33 Immortals

I went into my first run expecting organised chaos and got unorganised chaos instead, which - honestly - turned out to be half the fun. 33 Immortals drops you into Inferno as one of up to 33 damned souls rebelling against divine judgement, and the pitch is as bizarre as it sounds: a Dante's Inferno-inspired action roguelike where raid-scale co-op is baked into the structure rather than bolted on as an afterthought. Thunder Lotus built the whole thing around a pick-up-and-play philosophy, meaning there are no lobbies, no countdown timers waiting for 32 friends to ready up, and no planning sessions. You matchmake, you drop in, you start swinging. The four classes - Fighter, Tank, Hunter, and Specialist - each tie directly to a weapon pair, so swapping your loadout mid-run is actually swapping your role on the fly. The Hunter (Bow of Hope) is the friendliest entry point: good range, consistent damage output, forgiving to learn while you are still reading enemy patterns. The Tank leans on a parry-and-block kit with a Bubble Shield co-op ability that can genuinely save a struggling group during a boss phase. The Specialist is the risky mage archetype, built around the Staff of Sloth's slows and area denial; incredible ceiling, punishing floor. The Fighter sits in the bruiser middle ground. All four feed into the co-op power system, where filling your bar lets you drop glyphs on the ground that nearby teammates have to stand in to trigger a joint ability. No voice chat required - the game leans instead on an emote wheel, tactical pings, and visual Co-Strike cues when you and a teammate are hitting the same target. It works better than it should, though coordination still collapses in chaotic moments the way it always does when 33 strangers are onscreen simultaneously. The three worlds - Inferno, Purgatorio, and the newly added Paradiso - funnel the group progressively: 33 players push through Inferno together, that number narrows to 22 in Purgatorio, and the final realm filters further. Bosses like Lucifer in Inferno have proper multi-phase mechanics that reward a room that actually plays together, and the Ordeal system lets you stack up to 12 difficulty modifiers onto a run if you want to crank the risk-reward ratio. Permanent progression lives in the Dark Woods hub, where Eternal Shards fund upgrades between runs. The loop is genuinely addictive - runs feel short enough to sneak in on a weeknight, but the meta-progression keeps pulling you back for one more. The main criticism that surfaces after extended play is real: procedural generation starts to show its seams around the 20-hour mark, and without voice chat, the coordination ceiling for strangers hitting tougher content hits a wall. A premade group of four buddies partied together inside the 33-player session fixes most of that, and the cross-platform matchmaking means your friends on Xbox can fill those slots. For pure casual play it sits in a comfortable spot - the Hunter makes the first few hours accessible, and dying fast just sends you back to the hub to upgrade and try again. The art direction is Thunder Lotus at their best: hand-drawn, richly textured, and doing real visual heavy lifting given how little story scaffolding there is. The "mostly positive" Steam rating reflects the honest situation: a genuinely inventive concept that is fun in short-to-medium sessions but exposes its limits when you push deeper. If you have a small premade crew and enjoy the idea of a lunch-break-length MMO raid with roguelike bones, this hits that niche in a way nothing else currently does.

Riley · Scout Team

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