If you told me Morbid Metal was built in Unity, I wouldn’t have believed you. The game looks that good. Developed by Screen Juice, a small indie studio of about 10 people, and published by Ubisoft, Morbid Metal is a hack-and-slash roguelite entering Early Access on Steam on April 8 for $17.99. The game started as creator Felix Schade’s solo university project back in 2017 and has been in development for nearly seven years. Its core hook is shapeshifting between up to three characters mid-combat to chain combos and abilities together, drawing heavy inspiration from games like Bayonetta, NieR: Automata, Devil May Cry, and Returnal. I only have about three hours in so far, so these are early impressions, but I’ve seen enough to know what the game is going for and where it currently lands.
Shred of Evidence
The combat is the star of the show, and it feels fantastic. Everything is responsive and snappy, and switching between characters mid-combo is genuinely fun once it clicks. You start with Flux, a fast and agile melee character, and unlock Ekku, a heavy-hitting brawler, in the first biome. A third character, Vekta, is a ranged battlefield controller who unlocks in the second biome, though I didn’t get to that point due to limited playtime since I’ve been juggling this alongside The Division Resurgence. I’m looking forward to seeing how Vekta opens up the combat with a third swap option and a focus on ranged attacks. The comparison I keep coming back to is Ninja Gaiden 4 with a splash of Warframe and a roguelite core loop. The combat has that same demanding, punishing energy, and it honestly reminds me more of that than anything else on the market right now.
The difficulty is no joke, though, and it leans heavily toward Returnal’s level of challenge. Things can snowball out of control fast. You take one hit, and while you’re trying to recover, you’ll eat two or three more. It’s very easy to lose track of where enemies are during combat, especially when things get chaotic, and the flyers in particular are really annoying to deal with. There’s also a good amount of platforming between combat encounters that reminds me a bit of DOOM Eternal, with lots of air dashing and grappling between points. Unlike Returnal, though, there isn’t an intriguing storyline or mystery pulling you forward through repeated deaths. Your motivation to keep running is the combat itself, and while that combat is excellent, I’m not sure it’s enough on its own to push through the punishing early hours for everyone.
Routine Maintenance
Where Morbid Metal struggles right now is in its roguelite systems. The Routines, which are the mid-run upgrade choices you pick from after clearing encounters, don’t feel compelling enough to me. I found myself gravitating toward the same pick almost every time because it was obviously the most powerful option. The best roguelites have you sitting there agonizing over which upgrade to take, and that tension just isn’t present here. Some of the alternative skills don’t feel fundamentally different from each other either, more like another flavor of the same thing rather than a meaningful choice that changes how you play.
The meta-progression between runs has a similar issue. It reminds me a bit of Absolum, where the approach is essentially to unlock as many nodes as you can without much strategic decision-making involved. I think Morbid Metal would benefit from more compelling options across the board. The player needs to feel like they’re getting noticeably stronger, and right now, the choices just don’t deliver that feeling. The meta-progression economy doesn’t feel very generous either, which makes it harder to want to jump right into the next run. Compare that to something like Ball x Pit, where I can sit there for hours because every run feels like meaningful progress. Morbid Metal hasn’t hooked me that way yet.
Rust and Repeat
The start of each run is where the repetition hits hardest. Even though the maps are semi-procedurally generated, you’re seeing the same environment, the same enemies, and a limited pool of choices. Since you’ll be dying early and often until you build up meaningful meta-progression, that opening stretch begins to feel like a slog. Enemy variety is a little lacking in the first biome, and I was surprised how quickly I saw repeats in the Routine options during my first few runs.
A couple of quality-of-life features would go a long way. The game desperately needs a minimap with fog of war. I have a terrible sense of direction and found myself constantly questioning whether I was heading to a new area or backtracking through somewhere I’d already been. An audio cue for when skill cooldowns are ready would also help a lot. There’s so much happening on screen during combat that it’s really difficult to glance down to the bottom right to check if a skill is available. I also ran into some frustrating moments with the grapple points. There were times where I would grapple to a point and air dash to close the gap before reaching a second one, but the prompt for the second grapple would disappear because I air dashed, sending me to the dark unknown.
Forged in Progress
I want to be clear: I do enjoy playing Morbid Metal, just in short stints. It’s not my general style of action gameplay anymore, and I’ll be the first to admit I’m just not very good at this kind of game these days. But in spurts, it’s a good time. The combat is genuinely excellent, the visuals are stunning for a Unity game, and the character-switching mechanic has real depth to it. For a debut title from a 10-person studio at $17.99, the technical polish and combat quality are impressive. On the performance side, I have zero complaints. The game runs flawlessly on my setup, with a consistent frame rate, no crashes, and no weird issues outside of the disappearing grapple prompts.
I plan to put more time into it over the coming days, and I’ll update these impressions as I dig deeper into the meta-progression. This isn’t a game I’ll be playing for hours on end like Megabonk, but it’s one I can see myself picking up for a run or two when I want something fast-paced and challenging. This is Early Access, and according to the game’s Steam Early Access FAQ, Screen Juice expects to remain in Early Access for about a year. If the team can make the roguelite elements as satisfying as the combat already is, Morbid Metal could end up being something special. The foundation is absolutely there. It just needs more layers on top of it.
Morbid Metal enters Early Access on April 8, 2026, for PC. These first impressions are based on an early access code provided by Ubisoft, played on PC (Intel i9-14900K, 96GB DDR5-6800 RAM, MSI RTX 5090 Gaming Trio OC). While FullCleared does have affiliate partnerships, they do not influence our editorial content. We may, however, earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links.
