Despite the numerous fighting games from huge series like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8, there aren't a lot out these days replicating actual martial arts. That's where The Hidden Ones comes in, an upcoming game from Tencent studio Morefun, which blends motion-captured kung fu with supernatural powers to make a compelling 3D fighter with a surprising amount of depth. Morefun is planning to release The Hidden Ones in the third quarter of 2025, with prealpha in January and a closed beta in March.

I got to preview a few hours of the game in Los Angeles. It has the ebb-and-flow 3D fighting feel of Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero combined with a broad catalog of fighters. So far, it's a fun fighting game that's easy to pick up and use special skills, but with a deeper complexity I still haven't gotten the hang of. While 2D fighters have ruled the roost with room for technical precision, The Hidden Ones blends free 3D movement with timing and counters to produce a promising and fun fighting system.

The Hidden Ones is an adaptation of Hitori no Shita: The Outcast, a popular webcomic in China turned into a five-season animated series and more recently a live-action TV show. The story follows the emergence of the Eight Secret Arts, which were recently rediscovered as powerful martial arts mastered by fighters who, naturally, fight each other a ton. Blending Chinese kung fu, Taoism, spirits, yin-yang bagua and chi energy, the franchise blends martial arts and supernatural myth. 

"The whole perspective of Outcast is very interesting and very unique [with] the Chinese myths and martial arts flavor," lead game designer Fox Lin said through an interpreter. Outcast tells a very human story in Chinese context, replete with Taoism -- a philosophical and religious tradition with practices of self-cultivation to embrace humanistic virtues of compassion and monastic simplicity. Martial arts like tai chi and the various traditions under the umbrellas of kung fu and wushu are based in Taoist philosophy.

While other fighting games like Street Fighter have flashy effects, Morefun wanted to ground The Hidden Ones' combat in martial arts. While fighters in Outcast have supernatural abilities, they're woven into more traditional combat. Morefun used motion capture on actual martial artists for every character's moves in-game, according to senior game designer Stan Fan: "In the game, even someone with magic powers will [use it] in the martial arts way, to combine them together so that you will see how they move and the details of the martial art itself."

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I could easily see this mix in The Hidden Ones. Each fighter has their own special abilities to weave into basic attacks or use to catch an opponent off guard. But the game is unique in another way: It was built from the ground up to be playable on PC and mobile -- no console plans have been announced -- so the fighting system is streamlined for simple commands with special abilities mapped to simple button presses. That puts extra emphasis on positioning and battle flow. Often I dashed in for a basic attack combo, only for my opponent to catch me with a special ability first.

This is how The Hidden Ones stands out. In my duels with other players, we began by carefully circling, waiting for the other to commit to a move and try to punish with a combo of our own. Given the range of abilities among the character roster -- some have narrow ranged abilities, others have close-up area attacks, and so on -- it was a lot of fun to see how certain fighters stacked up against each other. Even when I got trounced, it was great to roll into the next fight with a better understanding of the combat.

Come for Hidden Ones' story, stay for duels

There were three modes available to us in the preview -- single-player story, one-versus-one duels and a boss rush trials mode -- but I only got to two as I was drawn into both. 

I played a midgame chapter of the single-player story following one of the fighters, Wang Ye, as he figures out who sent a gang of goons after his family. Naturally, he's gotta fight his way to the truth through urban back alleys and beautiful courtyards. The game roughly follows the original story of the webcomic and animated series, but certain things have been changed and added for the game -- like the grudge-bearing gang lieutenant I fought at the end of the chapter, whose second phase involved summoning a temple-sized snake spirit.

With plenty of anime-styled cutscenes and several fighters appearing throughout, the story mode is shaping up to be a fun jaunt. It was entertaining enough to distract me from diving into the trials mode, where players can take on other bosses and selectively ramp up the difficulty -- which was a bummer, since I missed out on taking on a nasty boss with a fire spear that sped around the stage on fire wheels beneath her feet (based on Nezha, the Third Lotus Prince in Taoism). But the meat of The Hidden Ones, like all fighting games, is in its versus mode.

