Cold Symmetry and Playstack have announced that Mortal Shell will be timed-exclusive on the Epic Games Store. Furthermore, and during the PC Gaming Show 2020, the teams revealed some new PC gameplay footage from it.
Now as you may have guessed, the decision to release the game exclusively on the Epic Games Store was not received well by some fans. As such, Cold Symmetry issued an official statement about this that you can find below.
“While this will not affect the releases on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, we understand that for those of you fellow PC users who prefer to keep their game library on Steam and are excited about Mortal Shell, this news can be disappointing. We would like to provide a bit of context to how this decision came to be. We’re not expecting a sudden shift towards solidarity regarding this decision, but considering the amazing support from all of you since the game was announced, we at the very least OWE you an honest explanation. In short, we’re a tiny studio and, for our publisher, we were a risky investment considering we’re a new and unproven team that hasn’t shipped a title before. This project, and our ambition to make a premium indie game that we personally would enjoy playing, has been a huge undertaking for us. The intense pressure of expectations we put on ourselves, and the limited resources we have at our disposal, has put an incredible demand on all our time and creative energy. While the game was initially set to be smaller and less polished than it is now, we kept pushing and raising the bar, believing that a small but dedicated team can create something compelling in a genre that demands famously high standards.
So yeah… ironically this project was “the Dark Souls of game development” for us. The reason we’re telling you this is not for pity, but to give you some real-life context about the headspace we were in when Epic Games first showed an interest. When Epic approached us, the game was at its most critical stage in development, where additional financial support was something that would meaningfully improve the quality of the Mortal Shell experience. Was this an easy choice? No. But given the circumstances, we felt it was the right thing to do for the game. We know that, ultimately, the high emotions about the Epic Games Store come only because you care about this project. That passion you have has always fuelled us, and regardless of your platform preference, we’re grateful that you’re a part of our community, and we can’t wait for you to get your hands on Mortal Shell.”
In short, Epic Games provided Cold Symmetry with additional financial support, something that was crucial for the game’s development. To put it simply, without these funds, the game may never existed in its current state.
Mortal Shell is an action RPG that is heavily inspired by the Dark Souls games. According to the devs, its combat will be strategic and deliberate. Players must commit their sword only when an opportunity opens. Players will also have to calculate their parries to unleash devastating counterblows. Furthermore, they will be able to temporarily entomb their Mortal Shell in stone to block attacks, or play aggressive and use their stone-form to add brutal weight to their own sword swings.
As you will see in the following gameplay video, the game is still rough around the edges. Let’s hope that Cold Symmetry will further improve it during its beta phase period.
Mortal Shell will release on Epic Games Store later this year. Its beta phase will also being on July 3rd.
Enjoy!
Mortal Shell PC Gaming Show Gameplay Footage
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Looks really bad.
a game with dark shet’s 40 iq combat system is on epic. oh wow, what am i going to do now?
Where did Dark Souls touch you?
in your mother’s stinky anoos.
another bites the dust
In that case, ahoy me maties
The boss fight was…well…disappointing.
So are your blogs
Come on man, please stop with the insults.
That guy, it’s all he does. Come here and attack the writers. Knowing damn well that if it wasn’t for DSOG we’d all be newsless when it comes to gaming. Because who in their right mind wants to go to PC Gamer, IGN or Kotaku. Just look at my comment history, I love in DSOG is the best around. You guys are any gaming. The comment section on the other hand, we are very guilty for bringing all the crap from other news channels over here. For example, DSOG doesn’t really deal in politics, but we read the politics elsewhere and then we inject it over here. I too was guilty of that, SJW this & SJW that. Its very sad!..
The last thing we should be doing is disrespecting the writers. That I don’t do & have never done. Once you start doing that, there is no point in being here.
I know man….You are one of the cool guys out here, and I really like you. I have not seen you b**** about any author here on DSOG. And that’s a really good thing.
The comment section out here can be messy sometimes, but we somehow manage to get around this. But I really never understood any stuff related to SJW though ?? There are also too many negative comments here on DSOG made by some users. Why is this SJW word mentioned under each new topic is just beyond me though ?
Not sure what was worse – the boss fight that looks like a textureless early alpha test build, or the news that Epic stole another game just before it was going to release on Steam
I still would’ve been happy to buy early access to this game on a legit store – now I won’t give a dime
HAHA, yes can’t wait to see the Rage in this comment section. I warned everyone this EPIC is going to single handedly destroy the core essence of gaming which is the TRUST!!! The industry was already going down the Sh*TTER as it is already.
True, but trust was dead in 2010 already. Epic just showing everyones colors. All those studios that used steam logo bam on release epic games LOL LOL LOLOLOL
Mortal.Shell-CODEX
LOL at the four clowns who downvoted your comment!
Looks dull and nothing new that we haven’t seen before.
Excellent!
I was gunna buy it but I guess it’s free now.
same lame game keep rolling combat like dark souls nothing new
I almost died of boredom watching the footage of the boss fight…
Was like the same 3 moves just repeating
Yeah, i don’t mind slow combat like the OG Dark Souls or even The Surge, but this is too much. Even the aesthetics are kinda meh since they look like out the Prometheus movie.
The Dev:”Timclusive money is very delicious. We cant resist that precious offer even if we must dissapointing steam fans”…
More games to avoid.
Everything about this is bad.
Bad Souls combat. Bad combat animations. Bad graphics.
This genre should have died with Demons Souls 11 years ago. None of them are good. That includes Nioh and Sekiro and Blooborne. Sekiro at least tried to add some actual gameplay to it.
Could this be a…. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3ece23247806f065e85b9f848010539285ddbeea6b52273379be859c7ee5a655.png casul?
Call me when soulskids can beat Ninja Gaiden (any of them) or battletoads or contra. Souls is utter trash.
I beat Ninja Gaiden when I was 7-8 years old, got anything else?
Ow, good to hear that Epic paid devs instead of me. Will play free Codex-edition.
Just love EPIC GameStore!
Best thing happens for the devs. But you Haters are so F*CKN stupid you cant see it!
Start to think a little you retarded bunch :/
fryed brain spotted
I mean really ? epic helped with the financial support ? They could just done early access on steam and people would gladly support a good progressing game in development (not like DAYZ). Spending on epic launcher money its like throwing it to fire cause you never know when they gonna pull the plug for it lol.
This pirating Epic’s exclusives is becoming hard work!
Epic, make piracy great again.
Honestly its sad, cause I wont be buying it on that garbage store, ehhh same old same news, putting games on dead launcher that 80% users are fortnite I mean what could go wrong. None of the people who said it was success showed actual proof or numbers. Metro exodus failed so bad that they were basically mute, I mean holyf*k release the game on every store or just take more time to develop thats it. If you’re an indie developer and started a project like this mortal shell and you talk that you needed extra financial support then you shouldn’t have made this game to begin with if you struggle with the money so bad. I mean sure extra money will help the game development but what about the release ? Once it will come out on steam it will be dead, epic gonna say ohh the game was success even tho it wasn’t lol.
CODEX it is then.
Lol so desperate!