As caught by VGC, Saber Interactive has released a statement confirming that Evil Dead: The Game has been taken down from storefronts, including Steam. Plans to keep the servers for the game going for players that have already purchased the game, however, have seemingly not been changed.

“We can confirm we’ve begun the process of removing the game from digital storefronts,” said Saber Interactive in its statement. “Anyone who has purchased the game will still be able to play it as we plan to keep our servers online for everyone.”

“We want to extend a sincere thank you to our community, to those who have been part of the game from the very beginning, and those who have recently joined us. We appreciate all of your support.”

The company had announced the end of support for Evil Dead: The Game back in September 2023 with a statement, revealing that no more new content for the game would be developed. While the company was leaving servers online, it had also confirmed that the Nintendo Switch version of Evil Dead: The Game had been cancelled.

Evil Dead: The Game was originally released all the way back in May 2022 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. As previously mentioned a Nintendo Switch version was also planned, but ultimately cancelled. The title saw a fair bit of early success, boasting 500,000 copies sold in its first five days.

For more details on the game, check out our review, where we gave it a score of 7 out of 10. In our review, we praised its fun gameplay, fan service, and progression. Our criticism largely revolved around imbalanced gameplay, maps being too big, and an overall lack of gameplay variety.

Unfortunately, the Nintendo Switch version has been cancelled. Evil Dead: The Game launched in May 2022 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC and sold 500,000 units in the first five days. It would receive a Game of the Year Edition and Steam launch this past April. As for the reason behind all these developments, it may be part of the Embracer Group’s restructuring program.

Saints Row developer Volition closed, and there are rumors of plans to sell Gearbox Entertainment. How this affects future projects, like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – Remake (which Saber Interactive is reportedly leading), remains to be seen. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming months.

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— EvilDeadTheGame (@EvilDeadTheGame) September 19, 2023

Evil Dead: The Game – Game of the Year Edition will include the base game along with all of the DLC content that has been released for the game so far. It will also include a new DLC, titled Who’s Your Daddy, that features a new Survivor, a new Deon, and new outfits for Ash, Amanda, and Pablo.

Other content part of the Game of the Year Edition includes playable Survivors, and Demons with unique powers and abilities.

Evil Dead: The Game, got a major addition back in February as part of the Splatter Royale update. The update added a new battle royale-styled game mode pitting 40 players against each other.

Evil Dead: The Game is an asymmetrical multiplayer title that pits Survivors against Demons. For more details, check out our review of the base game.

The trailer acts as an introduction to the Splatter Royale mode, and gives us a look at its gameplay. In terms of narrative, players will be controlling deadite versions of their favourite characters from across the Evil Dead franchise, and are battling to be the last demon standing.

The update also adds Ruby Knowby as a new playable survivor, as well as new cosmetics like the Party Animal outfit, the Kandarian Facelift outfit, and the Scourge of Evil outfit.

The grenade launcher is also joining the game’s arsenal of weapons, alongside the scythe.

Taking place in the Evil Dead setting, Evil Dead: The Game is an asymmetrical multiplayer game that pits survivors against demons. For more details, check out our review. Evil Dead: The Game is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.

First is the Leader, capable of buffing the group’s stats while being less susceptible to Fear and possession. Here are all of the different Leader Survivors:

• Annie Knowby
• Lord Arthur
• Ash Williams (Ash vs Evil Dead)

The next Survivor class is the Warrior, your main damage dealer. However, at least two have good tanking and survival skills. The three Warrior Survivors in question are:

• Ash Williams (Army of Darkness)
• Scotty
• Henry the Red

The third class is the Hunter, your de facto ranged specialist. In addition to dealing more ranged damage than other Survivors, they’re better at stamina management and can hold more ammo. The Hunter Survivors in question are:

• Ash Williams (Evil Dead 2)
• Ed Getley
• Kelly Maxwell
• Amanda Fisher

Finally, there’s the Support class, which focuses on healing others, marking targets with headshots, creating amulets, staring with a Shemp’s Cola and more. The three Support Survivors include:

• Ash Williams (The Evil Dead)
• Cheryl Williams
• Pablo Simon Bolivar

Next, let’s take a look at the evil side of the playable characters – the Kandarian Demons, with one playable at a time in a match. These are opposed to the Survivors and looking to disrupt them at every turn.

