Red Candle Games: Taiwan's 12-Person Studio That Refused to Stay Small

In early 2019, a small studio in Taipei had the best and worst month of its life. Its second game, a haunting horror story set in a 1980s Taiwanese apartment, had launched to glowing reviews. Within days, it was gone from Steam everywhere in the world.

Five years later the same studio released a hand-drawn action game about a cat-like warrior in a world of Taoist temples and rusting machines. Nine Sols went on to sell more than 800,000 copies in its first year, and Red Candle Games went from cautionary tale to one of Asia's most admired indie teams.

Six friends in Taipei

Red Candle Games was founded on 1 September 2015 in Taipei by six people: Henry Wang, Light Wang, Coffee Yao, Doy Chiang, Finger Chen and Vincent Yang. Even today it is a team of only about 12.

Its first game, Detention (January 2017), was a side-scrolling horror adventure set in a Taiwanese high school during the martial-law years, a period known as the White Terror. It mixed local folklore with real history that many young Taiwanese had only heard about from grandparents. Reviews were warm, and the story travelled further than anyone expected: it became a feature film in 2019 and a TV series in 2020.

Devotion and the vanishing act

Devotion followed in February 2019. This time the horror lived inside a single family apartment in 1980s Taipei, as a father's religious obsession slowly pulls his family apart. Critics loved it. Then players found hidden images in the game that mocked Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The backlash in China was immediate. Red Candle apologised, and the game was removed from Steam globally.

For a tiny studio, it could have been the end. Instead, Red Candle kept going. A physical edition was offered for pre-order in Taiwan in 2020, and in March 2021 the studio opened its own online shop, selling both Detention and Devotion directly to players.

Nine Sols: Taopunk and a crowdfunding roar

In December 2021 Red Candle revealed something completely different: a 2D action platformer called Nine Sols. The studio coined a word for its style, "Taopunk", a blend of Taoism and cyberpunk that mixes Eastern mythology with science fiction.

The hero is Yi, the tenth of the Ten Sols, the leaders of a cat-like alien race called the Solarians. The story follows his revenge against the other Sols, and it gets far darker than the cute faces suggest.

When the crowdfunding campaign launched in March 2022, it asked for NT$3 million. Backers blew straight past that target, pledging well over five times the goal. Clearly, players had not forgotten Red Candle.

Built for the parry

Nine Sols is a game about deflection. Director and producer Shih-Wei Yang and the team took inspiration from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, as well as Katana Zero and Hollow Knight. You block at the last moment, build up Qi, then spend it on talismans that you stick to enemies and detonate. Yi also has a bow, a double jump, wall runs, dashes and a grappling hook, so the game moves like a Metroidvania while fighting like a duel.

It was built in Unity with fully hand-drawn animation, which is part of why it took six years. Red Candle itself later described development as a "6-year odyssey" that faced countless challenges.

By the numbers

• 2015: Red Candle Games founded in Taipei
• ~12: people on the team
• NT$3 million: the original crowdfunding target, smashed many times over
• 29 May 2024: Nine Sols launches on PC and Mac
• 26 November 2024: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series, Xbox One and Switch versions arrive
• 84: Metacritic score on PC
• 800,000+: copies sold by the first anniversary
• 39,000+: user reviews on Steam

How it landed

Nine Sols launched on PC on 29 May 2024 and on consoles on 26 November 2024, the same day a free update added "battle memories", a boss-rush style mode. It earned an 84 on Metacritic, nominations for Game of the Year at The Indie Game Awards 2024 and Outstanding Visual Style at The Steam Awards 2024. Push Square gave the console version a 9/10 and called it the best Metroidvania around.

On the game's first anniversary, 29 May 2025, Red Candle announced that Nine Sols had sold over 800,000 copies worldwide, and was well on the way to a million.

A Taiwanese game, made for everyone

Look closely at Nine Sols and Taiwan is everywhere. The temples, the talismans, the incense smoke and the Hokkien lyrics all come from the culture Red Candle grew up in, the same culture that powered Detention and Devotion. What changed is the genre. Instead of slow horror, the studio wrapped those ideas in a fast, demanding action game, the kind of design that travels across languages without needing translation.

That choice paid off. Players who had never heard of the White Terror or Taiwanese folk religion picked up Nine Sols because of its combat, and stayed for its world. In a market where many Asian studios feel pressure to look "global", Red Candle went the other way and became more specific, not less. It is a lesson that the Taipei Game Show's own award winners seem to have learned too.

Taiwan has a long history in games, from PC RPGs to hardware giants, but Red Candle gave its indie scene a global face. Its games are unmistakably Taiwanese: they use local history, local religion, local music and local language, and they sell worldwide anyway. That is a powerful message for every young team at events like the Taipei Game Show Indie Game Award.

The studio is also a case study in survival. Losing a game to a global takedown might have finished a bigger company. Red Candle answered by owning its own store, going direct to fans through crowdfunding, and then making something so good that the story became about the work, not the controversy.

What to play next

Red Candle has not announced its next game as of November 2026, so for now there are three ways in:

• Nine Sols on PC, PlayStation, Xbox or Switch, if you like tough, fair combat and a story that hits hard.
• Detention, a short, atmospheric horror adventure and the best introduction to the studio's storytelling.
• Devotion, sold through Red Candle's own online shop since 2021 rather than on Steam.

If you are new to the genre, do not be scared off by the Sekiro comparison. Nine Sols is hard, but it teaches its parry rhythm patiently, and the satisfaction of finally reading a boss perfectly is the reason so many players went on to hunt for the true ending.

WGC's take: when a 12-person studio builds a game that sits comfortably next to Hollow Knight and Sekiro, it is no longer a small studio in any way that matters. Whatever Red Candle makes next, we will be watching for it.