Immortal Planet

My honest reaction to Immortal Planet was split right down the middle, and I think that split tells you everything you need to know before you decide whether to spend an evening with it. On one side: a genuinely atmospheric sci-fi crypt crawl, built by a single developer (Tomasz Waclawek, who also made the stylish turn-based platformer Ronin), with an isometric perspective that does something most Souls-adjacent games don't bother with. On the other: a short game that cannibalises its own best moments well before the credits roll. The combat is the real argument for playing this. Both you and every enemy share the same stamina ruleset, and crucially you can see their stamina bar at all times. That single design choice transforms fights into a kind of patience game. You bait an enemy into burning their stamina, watch the bar bottom out, and punish the opening. Light attacks, heavy strikes, well-timed parries, a relic ability you pick at character creation, and a weapon-awakening stance that hits harder but drains your stamina faster: the toolkit is lean but it clicks. You start by choosing one of three weapons (something like a polearm for range, an axe-sword for balance, a more shield-heavy defensive option) and a matching special ability, with the rest of the nine weapons scatterable throughout the world. Levelling up by spending collected Experiences (the local currency for souls) is present but oddly flat; the game wants you to get better, not just bigger. Where things curdle is in the structure. Four main areas, each with a boss, and then a second half for each area that rehashes those same zones with slightly harder versions of the same boss. For a game that clocks in at roughly five to six hours, that repetition lands hard. The platforming sections add friction without adding fun, partly because the four-directional movement grid makes reading walkable ledges genuinely unclear. Keyboard controls are a known weak point; the developer flags this themselves on boot. Play with a controller. The narrative is delivered in the classic environmental-lore fashion, sparse NPCs, cryptic signposting, and a sci-fi world of immortals eroded by endless rebirth cycles that has real atmosphere when the game lets it breathe. What it lacks is the density of world-building that makes lore-hungry players want to read every item description twice. Steam players have landed at around 81% positive on a small sample, which feels right to me. Critics were more divided, Metacritic sitting at 65, with the praise clustering around the combat innovation and the mood, and the criticism aimed squarely at repetition and shallow build variety. There is a New Game Plus that reportedly gates the true ending, but the community around this game has never quite resolved what that ending actually contains, which adds a strange, unfinished-feeling footnote to the whole thing. The art style leans into a high-resolution isometric look rather than pixel art, with a dark cyberpunk-fantasy palette that genuinely suits the frozen tomb setting. The musical direction earned consistent praise across reviews for matching the atmosphere, quiet and tense in the right places. If you are the kind of player who loves the mechanical core of Souls-style combat and wants a compact version you can finish in one long session, Immortal Planet delivers that with real craft. If you need enemy variety, deep lore payoff, or build diversity to stay invested, this one will start feeling thin by the second area. I will always defend a small game that knows what it is. This one almost knows.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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