The Sun is going to swallow the Earth. Before humanity can fly the planet to safety, it has to get rid of the Moon first. That is the setup for The Wandering Earth: The Last Full Moon, a new third-person shooter from Studio Surgical Scalpels that skips the 2019 blockbuster film entirely and returns to the novella roots of author Liu Cixin.
Back to the Novella
Liu Cixin’s original The Wandering Earth novella ran roughly 23,000 Chinese characters. It became a 2019 film credited as the moment Chinese cinema proved it could do hard sci-fi at blockbuster scale, a success that proved the commercial potential of Chinese science-fiction IP and kicked off a wave of new development across the industry.
Under Liu Cixin’s blessing and trust, the studio sees the game as a valid extension of the story.
Courtship and the 12-Month Proposal
Surgical Scalpels’ last title, Boundary, was a zero-gravity shooter that punched above its weight. This time it works with Starry Dome, the licensing-rights holder, which ran an open call in 2024 for a developer partner.
“The proposal phase lasted 12 months, and we went back and forth for a long time refining that proposal,” Frank Mingbo Li, Head of Studio Surgical Scalpels, told me. “This is also how we built trust between the studio and the IP holder.”
The deal came together earlier this year, and development started right after Chinese New Year. A playable multi-level demo is already doing the rounds internally.
Two Factions, One Planet
The sun will swell and engulf the Earth within a few centuries. Humanity builds a small army of planetary engines and launches the “Wandering Earth Project,” a 2,500-year mega-plan to fly the planet to Proxima Centauri.
The first step is to stop the rotation, point the engines, accelerate to escape velocity, coast, then flip everything and start braking. This is called the “Braking Era.” Not everyone agrees.
| Faction | Position | Conflict |
|---|---|---|
| Earth Faction | Ride the planet to Proxima Centauri | Wants the Wandering Earth Project to continue |
| Spaceship Faction | Abandon the planet for starships | Wants humanity to leave Earth behind |
That violent tension between camps that have argued for 300 years is where the action lies. The game’s title references Wangri, “the day of the full moon,” the 15th or 16th day of the lunar calendar. In Chinese culture, the full moon usually means reunion. This story is about the opposite: leaving.
Grounded Gunplay
You play an engineer sent to the Moon as that window opens, and things go sideways fast: an assault, a conspiracy and a very old argument reopened. This plays as a third-person shooter first, and the team is insistent about that. When the Dead Space comparison came up, the answer was blunt: no.
“We did accumulate a lot of experience, and the setting is shared, but it’s a new IP and it’s not connected,” Li said. “Our motto is to fulfill players’ fantasies for modern shooter games.”
The tools include:
- A backpack-mounted robotic arm that flings large explosives
- Exoskeletons
- Futuristic sidearms
- Space vehicles for moving between oversized lunar structures
None of it replaces shooting. “You can shoot your way from the start to the finish,” Li said. “We never compromise the shooting experience.”
Aiming in Zero Gravity
The aiming system is the clearest new idea: instead of a fixed center-screen crosshair, Surgical Scalpels is building a triple-reticle setup tied to the character model and lunar gravity. The player is the fourth layer.
“We want an immersive experience,” Li explained. “The crosshair needs to be tied to the character itself, shown dynamically, at the same time as we show what zero-gravity feels like.”
The team would not spoil which other factions might appear. “If I tell you, I’d have to kill you,” one developer said. The game is still early, and the team is aiming for a grounded, high-intensity sci-fi experience.
Source: ign.com
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