In Death, the roguelike bow-shooter from Sólfar Studios, the developers behind Everest VR (2016), just received a much-awaited update that’s aiming to add a little more depth to the polished, and extremely difficult medieval-themed single player game. Starting today, In Death will include dungeons, dubbed ‘The Pits of Damnation’, and an asynchronous multiplayer challenge mode called ‘The Ladder’.

Spaced periodically throughout the game you’ll now find portals to The Pits of Damnation, where you’ll battle new and harder enemies on a one-way route through the discrete level. Dungeon mobs like giant fireball-throwing succubi and geometry-morphing ghosts can end your run pretty quickly if you don’t have what it takes. “If you survive the punishment in the Pits it will be worth the effort as you’ll be rewarded handsomely before emerging back to Purgatory,” Sólfar says in a Steam forum post announcing the update.

image courtesy Sólfar Studios

The Ladder is a challenge mode divided into several “terraces” patterned after Dante Alighieri’s Purgatorio. At the bottom terrace, called The Proud, you’ll find yourself placed on a list of a dozen other players; the ultimate goal is to work your way up until you finally reach the terrace called The Lustful.

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Overall progress of players is assessed two times per week, called ‘the Reckoning’, which could mean moving up a terrace while others fall back down. “As you climb up to higher and higher terraces, the total number of players competing gets smaller and smaller until you reach the ultimate terrace of The Lustful, where only 12 compete globally for the heavenly throne.”

To move up in rankings you have to challenge others in your terrace and win. A challenge, Sólfar says, is basically a contest between two players where they both will need to finish a run using the same random seed and the same achievement profile—essentially putting both players on equal grounding.

In Death is still in Early Access, but it’s shaping up to be one of the most polished and engaging VR games out there. For a better idea of what to expect, see our updated hands-on with In Death, which includes the new modes.

Check out In Death on Steam (Vive and Rift) and Oculus Home (Rift).

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • nasprin

    I played a lot of Bow&Arrow Type games in VR, but none was as engaging and rewarding as “In Death”.

    Though i just cannot understand how people have reached these scores on the Leaderboard – in my 10+ Hours of gameplay i barely reached 30000 in a run…

    • Gonzalo Novoa

      InDeath is amazing, my favorite VR game so far. As for the high scores, two reasons: 1- You get more points the higher the purgatory. Say you kill 100 enemies in P5 and that gives you 10.000 points, that same run killing those same enemies would give twice as much or triple in P8. It’s just an example, the numbers are not exactly like that. 2- Anything over 600.000 points is not real, there was a bug from Purgatory XV on that made the monks shoot blanks making the game a piece of cake. I made one million and a half and I could have gone on forever but I just let myself die around P30, it was boring with the bug.

      It’s supposed to have been fixed in the new update. Other than that, it’s mostly practice and your own skills, 30.000 points is pretty good if you have only played 10 hours, I have put more than 100 hours into the game so far so obviously my scores will be higher than yours.

  • FireAndTheVoid

    In Death was already one of my favorite VR games before the update. I’m happy to see that Sólfar Studios is continuing to improve the game with additional enemy types and new gameplay.

  • Les Vega

    This has pretty much dominated my vr time for the past two months it’s a great skill challenge and feels like a better rounded game than most even just in early access.

    • Gonzalo Novoa

      Agreed, it feels far more polished than many other released games and it gets better and better with every update. They could perfectly release it as it is.