Indie Developer Bringing Souls-like Game - Mortal Shell

When you see Mortal Shell the first thing you will think of is Dark Souls and there is no doubt about their similarities in terms of gameplay and looks. Cold Symmetry the developers of Mortal Shell has incredible passion and love for the Souls games, and there is no denying that from what they surprised us with.

Your character feels like a character in the Dark Souls games, non-playable characters talks like Dark Souls non-playable characters, there are descriptions of loot and items on the loading screens just like Dark Souls, the combat impacts are also like Dark Souls, but Mortal Shell’s most amazing thing is how the borrowed the souls’ formula. They also introduce their unique ideas to the mix, their perceptions, which alter how the game feels, making Mortal Shell a very Souls-like game, but very unique becoming its own game.

The first big break from the formula is that there is no blocking mechanic in Mortal Shell and we all know that Blood Borne doesn’t have it too, but it’s still being dealt with in a different way, rather than blocking players can harden their body to a kind of stone to allow enemy attacks to bounce, this enforces an effective defensive mechanism because it doesn’t take away any stamina from the player, and when you block an attack from your enemies it will deflect almost all the time, giving you the power to attack and harden in mid-attack animation that will allow you to automatically move to defense when attacking.

But this is the catch hardness, it’s in the very significant cooldown and without it there are only two ways to protect yourself, and they are quite dangerous and difficult to pull off which are a time to parry and evasive rolling, and the other problem is that there is no fast and simple regeneration item such as an Estus flask or a Healing Gourd that restores your life easier and is refilled in the check checkpoints.

There are mushrooms that can be used for healing and can be picked up from the ground at random places, but without a way to restore health faster like Dark Souls games, it can be a real pain to survive the difficulty. There is one way to restore health to the max, it is by performing a special attack called “empowered”, it consumes 1 bar of resolve but it executes are powerful attack to your enemies by restoring your health at the same time.

There are consequences If the pressure is not maintained, this plays an important role in the management of resources because if you can build up 2 bars of resolve, you can perform an extremely powerful special attack which can kill enemies in one blow and makes you totally invincible for long periods because of the healing.

All of this means that you are not forced to play aggressive, but if you do there is a risk and reward factor, which makes you take risks so that you can heal in mid-battle if you are not willing to risk and playing it safe means that you will have to keep an eye to your cooldowns. It comes to a point where all styles of play have their own risks and rewards, and that playing safely doesn’t mean that you will succeed.

It feels like Dark Souls, but it feels like something totally different and it’s special because of what it expresses in gameplay. You will see it for yourself when you try the game and feel a true successor of the Dark Souls formula.

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