The three Kandarian Demon classes each consist of a Basic Unit, Elite Unit and Boss, which unlock at level 3, level 5 and level 10 respectively. Each has unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses depending on your play style.

The different Kandarian Demon classes and their units are:

• Necromancer – Skeleton (Basic Unit), Armored Skeleton (Elite Unit), Evil Ash (Boss)
• Puppeteer – Deadite Berserker (Basic Unit), Demi-Eligos (Elite Unit), Eligos (Boss)
• Warlord – Deadite (Basic Unit), Deadite Elite (Elite Unit), Henrietta

For more details on each Survivor and Kandarian Demon, their abilities, and which are the strongest, check out AZHYMOVS’ videos below. Evil Dead: The Game is currently available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and PC with the Nintendo Switch version coming later. For more details, check out our official review here.

The “Army of Darkness” update has gone live for the multiplayer horror game. The headlining addition here is the new Castle Kandar map, which features a number of familiar locations from the 1992 film Army of Darkness. Another major addition is the new Exploration mode, which lets you freely roam all maps in the game without having to worry about combat or other players.

A couple of new weapons have also made their debut in the game in the form of the mace and the explosive crossbow, while new paid cosmetics are also available. Besides the cosmetics, everything else in the update arrives for all players for free.

Evil Dead: The Game is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch version coming later.

New Survivor Passives unlock at levels 10 and 25 (the max level). The Kandarian Demons unlock new Passives at levels 15, 25 and 45 (which is the cap). In addition to XP, there are Spirit Points. Awarded at the end of matches, you’ll receive more upon completing different objectives, killing enemies and helping teammates. Spirit Points are a shared pool and not limited to a single character.

These essentially allow for leveling up the other Survivors. Along with speeding up progression on other characters, it can be especially great if you need to choose an alternative character when someone picks your mains.

Finally, you gain levels restricted within the match. Survivors can find Pink F in supply crates on the map, which provides a skill point to slot wherever. You can improve Stamina to run for longer periods, increase melee for improved damage with the chainsaw and much more. The same applies to the Kandarian Demon, though they’ll gain experience as the match progresses and can earn more by messing with the Survivors.

The best way to level up in the game is by playing Survivor (vs. AI). It allows for getting a feel for the game, and you can net XP in the process without feeling dominated by a powerful Demon player. You can then move on to Survivor (vs. Player) or Kandarian Demon (vs. Player), which is the meat of the game.

Be warned – playing solo against AI won’t give you any XP. These can also be useful for those who want a crash course on all levels. Various bits of lore for fans of the Evil Dead franchise can also be found. But if you’re not picking up the game to play with other people, then you’re going to have a bad time.

Evil Dead: The Game is currently available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 and PC. It’s out on Nintendo Switch later this year. Check out our official review here and stay tuned for more details.

An exploit that allowed players to cancel animations and perform actions at a faster-than-normal rate has also been fixed. This is in addition to server stability improvements, bug fixes (like the loss of input for Survivors when performing certain actions or being possessed by the Demon), and much more. The healing attributes for Cheryl and Evil Dead 1 Ash have also been rebalanced while the values on Amanda’s Weapon Master: Pistol Skill have been adjusted.

Evil Dead: The Game is currently available for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC. Check out our review here. It’s also coming to Nintendo Switch later this year. Stay tuned for more details on other patches and updates in the meantime.

