Mortal Shell has been described as a soulslike, a likesouls, and a soulsadjacent. While two of those words mean absolutely nothing, none of those labels matter anymore. That's because for the foreseeable future, Mortal Shell is simply going to be known as a "Epic Games Store exclusive".
In case you missed it, developer Cold Symmetry made the announcement during last weekend's PC Gaming Show that their game's PC release would be exclusive to the Epic Games Store until Q3 2021. In effect, this means that those who were hoping to play Mortal Shell on Steam are going to have to wait a good while, and hopefully their own mortal shell doesn't give out before then.
"The primary goals of our studio are to make Mortal Shell the best game it can be and to live another day and keep making awesome games in the future," says Cold Symmetry co-founders in a joint statement. "Epic's financial support, for a small studio like ours, was clearly going to help us achieve those goals so it was something we had to consider earnestly."
From a financial perspective, it definitely makes sense that the indie studio would opt to go with a more developer-centric distributor. It's just unfortunate that Epic requires studios to go "all or nothing" with them in order to receive their support.
In addition to pledging allegiance to the Epic Games Store, Mortal Shell also showed off a new gameplay trailer that focuses on Tiel - one of the four playable "shells" that players will be able to inhabit. Tiel is described as "an envenomed and complex character whose innate agility and familiarity with poison makes him a highly dangerous individual."
