33 Immortals’ creative director discusses Heaven, Hell, and roguelikes

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A 14th century Italian poem underlies an ambitious attempt to transform a popular video game genre into something completely unique.

33 Immortals is an exploration of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy—a work credited with both defining the Christian worldview of the afterlife and solidifying the modern Italian language through its three-book exploration of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. In 33 Immortals, players team up with 32 others as they fight their way through the afterlife in an attempt to change their fate, face down the wrath of God, and almost certainly die—repeatedly.

But instead of simply retelling the allegorical (sometimes anagogical) tale of Dante’s journey at the side of three wise guides, developer Thunder Lotus Games examined those 14,233 lines through the context of medieval Italy.

The result is a roguelike immersed in the setting of the Divine Comedy—complete with Dante himself, Beatrice, Virgil, and Charon as guides of a sort—but telling a very different story of rebellion against first Lucifer, then Adam and Eve, and (finally) God.

Divine inspiration

“What if we tell this story of the player being damned and not accepting their fate?” said 33 Immortals Creative Director Stephan Logier. “Not accepting the authority and the law of God, not accepting that they will be punished for eternity, and actually rebelling against that fate and fighting together to find a way to change their destiny?”

It was this early idea—driven by the historical contextualization of the Divine Comedy and a desire to explore the potential of multiplayer games—that led Thunder Lotus to a game that drops 33 players into Dante’s poetic world, and asks them to fight against the powers of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.

To read the rest of this story, which first ran on Dec. 4, 2023, visit Epic Games Store.