Patch 1.0.5

Stability / Quality of Life

• Implemented various fixes to combat cheats such as speed hacks, health regeneration, fake nicknames, and character model changing. A larger anti-cheat update is also forthcoming in another update soon.
• Addressed an exploit where players could cancel animations to perform actions faster than intended
  Improved server stability
• Various bug fixes and improvements

Missions

• Fixed crashing after closing the pause menu on “Find a way out of the pit” objective in Mission 5

Demon

• Fixed loss of input bug when a possessed unit dies

Survivors

• Updated balancing to Cheryl’s healing attributes
• Updated balancing to Evil Dead 1 Ash’s healing attributes
• Adjusted values to Amanda’s Weapon Master: Pistol Skill
• Fixed an issue causing loss of input when Survivors are possessed by Demon, exit vehicles, or try to pick up full stacks of items
• Fixed an issue that caused a Survivor to be immortal at death or when using a healing item in the storm
• Fixed an issue where Survivors can deal 1M damage to Demon and deadites

Miscellaneous

• Fixed PlayStation 4 Trophies not synchronizing

Interestingly, he also said this is the “first in a new franchise for Saber.” This could indicate longer term support than initially planned or more significant content updates for the current game. Perhaps there could be off-shoots of it, if not based on the original franchise. We’ll have to wait and see.

Evil Dead: The Game is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 and PC with the Nintendo Switch version coming later. It features four Survivors from across the Evil Dead franchise, including Ash Williams (played by Bruce Campbell himself), fighting off the forces of darkness. In the midst of all this is the Kandarian Demon controlled by another player who attempts to stop the Survivors. For more details, check out our review here.

Like Friday the 13^th the Game or Evolve, in its foundational mode, Evil Dead: The Game is an asymmetrical multiplayer experience, and you play as either one of four human survivors or as one powerful demon, each with opposing goals. As the humans, your goal is to exorcise the demon by recreating the Necronomicon, while as the demon, your goal is to kill the humans before they’re able to do so. Matches are long, sometimes approaching half an hour, so as to give each side their ability to gather resources, get stronger, and prepare for multiple stages of battle against one another.

"Evil Dead: The Game isn’t necessarily groundbreaking, nor does it feel like it has a remarkable amount of longevity, but as an asymmetrical multiplayer title in a beloved franchise, it’s mostly successful in making a quality experience for fans and newcomers alike."

The humans are a team of four characters from the movies, falling into one of four classes: Leaders, Hunters, Warriors, and Support. Each has their own group of movie characters, such as Cheryl Williams as Support or Scotty as a Warrior, with the exception of main character Ash, who has a version of himself from different Evil Dead titles in each of the classes. While each class does play differently to an extent, especially as you put skill points into individual characters, I didn’t find that I needed to change my play style to match my class and could ultimately play generally the same across the board. The main form of gameplay is traditional third-person melee and ranged combat against different types of demons. You can find weapons for each slot around the map, and ammo can be scarce, so there’s a major incentive to be as thoughtful as possible about when to use melee and when to shoot. Similarly, there are both health items and “Pink F” bottles for intra-game upgrades around the map, and while the health items are few and far between, which makes every hit meaningful, the upgrades are pretty frequent, and I found myself often reaching the max in-game upgrade level.

Much of the experience playing as a human is highly satisfying. Every bullet hits with power, and every melee attack is even more enjoyable, especially in the pre-animated takedowns, which never seem to get old. Over time, though, it does begin to get repetitive. Humans have the same sequence of objectives in every match – locate the map, find the lost pages, and exorcise the demon – and there isn’t much in the way of strategic variety across maps or different team structures. Even with the interesting Fear mechanic, which causes you to become more scared if you’re alone or in the dark and ultimately lets the demon possess you, there isn’t much in the way of strategy once you get the hang of it. With more content updates promised for the future, hopefully there will be more differentiation for the human players, but for now it can get repetitive after even just a few rounds.

