Diluvian Ultra

I kept coming back to a single thought while working through Diluvian Ultra: this is a game that deserved a bigger crowd in the room. The art direction alone earns that. Cresthelm Studios, a Swedish indie outfit, built something that looks like H.R. Giger dreamed in neon pastels instead of greyscale dread. Cathedral-sized tomb-ships made of living flesh, environments so fleshy you half-expect the walls to breathe, weapons that are themselves organisms. The pixel spritework is genuinely astonishing, and the colour-coding of enemies against those vibrant arenas is a deliberate, intelligent design call, not just a flex. When the game lets you take a breath between encounters, the sheer craftsmanship on screen is worth pausing for. You play Atilla, an immortal undead warrior-prince awakened aboard his organic tomb-ship, the Sacrista, by an invasion of intruders who have no idea what they have stumbled into. The premise sounds pulpy because it absolutely is, and that is a compliment. There is a genuinely interesting lore structure underneath the carnage, delivered through dialogue and environmental storytelling, with themes of fanaticism and betrayal that feel more considered than the genre usually bothers with. Your closest companion is Bella, a sentient pistol called a Squire Gun who can fly ahead and scout the path forward, which is the kind of weird detail that tells you this world has been thought about deeply. The combat system is where honest conversation gets complicated. Diluvian Ultra runs on a dual-damage model: enemies carry both armour and health, and armour-stripping weapons cannot kill on their own. You have to peel the armour with one class of weapon, then land the lethal blow with another. On paper, this is a sharp idea that rewards attentive weapon-switching and keeps fights from becoming a single-gun slog. In practice, with only six weapons in Chapter One and some of them sharing upgrade paths, the switching starts to feel less like strategy and more like chore once enemy counts swell. The ground pound, double jump, and dash give movement a satisfying snap, and chaining a ground slam into a finishing blow on a stripped target feels genuinely good. But the save system, which relies on scarce Waystone checkpoints, punishes those moments when the bugs catch up with you. And bugs do catch up with you. Soft-locks, inconsistent sound cues, geometry that swallows your character. These are not game-ending issues for the patient, but they are the kind of friction that erodes goodwill fast if you are already on the fence. Chapter One contains 10 levels plus a hub, 13 enemy types, and 30 upgrade slots spread across that six-weapon arsenal. It is a complete episode, not an early-access stub. The planned follow-up chapters are meant to expand both the arsenal and the enemy roster, which is exactly where the game needs the most help. What stings is the uncertainty around those chapters actually arriving. The game launched to a quiet reception, and the community has been small and patient. Whether Cresthelm gets to finish the trilogy matters enormously because this first chapter ends abruptly, without the boss fight climax it deserves. The synth-metal soundtrack is an unambiguous highlight throughout, the kind of thing you might actually queue up outside of the game. For players who genuinely love the biopunk aesthetic, want a retro FPS with more visual personality than any ten of its genre peers, and can tolerate a combat loop that asks more of you than it always rewards, Diluvian Ultra is worth the time. Go in knowing it is Chapter One of an unfinished story, and the rough edges sit differently. Go in expecting a polished, complete boomer shooter and the cracks show hard.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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