I’m no stranger to parkour. I was, for better or worse, friends with college-age guys in the early 2010s when it first began gaining popularity in the US. Granted, it began and ended with hopping over unnecessary things like curbs or the final step on a staircase and exclaiming, ‘parkour!’, but it did instill in me a healthy dose of respect for the physicality of actual parkour.
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Recently, these memories came flooding back. The Hidden Ones is an upcoming martial arts action game from Morefun Studios, and the anime visual style of the game gripped me long before I knew much about the story. Earlier this month, I hopped over a few low curbs in Los Angeles to take a look at the title.
The Original Team Is Back For The Hidden Ones
The Hidden Ones is heavily influenced by Hitori no Shita: The Outcast, a two-season anime that spun off from the massively popular Chinese webcomic Under One Person. Before we got to play the demo ourselves, Morefun game designer Mike Tao told us a bit of background about the series. He says you can play The Hidden Ones without watching the show first and enjoy it to its fullest, but he also warns that it will give away some major plot points from the show if you do choose to go back and watch it later.
Chatting through a translator after I played the demo, lead game designer Fox Lin told me a bit more about the influence of Under One Person on The Hidden Ones. “We don’t want to represent our story as the complete representation of the original title,” he says. “We want to reinforce the original narrative, but we want to elaborate on our advantage as a game to offer more interactivity in the story and focus on the individuals.”
I ask if the creators of the original series are involved with The Hidden Ones, and Fox is eager to confirm. “We grew a great relationship with the author [Don Man Tang]; he’s definitely involved with writing the script, developing on the story, and giving suggestions to the team,” he says. “I text Mi Er [the illustrator of Under One Person] from time to time, ‘Is this how this is supposed to be? Do you have suggestions on how the story should go here?’”
The Hidden Ones Pays Homage To Various Martial Arts
The various fighting systems in the game are known as The Eight Secret Arts, and were all motion-captured by a real-life martial arts master. These experts were each of a different discipline, to ensure each Art felt as unique as possible.
You’ll not only be dealing all kinds of physical damage to your opponents in this Eastern mythology-inspired, action-centric single player Story mode, but there are ample chances for multiplayer as well with the secondary game mode, Duel. Throughout the story, you’ll play a variety of characters, so choose a few favorites and head into the multiplayer arena to test your skills with each. Once you’ve mastered control of them, there’s an additional Boss Rush mode to really test your skills.
In the demo we played, which will be available in pre-alpha in January 2025, there were a limited number of characters to choose from, but Fan and Lin both assured me during our interview after the demo that the full launch in Q3 2025 will have more added to the final roster.
Combine Parkour, Martial Arts, And Eastern Mythology
I wouldn’t say I particularly mastered control of Wang Ye when I leapt into his well-worn parkour shoes, but I definitely enjoyed playing as him. It was with him that I got a taste of the story, watching as he was framed for the murder of a crime family leader and made to fight his way to confront the woman who actually stuck a knife in the old man’s back.
Before I managed to defeat her and the massive shadowy snake demon she summoned from the sky to try and eat me, it was time to try our hand at combat against other players in Duel mode. I added Wang Ye to my first roster of three, putting him out on the field first in the hopes that starting with a character I knew enough about how to use might give me the upper hand.
Joining Wang Ye on the team was Ru Hua, an extremely intense puppet girl with large lifeless eyes and a mastery of pointy weapons; and Feng Bao-Bao, a woman in overalls around my age who was an absolute menace with her machete. I barely got time to play as either of the women before winning my first match with Wang Ye for the most part, but I made sure to stick them into the second roster for the sake of experimenting. Ru Hua proved a bit tricky for me to get the hang of, but once Feng Bao-Bao came onto the field, I could simply not be stopped.
Most of us wound up maining Feng Bao-Bao before the end of the demo – which might point to an early issue with roster balance at least with the demo selection of characters. If you’d like to try her or any of the other fighters out yourself, Morefun is doing a pre-alpha test for The Hidden Ones between January 7-15 with a follow-up closed beta during the spring, and is currently aiming to launch The Hidden Ones in Q3 2025.
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