On the other side of the coin is the demons, which come in three varieties: Necromancers, Warlords, and Puppeteers. These three actually do feel significantly different from one another in gameplay, at least in the physical sense because they range in speed and power. For the most part, though, playing as the demon doesn’t have you controlling a physical demon, but as a floating being, moving around to set traps, open portals, and possess certain objects. Your main goal as the demon is to kill all of the humans, and you do so by somewhat strategically setting traps to increase their Fear levels and opening portals to bombard them with lower- and higher-level demons, including a boss that you control. Overall, playing as the demon is certainly the more rewarding experience because it feels like there’s more opportunity for playing around with strategies and trying new things. With that said, it ultimately falls into the same proverbial trap where you will most likely follow a similar play style after you get your footing.

"Playing as the demon is certainly the more rewarding experience because it feels like there’s more opportunity for playing around with strategies and trying new things."

Within matches, for both humans and demons, you can upgrade your character to increase single-match health or stamina for humans, or abilities and fear power for demons. Across matches, too, there are permanent upgrades you can give to characters, each of which has their own skill tree. For each overall level, every character gets a skill point, and you can upgrade individual characters by assigning XP, even without having to have played as that character. I really like this system because it offers not only a bunch of different ways to gain new abilities and try new things, especially because you can respec at any time, but there’s also a give-and-take between characters. However, it does mean you’ll likely be focusing on just a couple characters, as it’s overall better if you max out one character than spread levels across many.

Even with the upgrades, though, the multiplayer can be noticeably unbalanced in the demon’s favor. Maybe it’s understandable that a demon ultimately comes out on top of four humans most of the time, but as a gameplay feature, I only ever saw humans win a handful of times, while the demon could win easily a vast majority of the time. Even while playing as the demon, there were a few matches where I won without entirely knowing how, as I was away from the scene. There’s still a lot of fun to be had on both sides, but it feels like there’s some rebalancing and tweaking that can be done to increase the humans’ chances of victory as new content is rolled out. Until then, you can expect demons to emerge victorious more often than not.

The only other major mode the game has to offer is a series of shorter, single-player missions where you take control of some of the main characters of the series, most frequently Ash, to complete a series of linear, mostly drab objectives. The purpose of these missions is less to be their own experience and more to unlock characters and story bits, but even with that in mind, they’re mostly forgettable. Their gameplay is even more repetitive than that of the primary mode, and the missions, even with just five of them available at launch, can be brutally difficult. While your successful runs will only take between 10-20 minutes per mission, a couple of them took me multiple hours to beat, as enemies can be frustratingly spongey and the missions have no checkpoints, meaning you have to restart the mission from scratch at any death. As extra content, you may enjoy them, but these missions don’t emphasize what the game does well and aren’t ultimately worth your time.

"It’s not going to add a whole lot to the Evil Dead lore, nor will it make a dent in the gaming landscape, but for what it is, Evil Dead: The Game is worth your time, if only to have some tense, satisfying fun killing demons and humans alike."

While there is fan service to be found almost everywhere, from the characters to the audio logs, the best example is the environments, which are lovingly recreated major areas from the movies that bring you to some of the most important scenes. There’s a lot of satisfaction in seeing some of these locations for yourself and being able to explore, especially in missions where you can usually take your time, but it often feels like they’re actually too big for their own good. Objectives are frequently far apart on the map, and the journey to get there, either in a car or on foot, feels dull and without purpose. I like the scarcity of items and the satisfaction in finding a needed upgrade or health item, but there were many cross-map journeys that felt unnecessarily long.

On the whole, Evil Dead: The Game doesn’t break much new ground in terms of asymmetrical multiplayer games, but what it does, it does mostly well. It’s not entirely balanced or varied, so what you see up front is largely what you get, but I found myself still enjoying cutting the heads off of demons and hearing Bruce Campbell’s one-liners just as much ten hours in as I did the first time. It’s not going to add a whole lot to the Evil Dead lore, nor will it make a dent in the gaming landscape, but for what it is, Evil Dead: The Game is worth your time, if only to have some tense, satisfying fun killing demons and humans alike.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox Series X.