33 Immortals shows off what a 33-player roguelike run actually looks like

From the outside looking in, 33 Immortals is almost brain-breakingly hard to understand. True to the title, Thunder Lotus says its upcoming dungeon-crawling roguelike will feature 33 unique players per run. 33 players! What does a roguelike with 33 players even look like? It's hard to imagine, given genre stalwarts like Binding of Isaac, Hades, and Enter The Gungeon achieve their gripping loops in part by honing and focusing difficulty around just one or two players.

A top-down hack-n-slash roguelike where success relies on encouraging so many people to work together raises a ton of questions about balance, gameplay, pace, and communication. I recently spoke with Creative Director Stephan Logier about this unlikely marriage, the team’s inspirations for 33 Immortals, and what an actual run looks like.

As it turns out, 33 Immortals is a fascinating hybrid between roguelike and MMO. No, there aren’t guilds to join nor immense social and economic systems like you might expect from legacy MMORPGs—but it does condense some of the genre’s most beloved traits into a more digestible format by encouraging and rewarding teamwork.

“I was inspired by the surprise, the unpredictability of a roguelike,” said Logier, citing games like Hades. But then he continued, noting the social aspects of teaming up with strangers to fight massive bosses in the likes of World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. “The scale and spectrum of experiences you could have just amazed me."

What a 33-player roguelike looks like

Before you walk through the Eternal Gate-a massive, gold-glowing door in 33 Immortals' hub world-you’ll have to choose a weapon. The options run the gamut of standard sword-and-board fantasy—bows and arrows, swords, wizards’ staffs—and each comes with a special team-up skill (more on that later).

Once you’re all geared up, you pass through the portal and choose between the realms of Inferno and Purgatorio, (Paradiso is expected once early access ends). Then, you’re sorted into a lobby and randomly dropped into a realm with the other Immortals. (While there are 33 players in Inferno, that drops to 22 in Purgatorio, and 11 in Paradisio.) You can form a squad with up to three other friends if you’d like, but you don’t need to since you’ll always spawn near a handful of other players. Once your randomly assigned cohort gets its bearings, you’ll start taking on the armies of Heaven as they attempt to quash your rebellion against the divine.

After slashing through a few enemies, you’ll probably wind up near a Torture Chamber. Think of a Torture Chamber like one of Hades’ challenge rooms, where you balance risk and reward, taking on a horde of foes in hopes of earning some helpful prizes. In 33 Immortals, that means a relic that’ll beef up your stats or give you a buff or bonus of some kind.

You can go it alone, though it wouldn't be a good idea. You’ll need to work with your fellow immortals to take on the Torture Chambers. Drop a few pings at the chamber door and friends can use the world map to teleport to your location and help clear the challenge—but even working as a team doesn’t guarantee success. Maybe you’ll all succumb to your enemies.

If (when) that happens, you're sent back to the hub world where you started. At the hub, you can catch up with Dante, who can help you unlock persistent upgrades and buffs, or Beatrice, who offers four weapon options: the Justice Sword, the Hope Bow, the Greed Daggers, and the Sloth Staff, with more promised during Early Access and beyond.

“The immediacy and urgency of permadeath make for a tense, interesting dynamic,” said Logier, "but you don’t permanently die immediately." Once per round, your body can be destroyed but your soul remains. This triggers a 30-second period where you can wander around as an untethered soul, looking for someone to revive you.

If you're lucky, maybe an ally revives you just as the 30-second countdown weans uncomfortably close to zero. These kinds of moments are what Logier refers to as “Moments of epic collaboration,” the kind of emergent gameplay you get from working together in multiplayer experiences like an MMO raid.

Back on your feet, you and your fellow Immortals ace the Torture Chambers, taking advantage of your bow’s team-up ability. Bow wielders can place a trio of runes on the ground. If each node in the triangle is filled, the three of you fire a powerful volley of arrows in the direction the triangle is facing, pushing back a wave of enemies in the process. Each weapon in 33 Immortals has a different power, but they all highlight the MMO raid influences at play here, highlighting teamwork over individual strength.

Teamwork is the name of the game in 33 Immortals. There’s even an Empathy stat (which makes each weapon’s co-op ability more powerful) as well as a mechanic called co-strike that increases your chances for a critical hit when you and an ally attack an enemy at the same time.

Logier repeatedly stressed the importance of cooperation, telling me, “We have a lot of players, so one player cannot beat the game alone,” though he later clarified that, ”It’s very hard—not impossible—but very, very hard to beat alone.” It's more doable to become one of the stronger members in your cohort of 33, with a few lucky drops, smart metagame progression, and a strong character build. Even then, it's dangerous to wander the map alone. It’s always best to stick with a group.

And you won’t have to worry about co-op spoilers like loot sharing interfering with your team progress, either. Each piece of loot you earn from taking down an enemy or completing a Torture Chamber is rewarded locally, which fills a clever double purpose. It removes the task of divvying up hard-earned loot, obviously—but it also ensures that each person in your party has a different experience over the course of a run, which lets players chase their own builds and pursue success on their own terms.

As your group continues exploring, reviving and helping each other out as needed, you’ll find additional helpful objectives to complete. Maybe you’ll take on a mini-boss guarding a chest or find an altar that grants your team a helpful buff.

But beware the Wrath of God. This event shows up sporadically in 33 Immortals whenever God notices your rebellion against his final judgement, and manifests in various deadly happenings that seek to break up your party and winnow down your ranks.

For example, once you complete enough Torture Chambers, the walls will begin to close on your band of heroes, with a storm-like onslaught of Holy Fire forcing everyone to run toward a small point at the middle of the map. There, you'll take on the toughest challenge yet: an Ascension Battle. There are three in Inferno, two in Purgatorio, and one in Paradiso. All Immortals left standing must team up to defeat a series of strong enemies in a tight area before heading on to the run’s boss.

As you might expect, bosses in 33 Immortals also promise to challenge your ability to work together and improvise with a handful of strangers. You'll trade healing, buffs, and weapon abilities with your allies as you weave between the boss's big area-of-effect attacks. With the right combination of teamwork and skill, you might even defeat them.

Beating a boss helps complete quests and earn currencies you can use to unlock new weapons, outfits, abilities, and more. And hopping back into the game from the Dark Woods with a new angle of approach is simple and fast. Logier called this a “Pick up and raid” design philosophy, which aims to sand down some of the matchmaking issues that could arise from requiring 33 players to hop into a match at once and to trim some of the fat that slows down the raiding process in conventional MMOs.

“We aim to create player stories," said Logier. "It’s those epic moments where someone saves the day or we—together—achieve or complete something that wouldn’t be possible for one person on their own by collaborating with co-op powers and fighting together.”

The next 33 Immortals beta test goes live on January 28 on the Epic Games Store, if you'd like to hop in and check out its co-op hack-n-slash action for yourself. You can sign up for more information over at Thunder Lotus Games.