Mortal Shell's beta had over 350,000 players

Mortal Shell is a forthcoming Souls-like from Cold Symmetry, which opened its beta to the public due to popular demand. That beta is now over and the developers have shared some of the numbers, which is why we know that over five million people watched it being streamed on Twitch and YouTube, over 350,000 people played it, and the merchant's cat was stroked over 150,000 times.

James played through the couple of areas available in Mortal Shell's beta, and found a game that lived up to some of the best and worst of the genre, with excellent enemy designs but also a lot of repetition: "I clapped the first time a crypt guardian ripped two swords out of their torso to fight me, and louder when they cut their own head off and threw it at me before exploding in a cloud of toxic gas. Going down like that was rad, and I knew I didn't have a long trek back. But when I died for the fifth time to a crowd of ghouls and a guardian in the very next room, I started losing steam."

In the end he still came away "pretty damn excited" for the final, more polished game, which we're expecting later this year. You can read his full impressions and see 25 minutes of gameplay here.