The structure
🧩 Eight hand-painted maps
Ink-wash maps, painted by hand, that connect seamlessly into a single world. S-GAME's own words are that it is neither an open world nor a linear adventure from beginning to end. In complex regions the maps give only a rough sense of direction.
🏯 Pangzhen
Where Soul's journey takes him: lost warriors, rival factions and martial artists have gathered there, each for their own reasons.
🔍 What is in them
Secrets, hidden enemies, side quests and story clues, described as meticulously hand-crafted rather than generated or repeated.
Places shown but not named
- A valley held by ruthless bandits.
- An abandoned warehouse full of hanging puppets, where some kind of dark ritual seems to be under way.
- A vast lake that Soul crosses aboard a high-speed vessel — in a Ming-dynasty setting, which tells you how far the steampunk goes.
What it means for how you play
Explore before you push
Side quests, optional bosses and secrets sit off the story route, and S-GAME says some side quests open new story paths. Bells let you fast-travel between places you have found, so going back costs little.
Do not expect a map marker economy
Nothing S-GAME has shown suggests an open-world checklist of icons, and its maps deliberately leave the hidden corners to you. Treat it as a place to read rather than a list to clear.
What 'neither open nor linear' looks like in practice
🧭 Branching paths, and doors that open later
The hands-on previews describe regions of branching paths joined by shortcuts you unlock. Some ways stay shut until you carry the right Phantom Edge, which sends you back into places you have already been.
🚫 And not an icon farm either
Nothing S-GAME has shown suggests a map covered in question marks. The stated design is hand-crafted secrets, hidden enemies, side quests and story clues — things you find by looking, not by clearing a list.
⏳ Much of it is off the main road
The optional paths hold side quests, unusual enemies, resources and the occasional boss. That is an argument for looking around as you go, and for coming back once a new Phantom Edge opens a way through.
Still to verify
Cross-checked on 22 October 2026 against S-GAME's State of Play text on the PlayStation Blog, the State of Play coverage of PC Gamer, GosuGamers and GamingBolt, and the October hands-on previews of Game Rant, Game8, Polygon and TheSixthAxis. The places listed are the ones S-GAME's director names in the State of Play; how long the game runs is left out here because the estimates S-GAME has given differ. Beyond the eight maps no region list has been published, so this page invents none. What is still unverified is the only thing reading cannot settle — nobody here has played it.