Morbid Metal looks like a techno-amalgam of Risk of Rain, Warframe, and Devil May Cry—with a playa

, a game developed by Screen Juice and published by , [[link]] is brave enough to ask the question: Okay, but what if we made a roguelike where you could play every character at once?

As featured on the , Morbid Metal is a roguelike that lets you control a violence-polycule of AI bad asses in a digital hellscape. Its devs promise all the usual trappings of the genre: upgrades, shifting runs, and rock-hard bosses—you've done this song and dance before.

The key twist here is that you get to control up to [[link]] four characters, with the ability to swap between them seemingly relegated to the D-Pad of your controller of choice.

The three muder-bot musketeers, shown in the trailer above, are kitted out in different ways. One has no weapon to speak of, but appears to be a big-gauntleted creep with ranged blasts (and is thus my favourite design). Another has a slick katana with flashy movement, while the third has a big glaive apparently designed for hard-hitting attacks.

My mind's already rattling with possible combos and chains, so it seems like a solid choice on behalf of Screen Juice to simply knock through that skill ceiling and let players go wild with combo routes. Aesthetically, it's all looking very , but that's by no means an insult—I like a kickass android as much as the next guy.

The real fuel that'll power Morbid Metal's engine, though, is in how it controls and feels to play. Character action games live and die based on the actual kinetic experience of chaining together moves and combos when your boots are on the ground.

All told, 's picked a very tasty basket of inspirations to draw power from. If you're interested in giving it a shot yourself, a Next Fest demo goes live tomorrow. Morbid Metal will then be entering early access proper on August 20.

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