What happens when you take Dante’s Divine Comedy, rebuild it as a 1990s anime series, and then turn that series into a Vampire Survivors-style horde survival deck-builder? You get Hell Maiden, and it drops on Steam Early Access tomorrow — 16 July 2026 — from Portuguese indie studio AstralShift.
A Second Trip Through the Nine Circles
The setup flips the classic poem’s premise: Dante has already reached Paradise once, but returns to Hell with no memory of how she got there or why she is back. Her only option is to fight through all nine circles again and claw her way back to the surface. It is a premise that sounds like an excuse to loop through the same content twice — except that Hell Maiden’s structure keeps each run feeling different through its card-based build system.
The core loop sits somewhere between Vampire Survivors and a roguelike deck-builder. Dante auto-attacks as waves of demons pile in, and every upgrade selection is handled through Spirit Cards — split into Weapon Cards (active attacks) and Mod Cards (passive augments). With 40-plus abilities at launch and companions from Classical literature who each unlock five new cards when rescued, there is a lot of build variety even in Early Access.
The Card System and Early Access Content
At launch, the Early Access build covers the first two circles of Hell — Limbo and Lust — with their own enemy rosters, environmental hazards, quests and boss encounters. Four Poets of Limbo can be rescued across runs, and each one permanently unlocks a set of five new cards that expands your build options for future attempts. Additional abilities drop after each defeated boss, so the power curve within a single run feels genuinely different depending on which circles you push through.
AstralShift plans to add the remaining seven circles over the Early Access period, which is expected to run for at least a year before the full 1.0 release.
Mili Handles the Opening Theme
The opening theme, “Not my Paradiso,” is by Mili — the Japanese-Canadian music collective behind tracks on the Honkai: Star Rail soundtrack and the Goblin Slayer OP. If those names ring a bell, you already have a sense of the tone: theatrical, melancholic, with gothic edges. The track premiered on YouTube today, the day before the game launches. For Singapore’s Honkai community in particular, Mili’s involvement is a genuine reason to pay attention to a game that might otherwise fly under the radar.
AstralShift’s previous games drew heavily from 1990s shoujo anime for their visual palette, and Hell Maiden extends that to a faster-paced action context — the result is something that looks closer to an animated feature than a typical horde survival game.
Where to Get It
Hell Maiden enters Steam Early Access on 16 July 2026 for Windows. SGD pricing is set by Steam’s regional pricing system — check the Steam store page directly for the Singapore price. Full controller support is included from day one. Fans of anime-style indie games and the Vampire Survivors genre would be doing themselves a disservice by sleeping on this one. Check out more game news on GameTrader for what else is launching this week.
