Imagine you're fighting through a dungeon, sword in hand, when you cleanly decapitate an undead archer. Most games would just let the body crumple. Heathen, an upcoming indie first-person ARPG from solo developer Christopher Yabsley, lets you kick that severed head midair and use it to kill the next enemy in line.
That single mechanic is doing a lot of heavy lifting for the game's pitch, and honestly? It works. Heathen takes the loot-driven monster bashing that fans of Monster Hunter Wilds and Diablo know well, then drops it into a first-person perspective set in the subterranean depths beneath a fantasy town called Saltgrave.
What the dismemberment system actually does
Yabsley's latest gameplay trailer centers on a newly implemented enemy dismemberment system, and he's direct about why it matters: the system has "done a lot for making swords and axes feel really good." That's a problem most first-person melee games never fully solve, and it's especially hard to crack as a one-person studio.
Here's the thing, though. This isn't just cosmetic gore. Dismemberment is tied directly to combat strategy. As players descend further into the dungeon, they'll face increasingly strange creatures where chopping off limbs isn't just satisfying, it's necessary for survival. Yabsley describes fighting "some many-limbed creature" where you have to systematically dismantle it just to stop it from killing you.
The head-kicking mechanic sits on top of all that as the high-skill expression of the system. Chop a head, kick it mid-flight, chain a kill. It's the kind of move that belongs in a highlight reel, and it's the kind of thing that gives a combat system genuine depth beyond button mashing.
The Diablo DNA is unmistakable
Beyond the combat, Heathen wears its ARPG influences clearly. Loot explodes out of treasure chests. Conjured portals snap you back to town between runs. The UI carries that familiar Diablo-ish weight, dark frames and stat readouts that feel immediately legible to anyone who has spent time in that genre.
What's less expected is the personal story behind the project. Yabsley has spoken about playing Diablo as a child with his mother, describing it as a memory he'll always hold onto. That emotional connection to co-op play fed directly into the design: Heathen will support online co-op at launch. The idea of a dungeon crawler built partly as a love letter to shared play time is genuinely affecting, and it gives the project a warmth that a lot of dungeon crawlers don't have.
Why this matters for fans of monster-hunting ARPGs
The monster-hunting genre has always rewarded players who learn enemy anatomy. Monster Hunter World built an entire ecosystem around targeting specific parts, breaking horns, severing tails, and adapting your approach based on what you've removed. Heathen is doing something adjacent but distinct: it's making dismemberment a real-time physics playground rather than a stat-driven breakpoint system.
That's a meaningful design distinction. Where Monster Hunter World asks you to understand a monster's weak points over multiple hunts, Heathen asks you to react in the moment, read the chaos, and turn it to your advantage. The skill ceiling for that kind of system is high, and the payoff when it clicks is exactly the kind of thing that drives clips and communities.
No release date has been confirmed for Heathen's early access launch yet, but the game is already on Steam. If you're building out your monster-slaying knowledge in the meantime, the Monster Hunter Wilds guides collection has you covered across builds, hunts, and the latest updates, including a full breakdown of everything in the Monster Hunter Wilds Update 4 guide covering Gogmazios fights and Artian Weapon upgrades.
