ULTRAKILL: Six Years in Early Access and Still Descending Into Hell
Hakita's blood-fuelled shooter has spent six years in early access with a 98% positive rating, and its final act is now half-built. Why ULTRAKILL is the rare early-access game that keeps getting better.
ULTRAKILL's machines run on blood. That is not a metaphor: in this fast, frantic first-person shooter, you heal by getting close to enemies and covering yourself in what comes out of them. Hang back and you die. Charge in and you live. It is a design that makes cowardice impossible, and players have adored it for six years.
ULTRAKILL is the creation of Arsi "Hakita" Patala, published by New Blood Interactive. It entered Steam early access for Windows on 3 September 2020, and it is still there in late 2026, gradually building towards its finale. As of September 2026, Acts I and II are complete and the first two layers of Act III are playable. By May 2024 it had passed 100,000 Steam reviews with a 98% positive rating.
Dante, but with shotguns
ULTRAKILL's structure follows an interpretation of Dante's layers of Hell, split into three acts of three layers each. You are V1, a machine fighting its way down, level by level, through demons, angels and other robots.
The movement is the star: dashes, slides, wall-jumps and ground-pounds that let skilled players fly through arenas. A style meter grades every fight, and earning a P rank on every level in an act unlocks a secret "prime sanctum" boss for that act. Critics compared it favourably with Doom Eternal, which is high praise for a game made by a small team in Unity.
A small team with a big soundtrack
Hakita is the game's designer and also one of its programmers, writers and composers. Around him is a compact team: programmers Heckteck and PITR, artists including Andrei Mishchenko and Victoria Holland, and New Blood CEO Dave Oshry as producer.
The soundtrack is a big part of the appeal, mixing Hakita's own work with music from Meganeko, Keygen Church, Health, Vylet Pony and the Australian band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.
Early access done right
Early access has a bad reputation: games that launch half-finished and never get completed. ULTRAKILL is the counterexample. Every big update has been treated as an event, and ULTRA_REVAMP was explicitly about laying the technical groundwork for the next layer, Layer 8, Fraud. Players know the game is unfinished, and the steady stream of polished content has kept their trust.
There is a practical lesson here for small studios. ULTRAKILL never asked players to pay for a promise. Each act arrived feeling complete on its own terms, with bosses, secrets and a satisfying arc, so the game was always worth its price on the day you bought it. The wait for the ending feels like anticipation rather than a debt. Compare that with the many early-access games that launch as a rough sketch and spend years catching up, and it is easy to see why ULTRAKILL's reviews have barely moved.
Why it matters
ULTRAKILL is proof that an indie shooter can stand next to the genre's biggest names. It is also proof that a game can stay in early access for years without losing goodwill, as long as every update raises the bar. In our view, when the final layers arrive, it will deserve a place among the great shooters of the decade.
Where to play
ULTRAKILL is available in early access on Steam for Windows. Be warned: it is violent, loud and very hard to put down. For another early-access success story, read about Brotato (here).