Playing Sifu is an experience you’re unlikely to forget. Released in 2022, it’s a beat ‘em-up with roguelike elements centered around martial arts that’s tough enough to challenge even the most seasoned players. When your character dies, you’re brought back with new abilities, but this comes at the cost of health, visibly aging you as you progress. You improve as you inch closer to death, but the real challenge is how powerful can you get before you die for good?

We spoke to Jordan Layani, Sifu’s creative director and co-founder of developer Sloclap, about what inspired Sifu, the thought process behind this gameplay system, and how the game melds elements from various popular roguelike games to create a beat ‘em up unlike any other released in recent years. 

Kicking things off with the more obvious influences, Sifu’s look and feel draw heavily from “martial arts and kung-fu movies” while the fighting style Pak Mei kung-fu inspired the core gameplay loop of constantly improving yourself. The free-flowing style of combat, which sees players fight their way from target to target in a brutal ballet, may prompt comparisons to Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham series, but Layani pointed to other titles like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Bayonetta, and God Hand as points of inspiration.   

“In developing Sifu, we aimed to immerse players in life-or-death situations where even the slightest mistake could prove fatal,” he explained when asked why death was made such a large part of the game. “This premise led us to the understanding that death has to be a part of the game. 

“We quickly embraced the idea of resurrection, allowing players to stand back up and continue their journey. To further this concept, we wanted to give players a way to progress in their skill tree, utilizing the experience gained from their battles. Representing this accumulated experience led us to the idea of aging our character, which naturally introduced long-term tension for the player: How old can I get before I can no longer fight? When will the true game over occur?”

Whenever you die in Sifu, you can either give up and start over or resurrect with new abilities by spending experience points. The trade-off is that, every time you pick the latter, you lose a portion of your health bar, meaning you’ll eventually become a glass cannon capable of dealing out incredible damage to enemies but will die in a single hit.

While its story is rather linear, every level in Sifu is meticulously crafted from the ground up and packed full of breakable tables, walls, and other objects the player can interact with. Replaying levels also unlocks access to shortcuts and secret areas, opening up the game further with every death. 

It’s something that sets Sifu apart from the competition, enabling players to really experiment with different play styles throughout the game so that no one player has the exact same experience as another.

But why, with so many different mechanics that are almost staples of the roguelike genre, did Sloclap not make Sifu a roguelike? According to Layani, they “never intended for it to be a pure roguelike game.”

“Indeed, we have the reset of a portion of our character’s progression upon game over, a staple of roguelike games. However, we chose to focus on fixed levels and scenarios rather than procedurally generated ones,” he explained. “This decision was made to allow players to learn and master specific situations, enhancing their skills and strategy over time.

“Our aim was to find the best fit for our game, integrating elements that would complement our vision without strictly confining it to a particular genre. We sought a balance that would challenge players while still providing a coherent and enriching experience, reflecting the thematic core of mastering martial arts through persistence and learning from one’s failures.” 

With that in mind, it’s fitting that Sifu ended up becoming a game about nothing but balance. You have to be constantly aware of your surroundings, and if you’re good enough—and with enough practice, you will get good enough—then you can even start to perfectly mimic scenes from the movies and games the developers studied for this once-in-a-lifetime beat ‘em up. 

Sifu is currently available on the Epic Games Store.