. I fell into the game’s rhythm about 15 minutes into my three-hour preview, and by the end, I was shepherding small groups of lost souls across Inferno like I worked for Satan himself. In its simplest terms, 33 Immortals

And then there are Shards, found inside the chests of Torture Chambers, used to spend on weapon upgrades and more when you’re in the Dark Woods (I’ll touch on this in a moment).

With dozens of enemies and allies on-screen at any given time, this alone is a notable achievement by developer Thunder Lotus.

gives the focus to something unique in this genre, a massive cooperative experience. As you may have already guessed by the game’s title, each run through a level in this roguelike involves at most, 33 individuals.

The game begins with a 33-player map, Inferno, which is an arid wasteland of roaming demons, 12 Torture Chambers and one big ascension battle to complete. The minions running around Inferno are easy enough to dispatch for practice and Em excesso bones (the game’s currency), or you can run right by them without punishment. Torture Chambers are miniboss rooms designed for six players to tackle at once, but you can enter them with fewer than six, even alone. However, you’re unlikely to get far solo. The minibosses are hulking skeletons and big, flopping demon worms with plenty of health, and they always have hordes of minions as backup.

A faceless, damned soul, a rebel who has rejected destiny to fight against God and demand a different fate. That’s who you are in 33 Immortals. Well, you and countless others who are also joining in for a fight against everything in Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

While that isn’t a massive amount of time to pump into a roguelike, I think I managed to grasp the title’s unique gameplay loop and the direction the developers want to take it.

With so many random players on the map at any time, it’s easy to feel like your small mistakes aren’t spotted, while your successes are clear for all 33 Immortals Gameplay to see, and even participate in.

I thought my experience with ARPGs would be enough to push back against this enemy horde alone – I was wrong. It’s once I found other Rebel Souls (fellow players) to tag along with when my journey through Hell became a bit more manageable.

But I liked the vibe The Dark Woods area offers, letting me recover a bit from the hectic Inferno, and interact with these characters to help the story of 33 Immortals

Attempting to solo almost any activity can get boring quickly. I found that even the smallest enemies can be massive bullet sponges until you build up your character with hours of upgrades. Even as a late-stage herculean character, having some backup can upgrade the amount of damage you deal exponentially. This is thanks to the title’s use of critical hits, which only begin racking up when another player is also hitting the same target.

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That’s all I could gather about the lore before taking my repeated trips to Hell for all that loot and boss-slaying goodness. I suspect many players will be going the same route at launch too, as listening to NPCs and reading pages of lore are probably not what most action game fans want to do when they boot up a hardcore multiplayer experience.

Multiple times in different runs when me and a couple of others were attempting to take down a mini boss in the overworld without making much progress with health bars dwindling. Soon, another group players that was simply passing through waded in to help out, slicing through the mobs like butter. Receiving help like this is exhilarating, usually combining the groups into a larger pile that can ravage through the map efficiently.