Mortal Shell is a ten-hour game with one perfect idea, and once the credits roll you feel it: nothing else asks you to petrify mid-swing to survive a hit. If that Harden moment is what stuck with you, these seven Mortal Shell alternatives on PC are where to go next. The sequel is in closed beta with no wide release date, and this list covers what to play until then.
The picks span the whole soulslike arc: the peak parry game, the open-world benchmark, the fastest deflection combat, and a couple of newer entries that borrow Mortal Shell’s mood without copying its verbs. Every one is on Steam, runs on current hardware, and supports a controller.
Quick comparison
| Game | Best for | Free plan | Starting price | Standout feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elden Ring | Open world with total freedom | None | Around $60 base | Genre-defining scope, stance combat |
| Lies of P | Parry-heavy, gothic setting | None | Around $50 | Legion arm weapon system |
| Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice | Pure parry duels | None | Around $60, often 50% off | Deflection-only sword combat |
| Nioh 2 | Action-loot soulslike | None | Around $50 | Yokai Shift, stance switching |
| Lords of the Fallen (2023) | Dual-world exploration | None | Around $50 | Umbral Lamp realm-shift |
| Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty | Faster, deflection-driven | None | Around $60, often discounted | Spirit gauge for offensive parries |
| Nine Sols | 2D taopunk parry-focused | None | Around $30 | Sekiro-style combat in a hand-drawn side-scroller |
Why people look past Mortal Shell
Ten hours goes by fast
Mortal Shell’s base run lands around ten hours, twelve if you clean up every shell and rune. The Virtuous Cycle DLC adds a roguelike loop worth another five, but seasoned soulslike players finish everything in a long weekend. The genre trained us to expect fifty-hour campaigns, and Mortal Shell is a novella by that standard.
Four shells is the whole build variety
Cold Symmetry built four playable shells with distinct stat spreads. It’s an elegant system but you notice the ceiling fast. There are no infusions, no ash-of-war swaps, no armor-mix builds. Once you settle on a shell and a weapon you like, the second half of the game plays the same as the first.
Harden is defense, not offense
Petrifying to eat a hit is Mortal Shell’s signature verb, and it’s a defensive move. Sekiro fans and Lies of P fans want the aggressive read, the parry that opens a posture window and lets you strike back. Mortal Shell hardens you into a wall, and that’s a specific taste. Players who want to counter, not endure, drift toward the parry-first alternatives.
The zones are small
Fallgrim, the hub, is compact by design. Each of the three tower zones is a tight loop with a boss at the end. If you came from Elden Ring or Nioh 2, Mortal Shell can feel like a proof of concept rather than a full world. That’s the trade for the price and the twelve-hour run.
The alternatives
Elden Ring, the open-world benchmark
Elden Ring is the answer if Mortal Shell felt small. The Lands Between is a real open world with weather, day-night cycles, dungeons stacked five deep, and a hundred bosses. Combat inherits Dark Souls 3’s stance system and adds Ashes of War, which are essentially interchangeable special moves you can graft onto any weapon.
The core loop is the same rhythm as Mortal Shell: read the attack, roll or deflect, punish the recovery. Elden Ring rewards patience the same way, but it also gives you an escape hatch when a boss walls you: leave and level up somewhere else.
Where it falls short: The late game leans on repeated boss patterns (dragons, tree sentinels, gargoyles) and the last third of the map drops in density. Performance on Steam Deck is playable but not smooth at 60fps.
Pricing:
- Free: None
- Paid: Around $60 base, plus Shadow of the Erdtree DLC at around $40
- vs Mortal Shell: Six times the runtime for twice the price
Migrating from Mortal Shell: No save transfer, no shared achievements. The combat vocabulary is close enough that a Mortal Shell veteran will feel at home within an hour.
Download: Elden Ring on Steam
Bottom line: If you want the same combat rules stretched across a hundred hours, start here.
Lies of P, the best parry substitute
Lies of P is the parry game Mortal Shell fans move to. It’s gothic Pinocchio, set in a plague-choked Belle Époque city, and every boss fight is a rhythm test. Perfect Guard is the aggressive verb Harden isn’t: you time the deflection, you break the boss’s weapon-guard, and you get a critical opening. It rewards forward pressure in a way Mortal Shell never does.
