Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Deathmaster Plays a Bit Like a Stealthy Hollow Knight | IGN Preview

Key Preview Takeaways:

• Playing as a Skaven makes movement feel unique compared to other 2D sidescrollers.
• The level design reminded me of Hollow Knight.
• The quality of the story is still TBD after my very brief 30-minute hands-on demo.

It's rare that the giant, horrible rat men of the Skaven get a starring role in a Warhammer game, despite being one of the most unique and popular factions. They're normally the fodder you chew through in a horde game like Vermintide. So Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Deathmaster immediately sets itself apart by putting you in the stinking rags of Vihneek, a resourceful rodent we're introduced to as he's being unceremoniously dumped into a festering pit full of corpses. You know, it's probably not how he planned to spend his day. But rising from his unfortunate circumstances, he quickly takes to sneaking and murder in the spirit of his backstabbing lineage across a variety of gloomy, vermin-filled 2D sidescrolling environments that provided a good variety of challenges even in this short demo.

Vihneek's starting surroundings are gory, putrid, and almost hopeless. Which is to say, absolutely perfect for a game starring the Skaven, with layered caverns stretching off into the background and every crevice and torn canvas painted with a gloomy malice. I'm not a huge expert on Age of Sigmar lore, but coming from a Warhammer Fantasy background, I wouldn't have necessarily been able to tell this was a different setting. The Skaven are still quite recognizably Skaven, in all their duplicitous glory, doing Skaven things like sneaking and scheming through an underground world ruled over by many clans who often engage in bitter rivalries.

I started out almost completely powerless, with my grubby little paws bound in wooden stocks and only able to slowly waddle in either direction. But upon freeing myself with a bit of percussive problem-solving, I found Vihneek to be an agile little scamp who is quite enjoyable to control across a variety of platforming challenges. Notably, you can run along most walls and ceilings, which immediately sells the idea of playing as a Skaven and makes movement feel quite a bit different from similar side-scrollers. The animations that bring this to life are spot-on as well. Vihneek is just a weird little guy, and I support him.

I found Vihneek to be an agile little scamp who is quite enjoyable to control across a variety of platforming challenges. For the first little bit after this sneaky escape, mobility and stealth were my only tools. It was still unclear how I got here, but the twisting nooks that stretched out in every direction seemed to be some sort of prison. Coming into close contact with any of the armed guards means instant death and restarting at the place I entered the current chamber, and these jailers can also throw shockingly accurate projectiles to get you down from a high perch if they spot you.

Hiding behind drapes, extinguishing lights, and tossing abandoned skulls as distractions are among the many ways to get by them. Vihneek also has a useful instinct vision mode activated by holding L2 that locks him in place, but lets him see things like enemy vision cones and interactable objects that might let him drop a box from a crane onto an enemy, as one example. The right stick can also move the camera a few feet in any direction, including up or down, which I often found helpful in locating the next ledge or exit I needed to reach.

The level design reminded me a fair bit of Hollow Knight in the way it rewarded exploration and made me stop and think about how to navigate certain rooms. While trying to escape, Vihneek can go searching for precious warpstone – the magical space cocaine (yes, really) that Skaven are obsessed with, as it's what caused them to evolve into intelligent humanoids in the first place and powers much of their technology. This is optional, but it also gives you additional skill points. More on that in a bit.

Eventually, I came across a shield that I could use in a pinch to bash the guards' brains out, which changed the gameplay flow a bit. Instead of simply having to sneak and hide, I could get behind normal enemies and execute them in a gory display of malice with a single button tap. Running, or even dropping down from a high spot, makes noise though, so I still had to be careful.

Also, my pathetic piece of sharp wood didn't do any good when I ended up getting chased by a rat ogre, only to be saved by a mysterious white rodent with blades for a hand who didn't offer me much choice but to be recruited into his clan.

This is where things get more interesting, though. Vihneek is inducted as a Night Runner, which are kind of like the elite ninja assassins of the Skaven world. The job comes with a rad new outfit, but more importantly, a new suite of powers. The first of these, unlocked right away, is a grappling hook that allowed me to zip up to various locations that were previously inaccessible. The rest are purchased with warpstone and include everything from silencing your footsteps to being able to deploy smoke bombs. Sadly, I wasn't able to return to the clan hideout to purchase these during the demo.

This is the point that Deathmaster starts to feel like a bit more of a power fantasy. You're still quite fragile, but I got the sense that I had become the predator and everyone else was now the prey. Okay, maybe not that rat ogre. Each area became a bit like a puzzle as I scanned for environmental traps, distractions, and hiding places to figure out which guards I could get the drop on, and in which order, without alerting their friends.

The platforming itself wasn't especially difficult, at least so far, but careful observation of the subterranean world often led me to a warpstone reward. The name of the game is much more slow and thorough progression as opposed to tricky execution, although there were some rooms where I had to enact my plan quickly to not get caught by a guard.

The mixture of stealth game mainstays with Hollow Knight-stye platforming clicks together pretty seamlessly. The story, however, is still a little bit murky. I'm not sure why Vihneek was dropped into a pit like so much rotting garbage. We don't know why he has some kind of odd, glowing appendage literally welded onto where the back half of his tail used to be, or why his clanmates jeeringly call him "half-rat." All of the violence so far has been of the Skaven-on-Skaven variety. And that's very appropriate. The main reason the Vermintide hasn't overtaken the world yet in this universe is that the children of the Great Horned Rat spend as much time plotting against and murdering each other as they do the other races.

My first mission was to take out a rival clan's gnawhole, which is essentially a passage even deeper into the world they can use to summon reinforcements. Before I could get there, though, the unfortunately brief 30-minute demo ended. We did get to see a little bit more hands-off, including a boss fight with a deadly Stormvermin that requires Vihneek to use the environment – and ultimately a warpstone-powered lightning cannon – to win a battle that would leave him broken and discarded if he fought fair. And what good Skaven fights fair?

I had a maniacally delightful time with the very small slice of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Deathmaster I got to chew on. The art style is gloomy and grimy while remaining very readable. The mixture of stealth game mainstays with Hollow Knight-stye platforming clicks together pretty seamlessly. Exploring and backstabbing my way through its sometimes tricky areas as I gradually gained access to new abilities kept things fresh. And seeing Age of Sigmar from a Skaven's beady little eyes makes it all seem new again. A bit moldy, maybe, but new.

Overall, I'm just looking forward to playing more. Even having run through the demo three times, my appetite for furry mayhem hasn't been sated. We'll all get to seize Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Deathmaster in our duplicitous clutches in 2027.

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Leana Hafer is a contributing freelancer for IGN with a specialty in RPGs, strategy, horror, and survival games. She has been reviewing video games professionally since 2010 and is one of IGN's most prolific contributors, with more than 100 reviews published. You can also find her work on sites like PC Gamer and PCGamesN.