CODEX MORTIS

I went in trying hard to ignore the origin story - the "made entirely by AI" banner plastered on every storefront tile - and just play the game. That turned out to be impossible, and not because the gameplay is bad. It's because the origin story is, genuinely, the most interesting thing here, and the mechanics are interesting enough on their own terms to make that a real shame. What you actually do in Codex Mortis is plan a build before each run, then watch it either snowball beautifully or collapse in the first wave. Five schools of dark magic - Necromancy, Summoning, Blood Magic, Soul Magic, and Curses - each bring their own flavour, and the cross-school combinations are where the game earns its keep. Pairing Blood Magic with Necromancy to ignite corpse explosions feels genuinely clever on paper, and when it triggers on a packed screen it produces that satisfying chaos the genre lives for. The pre-run squad assembly, where you slot in heroes and lock in your spell loadout before a single enemy spawns, adds a light tactical layer that most Vampire Survivors imitators skip entirely. On eight procedurally generated levels with three distinct modes - an escape run chasing tomes before an immortal pursuer reaches you, a direct boss confrontation, and an endless grind for artifacts - there is enough structural variety to sustain a weekend of sessions. The post-launch Mutations update added 249 modifications spread across 31 skills, with a rarity system that scales from single-skill Common upgrades all the way to Mythic cards that touch five skills at once with randomised stats. That is a lot of build surface for a title this small, and it meaningfully raises the ceiling above what the Early Access launch offered. The developer has shipped patches at a pace that suggests genuine commitment to the community feedback loop, which is worth noting for anyone weighing an Early Access purchase. Now for the part I cannot talk around. The visuals carry the specific muddy, indistinct quality that AI-generated art tends to produce - enemies blend together in dark fantasy silhouettes, and while a post-launch patch added proper character animation (the launch build had essentially none), the art direction still feels assembled rather than drawn. The soundtrack sets an appropriate dark-fantasy tone without leaving any impression once you close the game. As someone who cares deeply about handcraft and intentional soundscape, I find that genuinely melancholy. The game functions. The loop clicks. But there is a hollowness where authorial voice usually sits, and no number of spell synergies fully fills it. Several Steam reviewers describe the same nagging feeling: the game intrigues you and then something remains stubbornly absent. Who is this for, then? Survivor-genre collectors who want more build depth than the average clone, players curious about where AI-assisted development actually lands in practice right now, or anyone who just wants a cheap local co-op session with a necromancy skin. If you have strong feelings about AI-generated art displacing human artists, the developer is upfront that everything - code, visuals, music, text - came from AI tools, and that transparency should be taken seriously before you spend money. For everyone else, Codex Mortis is a mechanically solid Early Access entry that patches quickly and asks an uncomfortable question about what we value in the games we play.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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