Daimon Blades rips and tears its way onto Steam Early Access -

Written by Eric Hauter on 10/6/2025 for PC  

Streumon Studio's Daimon Blades is bursting from the depths of Hell onto Steam Early access today, bringing with it some of the most intense roguelike melee gameplay I've ever experienced. The general concept of Daimon Blades will likely sound familiar to roguelike fans, but the combat is something else entirely. We've been playing an early version of the game, and have been having a gut-ripping good time with it.

In Daimon Blades, players are working for a mysterious organization tasked with stopping an evil invasion from another dimension (Hell. The other dimension is clearly Hell). Players can queue up for runs into the depths, either solo or with up to three other players. Runs are divided up into sub-levels, each of which takes about 10–15 minutes to get through. Once queued up, a gate keeper guy opens up a portal, and off you go, into the mire. Every three sub-levels or so, you fight a boss. Along the way, you gather loot, and at the end of each sub-level, you can pick a temporary perk to enhance your current run. Every now and then, the game gives you the opportunity to tap out of the run and keep all your loot, which you can use to pick up incremental permanent upgrades. If you fail to do that and hit the Game Over screen, your loot is diminished significantly, and you're back to the start.

That all sounds pretty familiar, right? What sets Daimon Blades apart is the organ-melting intensity of the first-person combat and the interesting weapon/demon mechanics. Players start with one of six or seven weapons, all of which handle differently. The sword and shield are fast but weak, the battle axe is powerful but slow, etc. Each of these weapons is inhabited by a demon, who talks smack to the player, and who has a skill tree all its own.

When you return from a run, you have multiple materials; some can enhance your character directly, and some can be used to enhance the demon that inhabits your weapon. The catch is, the different weapons house different demons. This creates an interesting dynamic when you start to pile up a few good weapons. If you have a bunch of resources invested in a sword, and you pick up a battlehammer you find interesting, do you start over from scratch, or do you keep using your old weapon to gather materials to enhance your new one?

Combat is blazingly fast and can quickly become overwhelming. I played hours of Daimon Blades with my son, who has platinumed Elden Ring (mentioned only to establish his hardcore creds). We both found ourselves rocked back on our heels a little bit by the intensity of Daimon Blades combat, as you are immediately confronted with basic enemies that can one-shot you from a distance. They circle behind you, they burrow into the ground and pop up elsewhere, they totally split up to flank you.

To combat this, you have your melee attack, and a weapon-unique ranged attack, both of which can be powered up by holding down the trigger buttons. Much like some incarnations of DOOM, it is imperative that players keep moving at all times. Stand still for even a moment, or try a frontal attack on certain baddies, and you find yourself face down on the floor. I defeated the first boss in the game solo (pure luck, y'all), but it took my son and I about four tries to get past the second boss. Combat is brutal, bloody, and wicked fast.

Players on a run share a "Corruption" meter. When you die, your weapon resurrects you, but that adds points to the corruption meter (if you can get a buddy to rez you, you don't gain any corruption points). If the corruption meter reaches 100, the run is over, your loot is decimated, and you find yourself back at in the hub world, licking your wounds. There are some interesting mechanics in the game that allow you to toy around with your corruption a bit, either mitigating the amount on the meter or trading a health boost for gained corruption. But whatever you do, you seriously need to keep an eye on it. 

The pre-release version we played of Diamon Blades is fun, fast, intense, and deep. It is also an Early Access title, and new players will need to keep that in mind and be a bit forgiving of some of the game's early quirks. The team at Streumon Studio have taken an extra month to refine the game before releasing it into EA in order to clean up some issues that very early players were seeing. This shows a real commitment to the continuing development of the game, and the team has a stellar track record, so expect a steady cadence of continuing improvements. Just remember going in that it is early days for Daimon Blades, and you'll have a good time.

I haven't seen a roadmap for Daimon Blades, but my son and I both enjoyed our time with the game enough that we're going to gather some additional buddies to play with now that the game has dropped into early access. As the game continues development and some of the current early access wrinkles get smoothed out, what is already fun is bound to become stellar. Hop in now, hop in later; that choice is entirely up to you and your tolerance for engaging with a game that is still being refined. But I can say that we had a blast with our time protecting the world from other dimensions, and I think you probably will, too.