Mortal Sin

I keep coming back to Mortal Sin the same way I keep coming back to a song I can't quite parse yet. There is something genuinely unusual happening here, built entirely by one person, Nikola Todorovic, who spent years in Early Access ripping out systems, rethinking entire loops, and shipping the kind of iterative ambition that larger studios rarely stomach. The 1.0 release that landed in August 2025 is the payoff of all that patience, and it lands hard. At its core this is a first-person melee roguelite spread across procedurally generated dungeons: crumbling castles, cave systems, wild woodlands, and at least one stranger biome hiding at the edges. You dash, block, parry, kick, bash, and string together combo inputs that the game actually rewards you for learning. A kick into a normal swing gifts you a free power attack; a bash into a swing triggers a whirlwind. These aren't button-mashing shortcuts, they're the vocabulary of a system that asks you to be present in every single encounter. Weapons span greatswords, spears, claws, guns, and magic, and each class, from Berserker and Paladin to Pirate and Monk to the blood-orb-launching Vampire, reshapes how that vocabulary is spoken. Dismemberment is not cosmetic either. Cut the legs off an enemy and watch it crawl. Sever a head and the body still swings. The whole thing has a physicality that first-person games almost never nail at this budget level. The art style is the room divider. Mortal Sin's default visual mode reads like a graphic novel printed in neon blood, all heavy contrast, glowing reds, and stark outlines. The good news is that 1.0 ships a second Realistic mode that pulls the palette closer to a grim Dark Souls register, so players who find the pop-art aesthetic too aggressive have a genuine alternative. Personally I think the Classic mode sets the tone with real intention. The world is supposed to feel unhinged. The soundtrack agrees, shifting from something soulful and Diablo-adjacent in the hub to a malevolent low drone the moment you cross a dungeon threshold. It is one of those soundscapes that does real atmospheric work rather than just filling silence. The honest cautions: enemy variety across the three main biomes does start to repeat after many runs, and the final boss has drawn community criticism for a difficulty spike that very few players have cleared, with achievement data suggesting the encounter may be tuned past the game's own skill curve. Progression can also feel slow against the highs of moment-to-moment combat. Between dungeons, the hub offers a crafting station, potion shop, and permanent ability unlocks, but the meta layer is lean by genre standards. If you come in expecting the unlock density of a Hades or Dead Cells you will hit a ceiling. If you come in for the combat feel and class variety, that ceiling is much further away. What Todorovic has built here, alone, is a focused piece of craft. The combination of responsive hit feedback, a combo system with genuine depth, and an art identity that looks better in motion than any screenshot suggests makes Mortal Sin the kind of game that earns its "Overwhelmingly Positive" Steam score rather than coasting on hype. It knows what it is, plays to that specific thing with commitment, and trusts the player to meet it.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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