Morbid Metal from Screen Juice and Ubisoft will launch on 8 April in Early Access. What started in 2017 as an university project has evolved into a stylish hack-and-slash roguelite. We spoke to Felix Schade, the game's creator, game director and CEO, about the final stages of this journey.
It all began in 2017 with the first Morbid Metal prototype as part of a university project. Felix Schade then worked on the project alone for years, investing more and more time in it and sharing his progress on social media. This caught the attention of Ubisoft, who have since signed the game as a publisher. Over time, Screen Juice was founded in Cologne and the team expanded to eleven developers. In preparation for the release of the fast-paced action game on Early Access, Screen Juice and Ubisoft released a demo, which we talked about with Felix Schade, the game's creator and game director as well as CEO of Screen Juice. We also discussed necessary postponements, refining the game with the community, and Morbid Metal’s place in the hack-and-slash genre.
GamesMarkt: How satisfied are you with the Morbid Metal demo, and what improvements have you made based on user feedback?
Felix Schade: "I am very satisfied with it! We launched the demo last Summer during Steam Next Fest and got really great feedback. While people had a great time with it, confirming that Morbid Metal was indeed as fun as we thought ourselves, we still did see some issues when it came to performance and some replayability systems in the game. These have since been tackled."
GamesMarkt: How important was this in refining the gameplay experience?
Felix Schade: "I think it was essential. We are making this game for players worldwide to just have a great time with it. Seeing that we are going in the right direction with what we are working on was invaluable for us. But also seeing where the technical and design limitations were at the time, it really helped us focus on the pain points and improve on what is fun. It simply helped us set the right path for us until the Early Access launch this April 8th!"
GamesMarkt: The launch of Morbid Metal has been postponed several times - from summer 2025 to autumn 2025 to April 2026. How have you used the additional development time?