The nitty-gritty of The Hidden Ones' 3D combat

In duels, I chose between three fighters from the nine available for us to play and threw myself into combat against other previewers and developers in the room. I quickly found fighters I favored, including a wild-haired old demon man in a suit with clawing slash attacks ending in an electric smash. But the real room favorite was Ru Hua, a slender hunched-over woman with a ghost-white face who whipped around chain-connected kunai daggers for vicious ranged blows -- I beat down and was beaten by her a few times.

While Outcast fans will doubtless recognize these characters, I certainly didn't. It was refreshing to discover a new lineup of fighters with strong visual and combat identities who haven't already appeared in a famous franchise from Capcom, SNK or Namco. 

I was also delighted by the game's combat, which felt like a grounded version of Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero's 3D arena fighting at a slower pace. The developers at the preview presented a triad of combat flow, where basic attacks can be stopped by defending, defending can counter special combat skills and attacks can interrupt said skills -- unless, as I found, an enemy dives into a fight with a skill or shoots it from a distance away. 

More powerful "sinister skills" can only be evaded by dodging, which consumes one point of stamina, represented by five yellow diamonds shown on screen. If you're getting pummeled by a skill or basic attack combo, you can break away, using three stamina points -- but if you use up all your stamina, you'll blink red in a more vulnerable state that takes more damage. And ultimate skills, which charge up over time and knock out a chunk of health, can only be dodged -- which is possible if you see it coming, leaving the enemy open for a counterattack.

There's more complicated strategy in the combat system, too: If someone defends for too long, a basic attack will turn into a grab. You can also counter in the middle of a basic attack combo if you time it right, which I couldn't nail down. 

On top of all this are support skills, which you equip before combat with a budget of up to four summon points for up to three skills. Simple summons like flinging spirit daggers cost one point, meatier ones take two and the most powerful take three, which can do things like lay down a healing aura on the ground. I barely grasped the depth of this system, but it opens up a lot of potential for customizing your combat flow beyond character abilities. 

At the end of the day, it's still a one-on-one fight where you bring your three chosen fighters against an opponent's trio. Knock down one and the round ends, with your character recovering a bit of health by an amount that is, intriguingly, not fixed but up to an internal algorithm. While I didn't get the specifics when talking to developers, I noticed I only got back maybe a quarter of my health bar when taking out an opponent's character. If you wait for the round's timer to expire, though, you won't get any health back at all.

How do you make a fighting game for PC and mobile, anyway?

What most surprised me was how easy it was to catch on to the ebb and flow of The Hidden Ones' combat. I knew I'd overextended myself a millisecond before an opponent punished me with a counter, and I had only myself to blame. It didn't matter whether I was playing with a controller or mouse and keyboard during combat -- and I've never used the latter in a fighting game.

That's testament to the game's combat design, where you're constantly locked on to the enemy and left to focus on when and how you close the distance to pummel or use a skill. That makes it easier to imagine how the game will play on mobile (we didn't get a preview of that functionality) -- and amazingly enough, Morefun expects to have crossplay between phone and PC players.

While the developers aren't too worried about latency given local servers in the markets they're planning to reach (North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, China and other regions in Asia), the developers did acknowledge that PC players may have an easier time inputting precise commands compared to touch-based inputs on phones.

"The team ran a lot of exclusive tests within the players we recruit [of PC and mobile players] just to ensure the best experience for the majority of players," Lin said. "We also provide personalized options for them to adjust to their own customizations. The team did a lot of research on that." 

And there are other adjustments to the game based on what platform they're playing on. If you're on mobile, cutscenes will zoom in on characters to best fit a smartphone's smaller but wider-format screen, while playing on PC will zoom out for larger displays.

Despite only playing for around 90 minutes, The Hidden Ones seems like a fun mix of polished martial arts action with some eye-catching supernatural powers, all wrapped around a tight fighting system that felt uniquely pleasing for both button mashers and more skilled players.

We'll have to see if the story mode is compelling on its own for newcomers and Outcast fans, but fighting game veterans who enjoy the more freeform 3D arena subgenre will want to keep a lookout for the prealpha tests in January and closed beta in March to try Hidden Ones for themselves.