Morbid Metal Interview with Game Director Felix Schade

Character action games are not exactly the hottest thing right now, and many AAA developers have moved away from complex combat systems focused on style, expression, and depth. Morbid Metal feels like a response to that gap from a smaller team, and it is a blast to play.

I had a chance to speak with the studio’s creator and Morbid Metal’s creative director, Felix Schade, about Screen Juice’s long journey to release, the design behind its movement and combat flow, and the ideas shaping its ongoing development.

Felix Schade Talks Morbid Metal

Note: Questions for this interview were sent before the release of Morbid Metal.

I was really impressed by the demo of Morbid Metal last year, and it’s great to see the title finally entering early access. How do you and the team feel about reaching this milestone?

Felix Schade (Game Director – Dying Light): It’s honestly such a surreal feeling. I have been working on this project for nearly 9 years now, the last 3 with the amazing team at Screen Juice, and finally seeing Morbid Metal in the hands of players is just such a fantastic feeling. We are very happy!

For anyone who is still unfamiliar with Morbid Metal, how would you describe it to both action and roguelike fans?

Morbid Metal is a character action roguelite in which players can shapeshift between characters to slaughter their enemies with stylish combos. Players are taking over the role of the newest of a long-lasting line of AI that is being trained to be the next evolutionary step of mankind. It is about breaking out of this seemingly endless cycle of violence, in which players take down their predecessors and learn from their previous iterations to grow stronger with each run. They master their shapeshifting roster and stylish combat while forging their own playstyles with powerful builds.

As someone who has been playing action games from a young age, I’m really happy to see how much focus there is on fast maneuverability both during combat and outside of it. Was getting around quickly always a priority, and how do you design encounters that encourage players to slow down when needed?

Fast movement is actually something that has developed over time. In earlier iterations of the project, there was no sprinting, nor grappling hooks or bounce pads. These have developed over time as we felt the pacing between combat and movement felt quite contrary. The slowing down is mostly in phases between combat encounters, when players find new Protocols or Corpora and have to make the run-defining decisions for their upgrade builds.

I’m a big fan of how special attacks can be performed in the air as well. Was it a challenge to make these work consistently across different character states?

It was a little bit of a battle with a few bugs here and there, but it actually was not that big of a challenge to get them also working in mid-air.

I’m sure that after a certain point, players will have unlocked a significant amount of meta progression. How do you approach balancing the game once players start to become much more powerful?

That’s something we are tackling with one of our first updates. But I don’t want to spoil the fun just yet.

The map structure and overall progression reminded me a bit of games like Returnal, which I really enjoyed. Were there any influences from similar titles that helped shape your approach to structure and pacing?

Returnal was a big influence when it comes to the world structure. While still distinctly different, its inspirations can definitely be felt in Morbid Metal.

I love the character switching mechanic and the potential it offers for cancelling into combos. How far can players take this in terms of combo expression, and how many total characters should we expect by the 1.0 release?

Without naming any concrete numbers, we are looking to expand the character roster and move sets during early access to let players shape their playstyle and combat experience the way they want to play.

I noticed what feels like a nod to Vergil’s Judgement Cut End. Is an action game ever truly complete without at least one iconic move like that?

😉

What’s something in the game you’re really proud of, and what’s something you’d like to improve?

The fluidity of the character switching and execution of combo skills is what I am most proud of. It was quite a challenge to get it to this state of fluidity. That said, we still need to improve on many aspects of the game during Early Access. For me personally, the number of run upgrades and build paths in the game currently is a big thing I’d like to improve. Though these things unfortunately need some time and thorough testing, and we are only a team of 11.

How has the experience been working with Ubisoft as a publisher, especially since they don’t often work with early access titles?

It was great! They are a valuable partner in this endeavor of the studio’s first (and my first ever) game. We are a young team, and having a very experienced partner backing us up has been very important throughout production.

Morbid Metal looks like it has a really high skill ceiling, especially with character switching and combo potential. How are you approaching onboarding so that new players can enjoy the game without feeling overwhelmed, while still leaving room for advanced players to really push the system?

We introduce characters step by step. This way, players get used to the overall combat feel and structure of Morbid Metal before being thrown in the ring and having to do shapeshift combos. Additionally, Morbid Metal, being a roguelite, naturally allows players to get used to and explore the combat system at their own pace and define their playstyle themselves.

Action games usually lean either towards being efficient or stylish. Where does Morbid Metal fall on that spectrum?

I’d say that depends on the player. They can focus on optimizing their builds to be efficient, but they can also focus more on the combat expression side of things.

Finally, what are some other action games from smaller studios that you’ve been playing and want to give a shout-out to?

Zahid Jeelani’s ENENRA: DΔEMON CORE and Nukefist’s Genokids are some great action games I would recommend to fans of the genre for sure!

Morbid Metal is available now in early access on PC.