-time action combat.

  Fights play out as live action, not turn-based menus. The

  combat system

  has the player wielding cartoonishly oversized weapons while their summoned Dokebi attack alongside them, and dodge timing matters as much as damage output.

Engine

DokeV runs on the BlackSpace Engine, Pearl Abyss's proprietary in-house technology. The same engine powers the studio's wider catalog, including Crimson Desert, and supports features like full path-traced rendering on PC, unified physically based lighting, and large-scale ocean and water simulation. Sharing tech across projects lets DokeV inherit performance and rendering improvements that have been battle-tested on the studio's other titles, while still allowing the art team to lean into the bright, stylized look the game is known for.

Pivot From MMO

When DokeV was first revealed in 2019, early descriptions framed it as a massively multiplayer online game with creature collecting. In August 2021, alongside the global gameplay trailer, Pearl Abyss formally repositioned the project as a single-player and multiplayer action-adventure rather than an MMO. Older write-ups still occasionally describe DokeV using MMO terminology, but the studio itself has been consistent since 2021 that this is not a persistent online world. The shift simplified the design space and put the focus squarely on traversal, combat, and Dokebi bonds rather than on social server infrastructure.

Music

DokeV's marketing identity has been shaped as much by its soundtrack as by its gameplay. The original track Rockstar, commissioned for the 2021 reveal trailer and later expanded into a full music video, fused K-pop, hip-hop, and electronic production into something instantly recognisable. It was written and produced by the Korean creative team GALACTIKA together with collaborator SameTime, and performed by the vocalist Luena. Its energetic chorus and dance-driven visuals set a tonal anchor the rest of the game has built around: bright, kinetic, and fashion-forward.

Current Status

DokeV has been in development for an unusually long stretch by modern open-world standards, with a missed early target of 2023 and a long quiet period between 2021 and 2024. At a March 2026 shareholder meeting, the studio confirmed that its main development team had finished its work on Crimson Desert and was now focused on DokeV, with leadership describing the remaining runway as roughly two to three years to completion. That points to a likely launch sometime between late 2027 and early 2029, though everything beyond a general window remains an estimate. See Release Window for the current outlook. Pearl Abyss's Q1 2026 earnings letter, published on May 14, 2026, formally confirmed that DokeV is in the pre-production stage and that the studio is prioritising resources on the project to support a planned title-release cycle of every two to three years. The letter also notes the studio will share further updates as development progresses, without committing to a specific calendar date.

Where to Begin

New readers who want a guided introduction to the game's world, creatures, and systems should head to Getting Started. From there, the wiki branches out into focused articles on the developer, the engine, the open world, the combat system, and the Dokebi themselves, each linked above.