It's been a while since our last post, so we wanted to communicate what we've been working on and expand on the roadmap ahead.
In short, we are making sweeping changes, increasing the scope of the game to create a bigger and more cohesive experience.
The world of Death Must Die started as an infinite plane, with a few objects scattered throughout. This is missing the sense of exploration and adventure we want to bring.
Which is why we are developing a real environment, with large open areas, winding pathways, passages to secret rooms, special encounters and expansive scenery.
To do all of this we are building a proper map editor, tools to procedurally generate dungeons and updating the enemy pathfinding. But most of the work is creating art assets - walls, props and such, for all 3 current acts + the upcoming act 4.
We've always imagined the game as an Action Roguelite + Bullet Heaven + ARPG. Mixing genres successfully is about taking the best elements and weaving them in the right proportions. Getting this formula right is key and we’ve spent a lot of time identifying what we are missing, what the current weak points are and how we intend to resolve them:
◆ Action - This is a very underserved aspect for ARPG and Action Roguelite players. With autoattack on, the only other “skill” players have is dashing - which is quite limiting. We are making a new skill system, where players can choose to make builds with anywhere from 0 to up to 5 buttons. For this new ARPG system of spellcasting, we are making a LOT of active blessings for each god, supported by new animations for every character - casting, channeling, charging up spells, etc.
(And as an alternative to Active skills - Rituals, a new blessing type which opens up powerful synergies)
◆ Playstyles - The game currently has different builds, but most of them are stat-based and somewhat similar. With the addition of active skills and rituals, we enable truly varied ways to play the game - engine-builds, action builds, reaction builds, 0-button AFK builds, 5-button "piano" builds, cheese builds, micro synergies, 1-shot big combo builds, passive builds, etc.
◆ Roguelite - Currently, a lot of the builds necessitate fishing for god X or Y. This predetermines the run before it is even started - losing the variety and fun of making choices on the fly. We are overhauling the blessings, so each god has good offers for every type of playstyle, and they all have ways to synergize together. We hope this will add a lot of in-run replayability, alongside the out-of-run itemization and buildmaking.
◆ Choice & RNG - A lot of feedback has been about bad RNG and not being able to choose your gods. With the new level design you will be able to choose your path in the underworld, picking the rewards you want. That includes gods, but also special areas, shop rooms and other various encounters. We are also adding bad RNG protection - like avoiding rerolling into the same stuff.
We want our endgame to be as flexible as possible, empowering players to lean on the playstyle they prefer.
This includes the much requested infinite mode, but also an “endless terrain” (how levels currently work) - plus a bunch of toggleable gameplay and difficulty modifiers.
We will be including all of this in the Act 4 update.
Our schedule so far has been one major Act update per year, with a couple of minor updates in between. As we are in the middle of creating all the new features, reworks and overhauls, we will be skipping the minor updates in favor of a huge Act 4 update somewhere in mid-late 2026. That being said, we will be sharing more news, as the release nears and the pieces start falling in place.
Additionally, for anyone interested I (Ren) will be discussing the design more in depth in the Steam forums and Discord more informally.
(P.S.: You can expect the usual Snowswatch event sometime in December)