Planned Release Date: 2027

About This Game

Outlaw heroes on a tactical grid

Water Margin: Rise of the Outlaws is a turn-based tactics game played on an isometric square grid. Cavalry, shield infantry, spearmen and archers counter one another, and reeds, thorns, fire, rocks, water, high ground and pit traps all change how a fight plays out. Move, pick a target, and see exactly how many troops the blow will cost the enemy before you commit.

Three techniques per hero, each from the novel

Every hero brings three techniques. The first is their signature, drawn from their best-known moment in the book: Lin Chong's Serpent Spear, Wu Song killing the tiger on Jingyang Ridge, Lu Zhishen uprooting the willow. A signature move plays a short ink-wash cut-in with calligraphy and a red seal, then gets out of the way.

Techniques come in four kinds:

• Active: use it on your turn

• Quick: trigger it and still act again this turn

• Passive: fires on its own when its condition is met

• Assault: strikes as part of a move

Damage is either martial or strategic, so strong fighters and clever tacticians play differently. Stun, root, disarm, poison, bleeding, shields, drunkenness and more are shown on every unit, with a description one tap or right-click away.

The Grand Tournament

Pick five heroes and face another five in the arena. Deploy, then fight: wipe out the other side within fifteen rounds, or win on remaining troops when time runs out. Heroes are ranked as Leaders, Mainstays and Specialists, and each has a role: vanguard, defender, tactician, controller, healer, support or blade. Three difficulty levels. Every match can be watched again as a replay.

Win enough bouts with a hero and they will teach their family technique to others, opening up new line-ups.

Story campaign from the novel's famous scenes

The campaign follows Water Margin. You play a young newcomer to the jianghu: choose a name and look, then head west from the capital. Train with Wang Jin and Shi Jin at Shi Family Village, watch Lu Da kill the butcher with three punches in Weizhou, then fight through Mount Wutai, Peach Blossom Village and the Waguan Temple. Each battle has its own goal: hold the line, escort, capture a commander, break out, or win a one-on-one duel. Your record for each battle is graded A, B or C.

Conversations give you choices, and people remember what you said. Who respects you and who can't stand you is written in your contact book, and it shapes what comes later.

Camp between battles

Back at camp, choose who sorties, change heroes' weapons, armor and accessories, buy medicine and gear with silver, and listen to your sworn brothers in the Hall of Loyalty.

Look

Song-dynasty ink wash and fine-line painting throughout: rice paper, lacquered wood, vermilion seals, a blue-green landscape map, and a portrait for every character who appears.

(See the AI Generated Content Disclosure on this page.)

Language note: the game is currently available in Simplified Chinese only.

Music & Sound

Theme "Serene Moonlight" (月明悠悠): Music by 小逸Eiyue (Xiaoyi), itch.io

Some music was created locally with the open-source AI music model ACE-Step 1.5 (MIT license), then hand-selected, edited and mixed by the developer.

Sound effects are CC0 public-domain assets by Kenney and many Freesound and OpenGameArt contributors. Full credits are in-game under Settings → About → Credits.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Generative AI tools were used during development. Every AI output was hand-selected and edited by the developer before it went into the game:
- Art: character portraits, title and interface art, maps, battlefield backgrounds and props, the source art for battlefield unit sprites, technique icons and ink-effect textures, story scene backdrops and full-screen backgrounds, base/camp backgrounds and the key art were generated with AI image tools, then hand-selected and edited (cropping, color grading, cleaning up garbled text and fake seals, touch-ups) before use. Unit walking and attack animations are generated procedurally from a bone rig.
- Music: some background music was generated locally with the open-source AI music model ACE-Step 1.5, then selected, edited, mixed and looped by hand.
- Text: story and dialogue were drafted with the help of AI writing tools and revised and finalized by the developer; the story is adapted from the classic Chinese novel Water Margin. English, Japanese and Korean translations were first drafted by AI, then reviewed and revised by hand.
No content is generated by AI while the game is running. Sound effects come from CC0 public-domain libraries and were edited and layered by hand. Fonts are not AI-generated.