Nine Sols

Nine Sols is a 2D action-platformer in which the player controls main character Yi, who aims to defeat all the nine of Sols to get revenge, while travelling in the old cyberpunk infrastructure environment, with gameplay focused on melee combat mixed with side-scrolling platforming. Yi's basic attack is slashing with a sword, but he can also deflect enemy attacks, which allows him to absorb and accumulate Qi to perform special techniques, like talisman dashing. In addition to his sword, Yi also uses a bow to perform powerful ranged attacks, and can run, jump, double jump, wall jump, dash on the ground and in the air, climb, wall run, and grapple. For defeating enemies on their way, the player will acquire in-game currency called Jin, that can be spent in shops and traders on items and jades; Jades give additional special bonuses when equipped, taking a limited number of jade slots.

Five hundred years before the events of the game, the Tianhuo virus infected the Solarians, a race of cat-like aliens. With no cure in sight, their leaders, the Ten Sols, developed the Eternal Cauldron Project, in which Solarians could rest in a virtual reality system known as the Soulscape to delay the virus while they searched for a cure. However, the processing power to create the Soulscape required the brains of intelligent lifeforms, so the Solarians left their home planet of Penglai and embarked on a 500-year-long journey aboard the island-ship New Kunlun to the Solar System and its "pale-blue planet", to kidnap and harvest the native "apemen".

Yi, the Tenth Sol and mastermind of the Eternal Cauldron Project, finds out that Tianhuo was accidentally synthesized by Eigong, his mentor and fellow Sol, in an attempt to discover immortality. After he discovers that the other Sols did not protest and hid this fact from him, he turns against them. Eigong is forced to silence Yi and leaves him to die, but he survives in a state of suspended animation due to a special connection with Fusang, a plant that produces vast amounts of energy that the Solarians harnessed for their technology, healing his injuries over the centuries. Yi awakens several hundred years later in Peach-Blossom village, an area within New Kunlun where the Solarians had kidnapped humans to breed as livestock.

The game was announced on March 22, 2022. Red Candle Games, a Taiwanese company behind Detention and Devotion, led the game's development. The game's combat was heavily inspired by Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Katana Zero, and Hollow Knight.

The game's theme song, eponymously titled "Nine Sols", is performed by Taiwanese indie rock band Collage, with vocals in Taiwanese Hokkien and English.

Nine Sols received "generally favourable" reviews, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Nic Reuben of Rock Paper Shotgun said he had mostly ignored platform games until Nine Sols, but its gameplay converted him into a fan of the genre. Despite Nine Sols's difficulty, he said it made him feel invincible, and he praised the game for being full of creativity.