Revision 1

Tianji: Shadow of the Ancients is developed and published by Justdan International Co., Ltd. It was announced on 8 September 2026 with a seventy-one-second reveal trailer and a Steam store page, and it is targeted at 2027 on PC, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2.

Justdan as Developer

The developer credit is worth stating plainly, because Justdan is far better known as a publisher and it would be easy to assume an outside studio built this. It did not. Four separate surfaces agree, three of them written by Justdan itself: the Steam listing names Justdan in both the developer and the publisher field in every storefront language; the specification block in Justdan's own reveal trailer descriptions gives Justdan as developer and publisher in Traditional Chinese, English and Japanese; and the official account run for the game states in its own profile that Justdan developed it. Coverage of the announcement described it independently as Justdan's first self-developed RPG.

No separate development studio is credited on any surface as of 12 September 2026.

Production Lead

The announcement credits 蔡明宏 (Tsai Ming-hong), described as the father of the Xuan-Yuan Sword series, with leading production on the game.

That credit needs care. It is absent from the Steam listing and absent from the specification blocks Justdan wrote for its own trailers, and it reaches the public only through coverage reproducing the announcement text. The word used for his role also varies between accounts: lead production, supervising producer, producer and director have all appeared. Nothing narrower than "leads production" is safe to state, and no other detail of his involvement has been published.

He left Softstar Entertainment (大宇資訊) after more than thirty years working on the Xuan-Yuan Sword series, and Tianji is the first single-player title he has publicly revealed since.

Tianji is a wholly new IP. The announcement states directly that it is a completely independent new work with no world-setting continuity with the Xuan-Yuan Sword series. The link between the two is a personnel one and nothing more: no character, location, system or plot from that series belongs in this game, and nothing about it should be used to fill gaps here. Tsai Ming-hong is also the only individual named anywhere on this project as of 12 September 2026.

Reveal

Scale

Figures attributed to the producer came out of the demo showing and have not been repeated by Justdan since, so they are an early estimate rather than a commitment.

Presentation and Design Direction

The art direction is high-definition hand-drawn 2D work influenced by traditional landscape painting, with that brushwork applied to the exploration scenes. The combat layer is built on classic turn-based RPG structure with combo chains at its centre; see Combat and Exploration.

One design note appears only in some languages. The Simplified Chinese and Japanese store descriptions both state that the game takes in some design concepts from action games, a line the English description drops entirely in favour of listing the traversal verbs. Reading only the English text therefore misses part of how Justdan frames the game.

Uncredited and Unannounced

Tianji was four days old when these gaps were measured. They are open questions at a very early point in the game's public life, not settled absences. See Release and Platforms for the release and platform picture.