Cold Symmetry has an open beta live on Steam for Mortal Shell II, three weeks ahead of the 20 August launch. Playstack is publishing again, and after a long stretch of trailers built almost entirely out of atmosphere, the studio is finally putting systems on screen.

Standalone, and Saying So

Steam bills it as a standalone sequel, which means the 2020 game is not homework. The store page lists the beta as a free download alongside the pre-purchase, and keeps the original pitch intact: possess warrior Shells, dethrone false gods, and harden yourself mid-swing when something is about to remove your head.

The Shell system was the first game’s one genuinely distinct idea. You are not a body, you are the thing that inhabits bodies, and each Shell is a different loadout of health, stamina and abilities that you swap into rather than build up.

The Mortal Shell II equipment screen showing a horned armoured Shell named Proxima, the Broodseeker, with a grid of weapon and item slots and trait descriptions
The Change Equipment screen names one Shell as Proxima, the Broodseeker, with a Biosampler trait and Grafted Armor damage mitigation. Screenshot via Steam / Cold Symmetry.

The Bestiary Is Doing a Lot of Work

The creature design is the loudest thing in the beta materials. Cold Symmetry’s screenshots run from a crowned figure standing beside something enormous and amphibian, through spider-limbed things picking across bone fields, to a frost-locked humanoid mid-lunge. It is less Dark Souls pastiche than the first game managed, and the lighting has come a long way.

A crowned armoured figure standing in front of an enormous pale amphibian creature with an open toothed maw in Mortal Shell II
The sequel leans harder on set-piece creature design than the 2020 original did. Screenshot via Steam / Cold Symmetry.

Why We Are Watching

Mortal Shell was made by a tiny team and landed far better than a small studio’s first soulslike had any right to. Steam’s wishlist ranking had the sequel sitting around fortieth most-wishlisted at the time of writing, which is a genuinely strong position for a studio at this size and with this budget.

A beta three weeks out is usually a confidence signal or a load test, and often both. Either way it is the one chance to form an opinion before the review cycle decides for everyone, so it is worth an evening.

Watch the trailer