The previously closed beta for Cold Symmetry's upcoming Soulslike, Mortal Shell, has been made open to all PC players due to fan demand. The closed beta began July 3 and was only accessible to players who received keys directly from the developer's social media pages.
Mortal Shell debuted in April, immediately attracting an eager audience. The third-person action-RPG takes players through a mysterious world where they'll face a litany of grotesque monsters and gargantuan bosses. Despite the studio's small size, Cold Symmetry includes talent from AAA studios and has been working on the game since 2017. Mortal Shell will launch as an Epic Games Store timed-exclusive later this year.
One day after the closed beta began, Cold Symmetry took to Twitter to announce it would open the beta to everyone. "We expected demand but nothing like this. We really didn’t want so many people to feel left out. We're delighted to open the beta for everyone on PC, starting now." The beta is only accessible through the Epic Game Store and Cold Symmetry said it will not release the beta on other systems, citing the studio's limited resources and tight deadlines.
Mortal Shell continues the decade-long tradition started by From Software's challenging, lore-dense Dark Souls trilogy and its spiritual predecessor, Demon's Souls. In the wake of Dark Souls' success, other developers produced their own homages to the game. Most Soulslikes adapted the series' punishing combat, occasionally upping the challenge significantly as in the case of Team Ninja's Nioh 2. Other developers, like Salt and Sanctuary's Ska Studios, tried translating the series to 2D while maintaining the Souls series' deliberate pacing and heavy-metal-meets-high-fantasy aesthetic (though 2D Soulslikes owe as much to Castlevania as they do to Dark Souls.)
The commonly accepted definition of Soulslike has been unfortunately limited to games in which big knights with big swords swipe at bigger knights with bigger swords. Many new trailers for upcoming Soulslikes promise some variation on the same tropes, and based on looks alone, Mortal Shell is aiming for a similar target. But there's more to Dark Souls and the best of its follow-ups than combat and aesthetics. Mystery, surprise and the thrill of discovery make a good Soulslike great and with the open beta, players can find out whether Mortal Shell conjures up that excitement and iterates on the Dark Souls formula. Or more interestingly, whether the game diverges from the From Software tradition, forging ahead with something yet unseen.
Source: Cold Symmetry
Mortal Shell launches in September 2020 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.