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Gameplay
July 22, 2026 at 05:21 AM
Added the Warcry, parry, Threat and Hazards, Company and Emporium systems and the persistence rule for ally Emblems
Tears of Metal combines fast-paced hack-and-slash combat with roguelike progression systems. Players control a playable hero and cut through hordes of enemies across large battlefields, making strategic decisions about artifact combinations and soldier management between each run.
Each playable hero has a distinct combat style with a set of escalating attacks. Combat takes place across vast battlefields filled with waves of enemies. Players can chain attacks, utilize hero abilities, and leverage artifact bonuses to overcome increasingly difficult encounters. A dedicated Warcry button lets the player rally the battalion mid-fight, added after players asked for it during the 2025 betas. Parrying produces an area-of-effect result rather than a single-target counter, so a well-timed parry punishes a whole cluster of attackers. Heroes also draw on a Weapon Combo Kit, and Paper Cult reworked keyboard input during testing so that it responds as sharply as a controller. The game supports both solo play and online co-op with up to three additional players.
Each Early Access campaign run is divided into three Acts. Every Act features its own set of enemies, tougher Elite foes, and a Boss encounter at its conclusion, so the difficulty and enemy variety escalate as players advance from one Act to the next. The first Act culminates in the boss Gilles the Hog. Paper Cult describes the Early Access build as fully playable from beginning to end, with the complete progression loop available at launch.
A Threat and Hazards system governs how dangerous a battlefield becomes as a run continues. Threat escalates with the player's progress and feeds into what the battlefield throws at the party, while hazards add environmental danger on top of the enemy waves. The system was introduced in the second open beta in 2025 and carried into the demo. Paper Cult has acknowledged that an early version of it scaled boss difficulty too aggressively, turning Gilles the Hog into a damage sponge, and the studio reworked the boss's behaviour and stats afterwards to make the encounter a closer, more direct fight.
The Company system organises the troops that fight alongside the hero, sitting between individual soldier upgrades and the wider battalion. It was one of the systems added in the run-up to the demo, alongside a post-victory roam that lets players keep exploring a battlefield after clearing it, and a content percentage tracker that shows how much of the available material a player has uncovered.
The artifact system is central to Tears of Metal's roguelike structure. Players discover and collect more than 100 artifacts throughout each run, combining them with upgrades to create distinctive builds. Since artifacts are acquired differently from run to run, each campaign offers a different combination of powers and synergies. Finding strong artifact combinations is key to surviving the later stages of each run.
Players recruit soldiers to form their Scottish battalion and can grant them permanent skill upgrades as they survive campaigns and gain experience. Soldiers who fall in battle are lost permanently, so protecting experienced troops matters across multiple runs. Between campaigns, players return to their settlement to manage their battalion, equip upgrades, and prepare for the next assault.
The settlement serves as the home base between campaigns. By investing in settlement expansion, players unlock new shops offering permanent upgrades, additional challenge modes, and other gameplay options. The settlement grows over time as players complete runs and meet special objectives, providing a persistent layer of progression that carries across individual roguelike runs. Alongside the battalion, players manage companions, a roster of allies confirmed as one of the core systems available in the Early Access build.
Players wield power from clan-based Emblem families. The public demo featured four incomplete families, while the full game is planned to include eight base Emblem families, each with tiers from 1 to 3 plus unique Emblems that create synergies between families. Emblems granted to allies persist from run to run and are only lost when that ally dies, so investing in a surviving companion compounds over a campaign. Completing in-game challenges unlocks more than 30 Charms, which are purchased with challenge rewards and provide additional bonuses and customization options. Paper Cult has indicated that more Emblems and Charms will be added during the Early Access period.
After defeating a boss, players can access the Challenge Shop, which provides high-risk, high-reward scenarios for solo or co-op play. This mode is designed to test player skill and offer greater rewards than standard campaign runs.
Throughout each campaign, players encounter special objectives beyond defeating enemies. Completing these objectives reveals new secrets about the Dragon Stone Meteor, unlocks new playable characters, grants artifacts, and rewards cosmetics. These objectives provide additional replayability and discovery across multiple runs.
The game features over 45 handcrafted locations, each with varied objectives, enemy compositions, and secrets to uncover. Environments range across the Scottish island setting and grow increasingly difficult as players advance deeper into the campaign.
The Emporium is the hub for Daily Challenges, short runs built around a fixed set of unusual conditions and a difficulty well above the normal campaign. Clearing one awards a badge, and collecting badges unlocks a cosmetic frame that displays in online campaigns. Daily Challenges were first run publicly during the October 2025 Steam Next Fest and sit alongside the shrines, unlocks and secret discoveries scattered through each campaign.
