Seven years.
Seven years is a long time for a game to be in the oven. Usually, when a solo passion project cooks for that long, it ends up being a bloated and outdated mess by the time it finally comes out.
Morbid Metal shouldn’t work. It started back in 2017 as Felix Schade’s college project, blew up on Reddit with a flashy combat clip, spawned a 10-person indie studio called Screen Juice, and somehow got picked up by Ubisoft. Add in a super generic “kill the rogue AI” sci-fi setting, and out expectations were pretty low. But after spending some time with the Early Access build, we have to admit:
The combat completely hooked us.
System Diagnostic
Real-time Shapeshifting: Seamlessly swap between distinct characters (Flux, Ekku, Vekta) mid-combo to juggle enemies and maximize damage.
Controller Bliss: We strongly feel this game was meant to be played with a controller. Everything is much more fluid and satisfying.
Roguelite Progression: Complete runs through biomes like the Sublime Garden and Steel Sanctuary, spending nano chips on permanent upgrades at the Void Hub.
Class Variety: Master highly specialized move-sets ranging from Flux’s single-target assassinations to Vekta’s ranged crowd control.
World: Beautiful, highly memorable biomes that often made us simply stop and enjoy the vistas
The Shapeshifting Slaughterhouse
Saving humanity is overrated. So, we don’t think the generic sci-fi story will blow your mind. Your actual job in Morbid Metal is sprinting through decaying maps, mashing out nasty attack strings, and dying. A lot.
You start in a hub called the Void, buy a few stat bumps using nano chips, and dive into the Sublime Garden. Standard roguelite loop. You run, die, then buy permanent upgrades at the Void Nexus, and you go again, hoping for a better outcome. But the meat on the bones here isn’t the loot, it’s…
Mastering the Dance
You don’t just pick a class at the start of a run. You hot-swap between three different characters right in the middle of a combo. You start with Flux, a squishy, teleporting assassin. Eventually, you unlock Ekku, a massive tank, and Vekta, who plays keep-away with gravity magic and shurikens.
All of the characters are highly unique and their special abilities and skills push you to try different things on the fly. To make things even more intense, you’re constantly encouraged to increase your rank by performing combos and killing enemies. Take damage – reduce the rank. It’s frantic, constantly keeping you on your toes.
When you get the rhythm down, it feels amazing. You can pull an enemy in with Vekta, instantly swap to Ekku to smash them into the floor, and switch to Flux to slice them up before they can stand back up. It’s fast, aggressive, and clearly inspired by games like Devil May Cry. But when you mess up the timing, the game punishes you hard. The first boss, Saru, will absolutely destroy you if you just mash the dash button. It has that Returnal level of difficulty where one mistake makes you panic, leading to three more mistakes and a quick death.
Under the Hood
When the screen fills with particle effects during a heavy attack, lower-end rigs are going to drop frames. Our RTX 4060ti, however, took everything like a champ and offered silky-smooth experience on 2K resolution (mix of high and ultra graphics). Above 80FPS was easily achievable.
On another note, current version is sorely missing some basic quality-of-life features. There’s no minimap right now, meaning you will inevitably get lost and backtrack between fights. We’ve also read about running into weird bugs. For example, the grapple prompt disappears if you dash at the wrong angle. Also, the attack sounds, which are punchy and satisfying, can sometimes be too loud and completely drown the warning sounds that the enemies make. We only experienced audio issues, but we didn’t find the loudness too distracting.
Scrap or Salvage?
The narrative is just window dressing. The whole post-collapse AI trope is delivered mostly through text logs hidden in a hub menu. You’re here to hit things, not for a deep emotional journey.
Mechanically, that shapeshifting combo system is borderline genius. It just desperately needs more varied enemy types in the early zones to use it against. Right now, the first biome can get repetitive entirely too fast. The progression systems at the Void Nexus also need tuning so they feel less like a grind and more like an actual reward for your time.
The audio and visuals keep your blood pumping, with the soundtrack hitting like a loud arcade cabinet from hell. However, that messy audio mixing can hurt gameplay clarity. Morbid Metal is, after all, a game that demands absolute perfection.
End of the Run?
Right now, Morbid Metal is a little rough around the edges. The progression leans a bit too hard into the grind, you end up fighting the same handful of enemies in the first biome way too often, and a few technical hiccups might scare off some players. Still, the foundation of its shapeshifting combat is undeniably fun. It definitely needs some polish, but there’s something genuinely special here. It’s in Early Access, sure, but with a few good updates, it could easily reach its full potential.
ID Card
- Developer: Screen Juice
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Engine: Unity
- Platforms: PC (Early Access)
- Release Date: April 8, 2026
- Genre: Action Roguelite / Hack-and-Slash
Dev & Play Media 
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