The Legion arm system replaces the shell mechanic with a swappable prosthetic (flame throw, chain grapple, electric puck) mounted on your left arm. It’s not the same as juggling four shells, but it gives combat a second gear.
Where it falls short: The final boss has been a divisive fight since launch and the story leans hard on Pinocchio references that don’t always land. The DLC (Overture) is very good but expects you to have hit endgame first.
Pricing:
- Free: None
- Paid: Around $50 base, Overture DLC around $30
- vs Mortal Shell: More expensive, roughly three times longer
Migrating from Mortal Shell: No save transfer. Both games teach you to respect stagger; Lies of P adds a parry timing you’ll spend the first three bosses learning.
Download: Lies of P on Steam
Bottom line: The single closest game if the Harden bit hooked you and you want more aggressive counterplay.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, pure parry combat
Sekiro is the game every soulslike is measured against for parry timing. There’s no build variety, one weapon, one moveset. What you get instead is the tightest deflection window in the genre. Every boss fight is a two-way sword duel that ends the moment somebody misreads a mikiri counter.
Compared to Mortal Shell, Sekiro is faster, meaner, and less forgiving. It also has the best boss lineup FromSoftware has ever built: Genichiro, Owl, Isshin. Mortal Shell fans usually respect Sekiro but need a week to unlearn defensive Harden reflexes.
Where it falls short: There is one build. You cannot respec into strength, you cannot summon co-op, and Steam Deck performance is inconsistent. The one-life gimmick (unblockable death) is real; the game means it.
Pricing:
- Free: None
- Paid: Around $60 base, drops to $30 on Steam sales twice a year
- vs Mortal Shell: More expensive; harder; roughly the same length
Migrating from Mortal Shell: None. Sekiro punishes the roll-heavy reflex Mortal Shell trained into you. Rebind your controller and mentally reset before you start.
Download: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice on Steam
Bottom line: The best pick if the Harden verb underdelivered and you want deflection as your whole language.
Nioh 2, loot-heavy stance action
Nioh 2 is the closest thing to Diablo built inside a soulslike shell. Ki Pulse (stance flushing), Yokai Shift (transformation ultimate), three stances per weapon, and enough loot drops to justify a stash tab. If Mortal Shell felt short on systems, Nioh 2 is the answer that hands you fifteen.
Combat is faster than Dark Souls, slower than Sekiro, and heavier than anything else on this list. The Yokai world sections are where the game shines: alternate-reality boss arenas that put a wrinkle on standard duels.
Where it falls short: The systems layer is heavy. You’ll spend the first ten hours reading tooltips on Onmyo magic and soul cores. The story is a nonsense knot of Sengoku-era history no player will remember by hour thirty.
Pricing:
- Free: None
- Paid: Around $50 for the Complete Edition (base plus three DLCs)
- vs Mortal Shell: Roughly five times the runtime, better price-per-hour
Migrating from Mortal Shell: No save transfer. If you liked juggling four shells, treat Nioh 2’s stances (high, mid, low) as the same idea, only mid-fight.
Download: Nioh 2 on Steam
Bottom line: The pick if you wanted Mortal Shell’s build variety turned up four notches and don’t mind reading menus.
Lords of the Fallen (2023), the dual-world twist
Lords of the Fallen (the 2023 reboot, not the 2014 game) is the closest tonal match on this list. The world is dark, gothic, oppressive, and the visual language sits in the same neighborhood as Fallgrim. It also has the most novel exploration mechanic in the genre right now: an Umbral Lamp that lets you peek into (and then physically enter) a shadow version of any room.
Combat is standard soulslike, but the Umbral realm is where the game earns its place. Solving a locked door by lampswapping into the realm of the dead, walking through a wall that only exists there, and swapping back is Fromsoftware-adjacent design done right.
Where it falls short: Enemy density in the Umbral is punishing to the point of frustration. Hexworks pushed patches for two years and it’s much better now, but the reputation cost was real.
Pricing:
- Free: None
- Paid: Around $50 base, often 60% off on Steam sales
- vs Mortal Shell: Longer, tonally similar, more mechanically ambitious
Migrating from Mortal Shell: No save transfer. Combat pace is close enough that you won’t need to relearn much.
Download: Lords of the Fallen on Steam
Bottom line: The pick for Mortal Shell fans who want the same mood in a bigger world.
