Mortal Shell is an action role-playing game franchise known for its bleak, decaying worlds and punishing combat. Its defining idea: the player’s consciousness is not bound to a single body. You seize the husks of dead warriors — Shells — and inhabit them, each bringing its own strengths and its own way of fighting into a land that has already lost whatever war it was fighting.

The series began with Mortal Shell, released in 2020 by Cold Symmetry, a small studio making its debut with a dark, deliberate take on the genre — slower, heavier, and steeped in ruin. It drew attention for its atmosphere and for its hard-won combat rather than for scale. Mortal Shell II continues the line in 2026, carrying the same fatalistic tone forward into a new entry.