SOL Shogunate Builds Feudal Japan Inside the Moon

Feudal Japan on the Moon sounds like something you'd pitch as a joke during a game jam. But Chaos Manufacturing is dead serious about it, and after watching the studio's first dev diary for SOL Shogunate, I'm starting to think the premise might be one of the most inventive settings I've seen in an action RPG in years.

The dev diary, posted this week, lays out the game's core world-building conceit: in the far future, humanity has migrated to the Moon and constructed a network of cities burrowed into the lunar surface. These aren't domed colonies or sterile space stations. Each city uses centrifugal force to simulate Earth's gravity, and each one is modeled after a specific era of Japanese history. Shin Edo recreates feudal Japan, right down to its architecture and social customs. Tenkyo, by contrast, is built around 1980s Showa-era Japan. Two cities, two wildly different aesthetics, both buried inside the same rock orbiting Earth.

I love that Chaos Manufacturing didn't just slap a samurai skin on a generic sci-fi backdrop. The idea that these lunar cities are deliberate cultural reconstructions, each preserving a different slice of Japanese history underground, gives the setting a sense of purpose that most sci-fi action games never bother with. It's worldbuilding that actually justifies its own weirdness.

Clans, Trains, and Cybernetics

The dev diary also introduces two rival clans that drive the game's narrative. The Tennoji clan controls interplanetary travel and the Moon's train network, which immediately makes them the faction with all the logistical power. The Karasuma clan runs massive mining operations. Resource extraction versus transit infrastructure is a power struggle that feels grounded even in a setting this fantastical, and it gives the story a political backbone beyond "bad guys did a bad thing."

Players take on the role of Yuzuki, the last surviving member of a once-prominent samurai family. She's a ronin hunting for answers after a tragedy wiped out her entire clan. Combat blends traditional samurai swordplay with cybernetic enhancements, which is exactly the kind of tech-meets-tradition fusion that a lunar feudal setting demands. Gravity, or the occasional lack of it, also plays a role, though the dev diary doesn't go deep on how that translates mechanically.

SOL Shogunate is coming to PC and PS5, though Chaos Manufacturing hasn't confirmed a release window. Given how polished the concept art and in-engine footage looked in the reveal trailer, I'd guess the game is further along than the lack of a date might suggest, but that's speculation on my part.

What isn't speculation is that this game has a setting problem most studios would kill for: it's so distinctive that people forget about it and then get excited all over again when they're reminded it exists. Push Square openly admitted the game had "completely left" their collective brain before this dev diary resurfaced it. I get it. There are dozens of action RPGs fighting for attention at any given moment, and SOL Shogunate doesn't have a massive publisher pushing it into every showcase. But a premise this original deserves more visibility than it's gotten so far, and I hope Chaos Manufacturing finds a way to keep the momentum going between now and whenever the release date materialises. A game that builds feudal Japan inside the Moon shouldn't have to remind people it exists twice.