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, deflection with a spirit gauge
Wo Long is Team Ninja’s answer to Sekiro, faster than Nioh 2 and built around a Spirit gauge that swings positive or negative as you land deflections or take hits. You spend the gauge on martial arts and a Wizardry Spell system that layers elemental buffs and debuffs.
Deflection here is the whole game. Miss the timing and you get bounced off the enemy’s guard, spirit gauge negative, and the boss opens the exchange. Land it and you’re on offense with a big posture-break window.
Where it falls short: The story is a Three Kingdoms retelling that ping-pongs between characters you’ll forget. The mission-select structure kills any sense of a persistent world (this is a Team Ninja habit).
Pricing:
- Free: None
- Paid: Around $60 for the base game, often 40% off
- vs Mortal Shell: Faster, longer, more mechanically dense
Migrating from Mortal Shell: None. The deflection timing is close to Lies of P, not Mortal Shell’s slower defensive reads.
Download: Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty on Steam
Bottom line: Try this if Sekiro is too punishing but you still want deflection to matter.
Nine Sols, the 2D sleeper
Nine Sols is the surprise on this list. It’s a hand-drawn 2D metroidvania with a Sekiro-style parry system layered on top. Red Candle Games nailed the aesthetic (Taoist punk) and the boss design (patient, aggressive, patterned) in a way most 2D soulslikes miss.
If Mortal Shell felt too static on a controller, Nine Sols is the same combat philosophy in a genre that lets you move constantly. It’s cheaper than everything else on this list and it took the sleeper hit of the year slot in 2024 for a reason.
Where it falls short: It’s short, around twenty-five hours, and the platforming sections can drag between combat encounters. Some bosses lean too heavily on unblockable specials.
Pricing:
- Free: None
- Paid: Around $30 base, often $20 on sale
- vs Mortal Shell: Cheaper, tonally different, mechanically closer than the price suggests
Migrating from Mortal Shell: None. But if the parry economy in Lies of P intrigued you, Nine Sols runs the same math for a third of the price.
Download: Nine Sols on Steam
Bottom line: The best budget option, and the one to try if you want a change of pace from 3D soulslikes.
How to choose
Pick Elden Ring if you want the biggest world and the safest recommendation. Pick Lies of P if the parry is what you’re chasing and you want a modern soulslike setting. Pick Sekiro if you’re willing to relearn the genre from scratch for the best sword combat FromSoftware has made.
Pick Nioh 2 if you liked Mortal Shell’s build variety and want ten times the systems. Pick Lords of the Fallen if the Fallgrim mood is what pulled you in and you want more of it. Pick Wo Long if Sekiro sounded good but too hard. Pick Nine Sols if you’re low on cash or want the 2D version of everything above.
Stay on Mortal Shell (and pick up the Virtuous Cycle DLC) if you specifically want the shell-swap loop, which no other game on this list replicates.
FAQ
Is Mortal Shell 2 out yet?
Mortal Shell 2 is in closed beta with no confirmed wide release date. Cold Symmetry has been quiet about a launch window beyond “soon.” If you’re waiting, the seven picks above are what to play in the meantime.
What is the best Mortal Shell alternative for beginners?
Lies of P, because the parry timing is generous enough to learn without a guide and the difficulty curve ramps predictably. Elden Ring is the runner-up because you can grind levels if a boss walls you.
Which alternative is closest to Mortal Shell mechanically?
None of them, exactly. The Harden mechanic is unique to Mortal Shell. The closest in mood is Lords of the Fallen (2023). The closest in combat economy is Lies of P.
Are there any free Mortal Shell alternatives?
Not on PC directly. Elden Ring, Sekiro, and Lies of P go on deep Steam sales twice a year (usually 50% off). Xbox Game Pass has cycled through Nioh 2 and Sekiro in the past year, which is the cheapest way to try either.
Can I run these on Steam Deck?
Lies of P, Elden Ring, Nine Sols, and Wo Long run well. Sekiro and Nioh 2 have frame-pacing issues that need community fixes. Lords of the Fallen is playable but not smooth.
What about non-soulslike alternatives?
If it’s the atmosphere you want, not the combat, look at Blasphemous 2 (2D, gothic, slower) or Hollow Knight (metroidvania, slower still). If it’s the third-person combat you want without the punishment, God of War Ragnarok is the closest mainstream pick.
