4 Skills of Sun Wukong: The Making Of

He can turn an enemy into a Sheep, deal hefty blows with a 6,750-kilogram staff, and revive himself with 100% HP and Turn Meter: how did Legendary RAID Champion Sun Wukong gain all these skills? Eugen Vonsyk, Game Design Team Lead at Plarium, shares all the details in this article.

From myth to game

Sun Wukong (or Monkey King) is a well-known figure, and not just in the gaming industry. When bringing him into the RAID universe, we had to not only create a Champion with unique features, but also transpose his character from myth to game through gameplay mechanics.

To get a better understanding of who Sun Wukong is, we began by exploring myths and legends.

Character features

After reading Sun Wukong’s story in the novel “Journey to the West”, we formed a vision of the character. He’s a typical trickster, the embodiment of cunning, a master of illusion and deception, and a mischief-maker who is not afraid to defy even the gods.

Based on these traits, we decided to go with a hybrid Champion type. Sun Wukong is both a martial arts master – the Attack-type Champion who dishes out damage – and adept at transformation and illusion – the Support-type Champion who excels at controlling enemies.

Skill creation

Here we drew inspiration from Sun Wukong's 72 transformations – his supernatural abilities described in the novel “Journey to the West”.

In the novel, Sun Wukong had 72 magical skills, including everything from the ability to fly, breathe fire, and become invisible, to the power to pull the moon down from the sky.

We couldn't use all the skills, so we chose the most interesting ones, as well as those that could be replicated in RAID gameplay: stun, transformation, illusion, and revival.

1. Stun

In the novel, Sun Wukong wields a magical staff that grants wishes. It was given to him as a gift by the dragon king of the Eastern Seas. The staff weighs 6,750 kilograms, and is certain to leave all enemies seeing stars.

This gave us the inspiration for the Champion's default skill. In the game, Sun Wukong has a 25% chance of placing a Stun debuff for one turn when attacking a single enemy. If the target is under any buffs, this chance increases to 50%.

2. Transformation

Sun Wukong could turn one object into another by pointing his finger at it. In RAID, we have a Polymorph Blessing, which allows a Champion to turn an enemy into a sheep. It fits perfectly with the Monkey King's character. We just tweaked it a bit with developers, and made it possible for enemies to resist the transformation.

Wukong strikes one enemy with a powerful blow, bypassing 50% of their defense. If this attack kills the target, any surplus damage will be dealt as an additional AoE attack to the remaining enemies. If the attack doesn’t kill, Wukong turns his target into a Sheep.

3. Illusion

We wanted the third skill to incorporate illusions. The thought was to create illusionary versions of the Champion in place of dead allies, or an illusionary copy of an enemy. But such effects would have required a long development process.

In the end, our animators helped us bring the idea to life. They made the attack animation for this skill with copies of Sun Wukong emerging and attacking the entire enemy team.

4. Revival

According to the legend, Sun Wukong died of alcohol poisoning. After ending up in hell, he had a quarrel with the servants of the God of Death, wiped his name out of the Book of Life and Death, and gained immortality.

This part of the story laid the foundation for his passive skill. When the Monkey King is killed, he revives himself three turns later with 100% HP and 100% Turn Meter, storms back into battle and sets about completely ruining the enemy’s plans.

Curious to see these skills in action? Check out Sun Wukong in RAID!

If you found this article interesting, check out more from our experts on our blog where we explore the ins and outs of creating games.