Ubisoft is selling a $13 roguelite in Early Access – here’s what Morbid Metal really offers

When Ubisoft starts selling a stylish action roguelite for $13 in Early Access, you’re not just looking at another indie launch – you’re looking at a publisher testing a very different kind of playbook.

Morbid Metal – from indie studio SCREEN JUICE, published by Ubisoft – hits Steam Early Access on April 8, 2026. The pitch: slick hack-and-slash combat, real-time shapeshifting between characters, and a focused roguelite package that’s intentionally cheaper and smaller at launch, with promises to grow over time.

Key takeaways (no fluff)

• Early Access starts April 8 at 15:30 UTC on PC via Steam, with Ubisoft saying this date overrides older August windows that floated around before.
• Launch price is $13.49 / €13.49 as a limited-time 25% discount; the base price is $17.99 / €17.99 and may go up as more content is added.
• You’re getting a core roguelite slice, not a full content buffet: three playable characters, several bosses, three biomes, around 10 enemy types, and 60+ mid-run perks and modifiers.
• Roadmap drops April 17, which is where we’ll find out if this becomes a “Hades-style slow burn” or a forgotten Early Access experiment.

A $13 Ubisoft game is not business as usual

Ubisoft’s logo on a $13 Early Access roguelite is the part worth pausing on. This is a publisher that usually ships $60+ blockbusters and then bleeds them with battle passes and cosmetics. Here, they’re backing a small, systems-heavy project at a price that screams “find our audience first, scale later.”

According to the Steam page and press materials, Morbid Metal launches at $13.49 / €13.49 for a short window, then settles at $17.99 / €17.99 – with explicit mention that the price may rise as the game grows. That’s the Hades model, not the Far Cry model: reward early adopters, then ratchet up as the content catches up to the vision.

That alone tells you how Ubisoft sees this game. Not as a tentpole release, but as a low-risk, high-upside experiment in a space that’s been dominated by smaller publishers. It’s also a quiet admission that roguelite players are savvy; you don’t charge premium money for a feature-limited Early Access build and expect goodwill.

The uncomfortable question for Ubisoft is simple: are they here to nurture a cult-hit action roguelite, or to test-drive “budget Ubisoft” for future low-cost, high-iteration projects? The way they handle price increases, updates, and communication over the next six months will answer that faster than any PR line.

Three characters, three biomes – enough for a loop?

Morbid Metal’s hook is its combat: you control a squad of up to four characters and can shapeshift between them in real time mid-combo. The Early Access build starts you with three playable characters, with a fourth presumably coming later.

That design matters because it means variety is in your hands, not just in enemy layouts. Instead of picking one character and living with that choice for a whole run, you build a mini-roster and switch on the fly, chaining moves between forms. Even with only three characters, there’s potential for a lot of depth if their kits are distinct and synergistic.

Content-wise, Ubisoft and SCREEN JUICE are promising:

• Three biomes (zones) to fight through in a run
• The first bosses tied to those areas
• Roughly 10 enemy types in the initial build
• 60+ mid-run perks and modifiers
• Character “Protocols” for persistent upgrades
• “Corpora” effects that twist the rules of a run
• Meta-progression via the Void Nexus and a lore Codex

On paper, that’s a respectable slice for an action roguelite launch, especially at this price. The real test is run length and repetition. If a full clear takes 20–30 minutes and the biomes remix well, three areas can sustain a decent amount of replay while you learn the combat. If it’s longer, those same three biomes will start to feel old fast.

We’ve seen this pattern before: games like Hades and Dead Cells leaned on a tight early loop and smart progression to make relatively small amounts of content feel huge at the start. When that works, nobody counts biomes; they count “one more run”s. When it doesn’t, every repeated tile and enemy sticks out.

Early Access as combat lab, not content dump

Morbid Metal is built around precision action combat in a roguelite shell. That’s important, because Early Access is much better at iterating on systems than filling in missing content. Balance, enemy design, perk synergies, difficulty curves – all of that gets better when thousands of players start breaking things.

From the feature list, you can see where SCREEN JUICE wants feedback:

• Perks and modifiers – over 60 mid-run perks is a lot of levers to tune. Expect buffs, nerfs, and reworks as busted builds emerge.
• Protocols and Corpora – these persistent and run-level modifiers are where a lot of long-term buildcraft will live. If they’re too subtle, nobody cares; too extreme, and every run feels hostage to RNG.
• Enemy and boss behavior – in a tight action game, bad telegraphs or unfair patterns kill runs and player interest. Early Access is where those edges get sanded off.

Compare this to something like Menace, another recent Early Access roguelite (albeit tactical, not action). That launched with its core systems intact but a limited mission and biome set, explicitly planning to expand over a year. Morbid Metal looks like it’s following a similar “core now, breadth later” pattern – which is exactly when Early Access can be worth buying into early, if you’re comfortable helping test the edges.

Where I’m cautiously optimistic: nothing in the feature list screams “we’ll bolt on the real game later.” This looks like a lean, vertical slice of the actual loop. If the combat already feels good on April 8, the roadmap becomes a bonus rather than a crutch.

The quiet parts: roadmap, price hikes, and support

Ubisoft and SCREEN JUICE are holding the roadmap until April 17. That’s smart marketing – get hands-on impressions out first, then ride that wave into the “here’s how we’re growing the game” beat. It’s also where we’ll see how ambitious they actually are.

Things I’ll be looking for on that roadmap:

• How many new characters and biomes are planned, and in what rough timeframe.
• Whether meta-progression gets story and lore, or stays purely mechanical.
• How often they commit to updates – monthly patches vs. “when it’s ready” is a big difference in Early Access.
• Any talk of monetization beyond the box price. So far, none – and it should stay that way for this to work.

The other quiet detail is localization and accessibility. At launch, Morbid Metal ships with subtitles in at least six languages (English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese). That’s decent coverage for Early Access and a hint that Ubisoft expects a global audience, not just a niche Steam curio.

As for price hikes: the Steam page is already seeding the idea that the $17.99 base price could increase as more content lands. That’s fine – and frankly fair – if each raise is tied to a clear, substantial update. If we start seeing price bumps without meaningful additions, that’s when the Ubisoft name goes from “helpful muscle” to “red flag.”