<p><img loading="lazy" src="https://www.gameinformer.com/sites/default/files/styles/body_default/public/2025/06/04/9874fad7/wutangrotd-04.jpg" width="800" height="450" alt="Wu-Tang Clan: Rise of the Deceiver preview" typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-body-default" /></p>

Platform: PC
Developer: Brass Lion

<p>It’s been nearly 25 years since the legendary Wu-Tang Clan starred in their own video game, but the crew makes its grand return to the medium in the form of a new title, Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver. Developed by <a href="https://www.gameinformer.com/feature/2019/11/15/standing-up">Brass Lion</a>, the game is a co-op third-person action RPG that sees players taking to the streets to battle enemies in a fantastical adventure. Perhaps more importantly, the game immerses Wu-Tang fans and newcomers in the mythology of one of hip hop’s greatest collectives.</p><iframe width="560" height="315" frameBorder="0" width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/826WlpkBZOQ" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay" allowfullscreen="true">&nbsp;</iframe><p>Rise of the Deceiver is the brainchild of Wu-Tang members Ghostface Killah and RZA. When the pair began developing their upcoming film,<em> Angel of Dus</em>t, a supernatural thriller, they decided to create a video game based on it. Brass Lion was contacted for the job, and the project became a dream come true for the studio. Formed in 2019 with the mission statement of promoting black culture and elevating artistic voices from marginalized groups, the team saw the interactive potential in <em>Angel of Dust</em> and decided to adapt it and rework elements into a new standalone adventure.</p><p>“We read the initial script, and there were elements of it that we liked, that we sort of took back and created our own mythology around those elements,” explains Rashad Redic, game director and Brass Lion co-founder/CCO. “And so there are some universal connections, but they're completely separate stories.”</p> <img loading="lazy" src="https://www.gameinformer.com/sites/default/files/styles/body_default/public/2025/06/04/99b95644/wutangrotd-06.jpg" typeof="foaf:Image" alt class="image-style-body-default"> <p>Rise of the Deceiver unfolds in the fictional neighborhood of Shaolin, a stylized amalgamation of the New York City boroughs the Wu-Tang call home, such as Staten Island and Brooklyn. As a customizable character, you’ll team up with up to three friends online to battle a corrupting entity known as the Deceiver. The roughly 20-hour adventure centers on how a superpowered Wu-Tang Clan must pass their abilities down to this new generation of warriors. “The central spirit of [the game] is to ask the player to think about the human connectivity between dreams and building together, and what happens when that's taken away,” says Redic.</p><p>The game also presents a mythologized take on the Wu-Tang Clan’s story, both as a collective and as individuals. Brass Lion wants to stay true to the group’s musical personas, presenting them in a fun and interactive context and uplifting from a storytelling angle. “The game is about, thematically, their connection to their roots,” says Brass Lion senior writer Evan Narcisse. “What has happened to that place as the Wu have kind of become like legendary hip hop superstars, and the stakes of what it means to achieve a dream, maintain it, and help other people achieve theirs too.”</p><p>As enthusiastic Wu-Tang fans, Brass Lion wants to stay faithful, but the game is not meant to serve as a documentary piece or a Wikipedia entry. “We’re remixing their lives,” states Narcisse, meaning the game takes some creative liberties; the Wu have supernatural abilities, after all. But this doesn’t mean the team hasn’t done their due diligence in terms of research. The storytelling draws from the books written by different Wu-Tang members, various interviews and podcasts, and, more fundamentally, the 2019 documentary series <em>Wu-Tang: Of Mics and Men</em>. As such, fans can expect to find plenty of easter eggs and references. But Brass Lion hopes the game will introduce and re-contextualize the group for less familiar fans who may only know the Wu or its members by name and reputation.