Indie Hour - Tears of Metal

Hey it’s Tarrmu and welcome to a new series called Indie Hour, where we’ll be diving into the world of indie games and highlighting upcoming releases you should be on the lookout for. In today’s episode, we’re looking at Tears of Metal, the latest game from Paper Cult — the studio behind Bloodroots. I was able to jump into the most recent playtest, and even though I joined towards the end and only had about an hour with the game, that was enough to see just how much potential it has.

And before we get into it, if you like the look of this game, I’ll leave a link to the Steam page so you can wishlist it.

So what is Tears of Metal?

Think Dynasty Warriors, but in a roguelike format. You command a Scottish battalion and push through hostile territories, with each run progressing your invasion deeper into enemy lands. In my short time, I’ll be honest — I got wiped out more than a few times. This is a tough, punishing game. But that’s part of the appeal.

What balances that difficulty is how rewarding the progression feels. Every failed run still nets you gold to craft weapons, lets you promote and level up your soldiers, and helps you strengthen your battalion. There’s a satisfying loop of growth — not just in stats, but also in how you learn enemy patterns, their attack tells, and when to dodge or block.

Why does it stand out?

Tears of Metal combines familiar roguelike progression with the chaotic energy of musou-style combat. Every run feels like you’re building towards something meaningful, and the battles themselves stay engaging because of how weighty and impactful your attacks feel. Even in just an hour, the sheer chaos of commanding a battalion in these large-scale fights kept me hooked.

From what the demo suggests, there may even be additional characters to play as in the full release, adding more variety to an already flexible combat system. I'm curious with the act based system which I'm predicting will advance the story and run completion, what will differ between each character, and how each character will play and feel.

Multiplayer

One other component that is worthy of note as well is that Tears of Metal also does have multiplayer functionality where you'll be able to set out on runs with your friends too. I wasn't able to test this, I tried to join a lobby, but I wasn't able to join a party, maybe I was playing too late into the evening. But I think that this concept is cool, and I'd be interested to see more from this angle, and I think it is another aspect that is also somewhat fresh for this genre.

Closing Thoughts

I wasn't able to get as much time as I would have liked with the game, due to my own things going on, but Tears of Metal is shaping up to be an interesting spin on the rogue-like formula, but taking it into an interesting direction that we haven't quite seen with fun combat that feels satisfying, along with a flexible amount of progression systems that makes each run feel like you're slowly inching forward towards a greater goal. At this point there is still no hard date on the release of Tears of Metal, but it is slated to release in 2025 and it is one worth keeping an eye on.

Thanks for watching this video, what are your thoughts on Tears of Metal, will you be picking up this game, is it on your wishlist now. Also what are your thoughts on the new Indie Hour format, this is the first of many types of videos like this that I would like to make, and I'm slowly fleshing this out. So let me know your thoughts down below and as always thanks for watching.