Planned Release Date: December 2026

About This Game

Your hands are the spirit's whole world.

Raise them into the light, and the shadows on the wall become its mountains and bridges, its roads and glow. Jinian: The Hand-Shadow Messenger is a puzzle game played with hand shadows: a little spirit crowned with a halo carries longings through a papercraft world, while you pave its way, guard its journey, and clear its dangers — with nothing but your own two hands.

How to Play

Place both hands in front of your camera. As your hands form different gestures, their shadows turn into physical objects in the game, in real time:

👍 Command — guide the spirit forward and over gaps

👌 Freeze — turn a hand shadow into ice: bridges, footholds

👎 Evaporate — dissolve the ink walls blocking the way

🔗 Hands together — switch between Action and Build modes

⊤ T-pose — open the level select

Ink bleeds, ice melts, gears and balances turn and tilt for real — every step asks you to invent the answer with your own hands, on the spot.

What You'll Experience

A papercraft journey of 20 levels across 4 chapters: Chapter One "Longings of the Living" (gentle steps into walking, freezing, evaporating, gears and balances) · Chapter Two "Longings Across Time" (time, remembrance, and combined mechanics) · Chapter Three "Longings of All Things" (wide scrolling worlds and mirrored routes) · Chapter Four "Longings In-Between" (dreams, and a final trial of everything learned)

Every letter has one recipient and one small story — told through letter cards and a wax-seal stamping moment; plus a stamp album: 3 stamps per level (1 for delivery + 2 challenge seals, such as "No Fall", "Restraint", "As Promised").

Features

🖐 No extra hardware: one camera is all you need — no gamepad, no VR

🧊 Simulated physics: ice bridges bear weight, balances tilt, gears can be jammed — everything your shadow makes is interactive

📮 Stamp challenges: two challenge seals per level (timed, restraint, no-fall and more) — they reward care, never gate progress

Length & difficulty: about 1.5–2 hours for a first playthrough, around 3 hours for a full stamp collection; no fail states — a fall simply means a gentle restart.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

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

Some of the art assets in this game (characters, scenery decorations, and mechanism textures), as well as portions of the music, sound effects, and narrative text, were created with the assistance of generative AI tools during development, and were individually reviewed, refined, and integrated by the developer. The core gameplay and level design are entirely human-crafted.