</p><p>“There's a cohort of potential players that may only know Method Man from Power or Poker Face, or his film and TV roles,” says Narcisse. “They may not know that homie can spit, he's a rapper of the first order…And there's people who may only know RZA [as] a guy who shows up in movies or somebody who has meditation apps. They may not necessarily know that he was a really game-changing strategist in terms of ‘Hey, how do hip hop deals get made and signed?’ and ‘What kind of independence can be found within a really extractive paradigm of the music business of the ‘90s?’ They may not know the whole of their story.”</p> <img loading="lazy" src="https://www.gameinformer.com/sites/default/files/styles/body_default/public/2025/06/04/54eaeedf/wutangrotd-05.jpg" typeof="foaf:Image" alt class="image-style-body-default"> <p>Brass Lion wants Rise of the Deciever to be the interactive fusion of hip hop culture and martial arts movies that form the basis of the Wu-Tang Clan’s personas. The game sports a heavily stylized anime-inspired art direction that incorporates Afro-surrealist elements and the reduced framerate of the Spider-Verse films. Gameplay-wise, Brass Lion stresses the game is not a beat ‘em up, but a more traditional third-person action game. The Wu-Tang Clan’s love of martial arts is reflected in a battle system combining multiple disciplines; Brass Lion even captured motion references from RZA’s long-time Shaolin martial arts teacher. In addition to throwing hands, players will wield the Wu-Tang’s mystical powers, though it’s unclear what form those abilities take. The reveal trailer also showed the character wielding a sword, but Brass Lion isn’t ready to divulge how weaponry plays into the action.</p><p>As a Wu-Tang project, the soundtrack is integral to Rise of the Deciever. Brass Lion boasts legendary hip-hop producer Just Blaze as its music director, and his audio team wanted to do more than simply have songs play in the background as players punch goons in the face. Instead, the music dynamically reacts and changes as players perform. &nbsp;</p><p>“[Just Blaze] created not only interactive music that works with our team's system, but by breaking it all down to the stems, he's also added layers and remixes of the songs themselves, so you'll hear it escalating and amping up as you're playing,” explains Bryna Dabby Smith, CEO of Brass Lion. “So it's actually tailoring itself to your experience. It's so seamless that you don't even necessarily recognize right away that it's happening. And when you do, it's kind of an incredible ‘wow’ moment.”</p><p>Rise of the Deceiver’s soundtrack features a large selection of Wu-Tang’s catalog. Just Blaze has also composed orchestral versions of classic Wu-Tang tracks, and Brass Lion teases the game features brand-new music too. Whether these original tracks are Just Blaze compositions or come from the Wu-Tang Clan themselves is unclear.</p><p class="inline-rich-content-placeholder">&nbsp;</p><p>Non-rhythm-based video games based on music artists don’t have the greatest track record in terms of quality, whether it's Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, Aerosmith’s Revolution X, or, to a somewhat lesser extent, Wu-Tang’s own 2001 fighting game, Shaolin Style. But Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver looks promising and will hopefully break the mold by being a great game first that happens to feature a popular act. More than perhaps anything else, Brass Lion wants Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver to positively celebrate hip hop culture as a whole through the lens of one of its most significant contributors.</p><p>“People siphon the culture,” says Narcisse. “We can't not be real about that. People draft off of it, but they often do so in ways that can reinforce stereotypes or flatten what it means to live these kind of lives, and we're trying our best not to do that. We're trying to not flatten, but complicate and add texture to what it means to live these lives, love this art form, and, hopefully, give back to it a little bit.”</p><p>Wu-Tang: Rise of the Deceiver is coming to consoles and PC, but it currently has no release window.&nbsp;</p> <section class='type:slideshow'><figure><img src='https://www.gameinformer.com/sites/default/files/styles/body_default/public/2025/06/04/1669d65f/wutangrotd-02.jpg'></figure><figure><img src='https://www.gameinformer.com/sites/default/files/styles/body_default/public/2025/06/04/d071f9fb/wutangrotd-01.jpg'></figure></section>