What Tears of Metal is
Tears of Metal is a third-person hack-and-slash roguelite set on a Scottish island under occupation. You carve through hordes of enemies across vast battlefields, alone or with friends, fighting to reclaim the island from the invaders who are cutting into the Mother Dragon Stone to harvest its power. The Dragon Stone Meteor event brought the occupiers and mysterious, dangerous powers with them, and you pick up those powers yourself as you play.
Each campaign is a run: you gain upgrades along the way and combine them with over a hundred artifacts to build something distinctive and destructive. Multiple playable heroes are available, each letting you unleash explosive attacks from the frontlines. Between runs your soldiers keep permanent skills, so your battalion grows stronger over time rather than starting fresh each time.
Playing it as a group
Online co-op supports up to 4 players. You fight side by side on the same campaign, and friends can be invited into your run to share the victory. The battles are built for a group to push through together: rally your Scottish troops, hold the front, and take down enemies that would be a much rougher fight on your own.
Because builds come from combining upgrades with artifacts, a group can end up with quite different loadouts in the same run. Everyone brings their own hero and their own combination of powers to the fight, so a coordinated squad has more options than four copies of the same approach.
Before you start
This is a difficult game in the action roguelike mold. Expect to fail and try again, and expect the runs to give you different situations each time — there are over 45 handcrafted environments with varied scenarios and objectives. Progress carries across campaigns: your settlement expands, giving you access to shops and permanent upgrades, and you can unlock tougher challenges for greater rewards.
Special objectives unlock new artifacts, playable characters, cosmetics, upgrades and combos, and there are secrets scattered across the war-torn battlefields. The game is in Early Access, so content and balance may change as development continues.