’33 Immortals’: Team Up to Challenge the Gods!
Have you ever faced difficulty in assembling a team of four for Overwatch? Have you attempted to find a way for you and your friends to play Destiny 2 together at the same time?
Can you imagine gathering 33 players for a 25 minute track? 33 Immortals intends to do just that.
Channeling the animation style of retro comics (and a little Banner Saga), 33 Immortals is a massively multiplayer roguelike top-down action game from the creators of Spiritfarer. In this week’s session following the Xbox Showcase at Summer Game Fest, five guys and I tried to escape hell.
In this early build of the game, the game featured two character types: a swordsman who could deal heavy close-range damage, and an archer who could send up to three arrows at enemies before needing to reload. I have to play the latter. Along with normal attacks, I could hold down the action button to charge a heavier piercing shot. The archer, when he reloads, returns the arrows he fired back to him, meaning strategic placement can effectively double the damage dealt.
All characters also have dash moves, while the fire buttons unlock the world map, smiley wheel and co-op powers. These cooperative powers vary depending on your character type and often require careful planning to achieve them. Pressing the RB trigger will show a triangle of circles on the ground; your two fellow immortals must activate the empty circles to launch an attack. For me this rained arrows over a wide area, but for the swordsman it triggered a wide healing spell.
With a lot of enemies on screen, especially in the more challenging portal dungeons, it’s fun to just chaotically spam attacks, help the rest of your team finish off mid-bosses, or pick off easier enemies from a distance before they coordinate their own actions. attacks.
If the sword and bow options sound a bit limiting, don’t worry: 33 Immortals offers plenty of different character types to play with. Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues we will probably get to play with seven different warriors. Outside of co-op powers and quirks, the button layouts don’t change between characters, making it easy to try every option. To add a little more complexity, you can collect in-game currency from the monsters you kill and exchange them for healing or trinkets to improve your attack speed, defense, and more.
And you’ll probably have to try, try, and try again. Each raid is built around 25 minutes long, and you want to keep as many players alive (and online) as possible so you can take down the boss at the end. More players means it takes less time to shave off the health bar of bigger enemies, since the game obviously isn’t built around how many characters are playing. More Immortals is always better.
By the way, you’re not exactly immortal as a fighter either. After taking too much damage, you’ll fall and once again appear as an ethereal spirit that can do nothing but float until another attacker can revive you – which proved especially frustrating in the midst of tough battles. Naturally, it’s just better if you fight more carefully, heal your allies, and… not die.
33 Immortals is inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. You rebel against God’s final judgment that your soul is cursed, and the way God unleashes his wrath has a fun twist when you conquer one of his caves. When you step out of the portal, the ground around you will be scorched with holy fire, and you’ll have to dodge this and the enemies that spawn until the God cools down a bit.
Although this was an early demo, latency was a struggle on my machine, but the team has plenty of time to settle in – and deliver demos that aren’t in the middle of a hectic Xbox launch. I’m excited to play a roguelike as part of a mob, and I’m curious to see what the other character types are up to.
33 Immortals is coming to Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2024.
