Heavy Metal Death Can: Early Hands On Preview

The recently revealed Heavy Metal Death Can from new studio Krufs Productions came with a pleasant surprise – a fully playable vertical slice for us to check out. We jumped at the chance, loving its inspirations such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and the video above is my first playthrough of the preview in its entirety.

Played via static cameras, we have the option of both Tank and Modern controls, and must navigate through this 1970’s submarine after things have gone terribly wrong. This very early look – the game is slated for late 2026 – keeps things pretty simple, though there are a good selection of puzzles and combat encounters to give us a flavour of what to expect.

In the main, we’re pretty happy with the game. The atmosphere is tense without being too dramatic, the combat is simple but will no doubt get more intense with bigger or faster enemies later on, and the act of slowly unravelling even this small area is as satisfying as ever. The few puzzles we get are well balanced too; look out for the morse code one towards the end that had me stumped for a little bit longer than it probably should have, but it is a great example of a puzzle type that I’ve not really encountered before.

My only real gripe at this point is the implementation of the tank controls. Switching to them still has us using the analogue sticks, and tank controls rarely – if ever – work well on them. It’d be far easier and smoother to let us use the d-pad for this control method, and I hope this is something that can be worked out. I was actually pleasantly surprised with the modern controls more analogue movement, but would vastly prefer using d-pad enabled tank controls for sure.

We’ve got a fair wait for the full game, but if Krufs can keep up the quality here and iron out a few of the small issues present, then this is something we’re very keen to see more of as soon as possible.

This game was previewed on PC (via Steam). All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by the publisher.

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