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Is Phantom Blade Zero a sequel? Series history and the studio behind it
No. S-GAME's founder calls Zero "the spiritual rebirth of the original Rainblood": a new game in the same series, not Phantom Blade 4. Confirmed· PlayStation Blog You can start here. He says the story is newly written and needs no earlier game. Reported· GamerSky
The short answer
Each line carries its own status. Spoiler-free: nothing here goes past the store page premise.
Zero and the older games · sources
Sequel or reboot?
Soulframe Liang, S-GAME's founder and CEO, calls Phantom Blade Zero "the spiritual rebirth of the original Rainblood": a new game in the same series, much larger and richer, moved from RPG Maker to Unreal Engine 5, but with the same core. It is not presented as a numbered sequel.
Liang says Zero borrows characters and some basic settings from the original Rainblood but is a newly written story: character relationships and motivations are new, and you could treat same-named characters as different people. Players do not need to know any earlier game, because all the content is inside Zero.
S-GAME says Zero is its first big console game and its first approach to the global market, after only making mobile games for the Chinese market. Steam lists the developer as S-GAME Studio and the publisher as S-GAME Publishing.
The series started as Rainblood and was later renamed Phantom Blade. The name "Rain Blood" with a space is how Steam spells it.
Series history · sources
Where it began
Liang made the first game, Rainblood: Town of Death, himself with RPG Maker while studying architecture, then returned to China and founded S-GAME to make more games. Rainblood grew into a franchise and was renamed Phantom Blade.
The year of the first game, Rainblood: Town of Death, differs by source. Liang's PlayStation Blog post says he made it with RPG Maker in 2010. The 36Kr profile (via KrASIA) says he released it in 2008 as a university student and an English version followed in 2010.
How we handle it: Both can be true if 2010 is the date of the English release; neither source says so directly, so we show both.
Early timeline
After the first game, 36Kr's profile says S-GAME was formally founded in 2011, released Rainblood 2: City of Flame in December 2011, and followed with the side-scrolling Rainblood Chronicles: Mirage two years later. It then moved to mobile and released Phantom Blade 1 in September 2017.
Rainblood Chronicles: Mirage, a side-scrolling action game from the series, is on Steam as "Rain Blood Chronicles: Mirage" (the store spells the name with a space), published by Origo Games, release date 11 Nov 2013.
Most games in the series were made for smartphones and never released outside China, and Liang says the series has a fan base of over 20 million. Phantom Blade Zero is described as the game the studio always wanted to make, now for PS5 and PC.
Phantom Blade: Executioners is the series' free-to-play side-scrolling action RPG. RPG Site reports (relaying S-GAME's announcement) that it launched on 2 November 2023 on PS5, PS4, mobile and PC, was the series' first global release, and is set in the same universe as Phantom Blade Zero.
The official Executioners site (pbex.s-game.com) describes a game about the Order and lists Soul, "the youngest Will of the Order", among its heroes: the same Order and hero name that Phantom Blade Zero uses.
Years and release order for the mobile games come from one Chinese-press profile, so we keep them as reported. We did not find an official S-GAME timeline page in English.
The founder uses the name Soulframe in English and Liang Qiwei in Chinese-language press.
Studio · sources
Founder
Liang signs S-GAME's official announcements as "S-GAME CEO / Creator of Phantom Blade Zero" (his Chinese name is Liang Qiwei, per Chinese-language press).
S-GAME says Zero is its first big console game and its first approach to the global market, after only making mobile games for the Chinese market. Steam lists the developer as S-GAME Studio and the publisher as S-GAME Publishing.
In December 2025 Liang described about 140 people across four cities: the Beijing headquarters, a motion-capture and animation team in Shanghai, an art team in Hong Kong, and a global publishing team in Los Angeles.
No, not in the numbered sense. S-GAME's founder calls it the spiritual rebirth of the original Rainblood: a new game in the same series with a newly written story.
It is not described as one. The "Zero" is better read as a restart. The studio says Zero reuses some characters and basic settings from Rainblood but tells a new story with new relationships and motivations.
No. Liang says players do not need knowledge of any earlier game and that all the content is inside Zero. That wording comes from his Chinese-language post, so we label it reported.
Yes, loosely. It is a free-to-play side-scrolling spin-off that S-GAME's announcement placed in the same universe, and its official site features the Order and a hero named Soul. You do not need it to follow Zero.
PBZ
