An elegant martial arts meditation on temporality and self-possession, set in a loving but touristy idea of China.

I was a hearty 40-year-old when I walked into the Museum; a spry 68 when I walked out. No, I am not Dorian Gray. This is Sifu, a China-set martial arts revenge fable from French developer Sloclap, in which every “death” shaves another few years off your life, care of an enchanted pendant. In this case, the culprit was the Museum’s artist-in-residence – one of five assassins who murder your character’s father and destroy his Pak Mei Kung Fu school in the prologue, sparking a quest for payback that may last a single day or a lifetime, depending on your dexterity.

I couldn’t just block her blades with my forearms, and struggled to time her whirling, leisurely strikes. But eventually, I learned to dodge and parry well enough to fit in a few combos of my own – a steadying palm to the solar plexus, then a cathartic shoulder barge and a running ankle-sweep, flooring my willowy adversary and allowing me to land a couple more punches… before helping her gallantly to her feet. Sifu would be a much easier game if the protagonist would just sit on downed foes and clobber them indefinitely, but then again, this is a story about mastering your brutal urges, with every loss of self-control measured in decades.

I am more vicious for my rapidly advancing age, but also frailer, my health bar shortening even as the years have somehow polished and strengthened my attacks. Ahead lies the Tower, its dusky golden lobbies and eerie foundations roamed by bodyguards who generally parry your second punch and tackle you for good measure. Somewhere in this building lurks my next target, an equally venerable executive who wields a glowing flail. I am probably too old to survive her hospitality. Sifu’s pendant won’t revive you forever: as you age, its component discs shatter, till all you’re left with is scarlet thread. Take a fall in your seventies and you’ll have to start the level over.

You can push on regardless, trying for a perfect run, but the safer approach is to replay previous levels with fewer KOs, stealing back a fistful of hourglass sand from the reaper, while amassing the XP for new moves – the game’s domineering but enjoyable core loop. Among these moves is the ability to snatch throwing knives out of the air, which proves helpful indeed in the second phase of the artist fight. After repeating the first three levels, I walk out of the Museum a trifling 39. Now to bring justice to the occupant of that Tower.

Sifu’s ageing mechanic gives its 10 hour+ roguelike campaign a peculiar, mildly dictatorial but very engrossing rhythm of experiment and optimisation. You begin each chapter at the age you finished the previous one. Replaying chapters to shave off years means abandoning any XP or moves unlocked in the current run, but you can unlock an ability several times over to render it permanent. You’ll also discover shortcuts within levels that persist between runs, letting you bypass half the level in some cases, or even take an elevator straight to the final boss. These finds are tracked by a slightly gratuitous detective corkboard back at your father’s old kung fu school or “wuguan”, with threads joining keys to doors, and greyed-out silhouettes for artefacts you’ve yet to discover. Gradually expanded from chapter to chapter, Sifu’s hub space is oddly reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Rear Window, its training floor overlooking the game’s five neighbourhoods, each corresponding to a certain time of day.

The environments themselves are spaces immortalised in both films and games: an apartment block’s worth of dealers, a pulsing club with pirouetting clientele, a mountaintop sanctuary that had me thinking wistfully of Hitman. Shortcuts aside, each level is pretty linear, breaking down into a series of room fights, a couple of mini-bosses and infrequent dragon statues where you can activate power-ups and unlock moves. The dense yet graceful composition of these spaces, with gorgeous views peeking over the walls of a tightly framed critical path, recalls Sloclap’s previous fantasy brawler Absolver. I don’t know many developers that can make relativel