Ultrakill

Ultrakill is a fast-paced first-person shooter with an emphasis on movement and stylish techniques. The player must make their way through an interpretation of Dante's layers of Hell, with three acts each made up of three layers being divided into multiple levels. As of September 2026, only Act I and Act II have been fully released, with only the first two layers of Act III being available.

The player battles enemies using an arsenal of weapons, having a primary and alternate attack, and various robotic arms. These have unique interactions with each other, evoking the combination attacks of games like Devil May Cry. Many of the advanced techniques in the game are a result of combining various elements of the player's arsenal. To encourage aggressive gameplay, the player can heal by absorbing the blood of enemies through close-range combat or parrying enemy attacks.

Long before the events of the game, God created humanity, hoping they would follow his word as law. However, he couldn’t create a mind without free will, wasting countless cycles trying. In a fit of anger toward his creation, god made Hell, but once he realized what he had done, it was irreversible. At some point in between his disappearance and the creation of Hell, Lucifer questioned God's rational for creating hell; stating:FATHER, WHY ETERNAL TORMENT? IS IT NOT CRUEL?

IS TORTURE UNENDING TRULY A FATE FIT FOR A FOOL?For questioning God's authority, Lucifer was thrown into Hell. God would come to regret this too, weeping from their mistake. Wracked with guilt and regret, they eventually disappeared, leaving Heaven without a ruler.

Arsi Patala, who goes by the name Hakita, began development in February 2018. An early demo of Ultrakill was released in August 2019, with the game being picked up by New Blood Interactive in May 2020. It released through early access in September of that year.

On 24 February 2025, the game received a near-complete overhaul in the "ULTRA_REVAMP" update, featuring new graphics for most layers, technical improvements, new "Encore" levels featuring different themes for each layer (such as the industrial setting of the Prelude having been frozen over), and music from King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. The technical updates were done in preparation for the development of the Fraud layer, with the developers stating in a Steam blog post that "much of ULTRAKILL's codebase was very messy, especially the enemy behaviors. So much so that not only would it make it harder for us (and modders) to work on the game in the future, but even for us to do some of the new things we wanted to do in Layer 8".

Ultrakill was praised for its movement mechanics and authenticity towards earlier arena shooters and first-person shooters. Christopher Livingston of PC Gamer described Ultrakill as faster and "even more metal than Doom Eternal" and commended the game for its verticality. It was also described as "[moving] like turbo Doom Eternal", in another PC Gamer article by Dominic Tarason, who noted that it "looks like a PSX game". It was also reviewed by Peter Glasgowski of TheGamer, who wrote that "...Ultrakill ticked off every box for me." On 15 May 2024, the game had achieved 100,000 Steam reviews with a 98% approval rating.

On 8 December 2022, Ultrakill gained official controller rumble support, under the guise of being sex toy support. Its developer released an official mod called UKbutt, adding support for a plugin called buttplug.io. The mod was created by Ultrakill programmer PITR and buttplug.io lead Kyle "qDot" Machulis. New Blood CEO Dave Oshry remarked that "at no point when originally testing or discussing the game with Hakita or anyone at [New Blood] were any of us like 'they're gonna want sex'." The mod was met with positive user reviews.