Mortal Shell Is One Of The Best Indie Souslikes Ever

Soulslikes are a hard genre to make. It’s about more than just the difficulty, because things have to be punishing, but also fair, and a lot of games don’t manage to balance that quite right. Mortal Shell is one of the few that genuinely feels like a Soulslike, and while it does occasionally slip into being unfair in places, the majority of the game is a textbook example of what makes the genre so damn enticing.

The standout feature of Mortal Shell is that you play as a husk of a being. You’re barely alive yourself, and instead of fighting using your own power, you inhabit the dead bodies of other heroes. It means that your build is dictated by who you’re wearing, instead of other things. It also means you can experiment and mix and match both bodies and weapons to find a playstyle that you like. It’s a really fun way to offer build variety in a game like this, and it works well.

Since its release, it’s had a fairly impressive bit of DLC come out too, so it might feel new even if you’ve fought through it already. We’re very excited to see what the future holds for Cold Symmetry, the people behind the game, and we’re also very excited at the prospect that that could be more Mortal Shell. Until then though, at least we’ve got what’s already here to tide us over and keep us on our toes, and also in our digital graves.