Doom is getting a mobile roguelike and it has no business being this cute

Mighty Doom is a top-down shooter for mobile that makes murdering demons absolutely adorable - and it's surprising me most of all because I think I might actually be excited for it.

The game takes place in the toy factory where the little action figures you collect in the modern Doom games are manufactured. You control the Mini Slayer through top-down shooter levels, contending against similarly cute-ified versions of familiar Doom demons like Imps and Pinkies. Larger enemies like Arachnotrons also appear as bosses.

It all looks a bit like a modernized version of a classic arcade shooter like Ikari Warriors or Capcom's Commando - which I'm suddenly realizing with some horror are too old to be meaningful reference points for many gamers today. The linear top-down shooter doesn't get as much attention these days as a lot of other retro genres, and I'm intrigued to see it applied to a cutesy Doom aesthetic.

Mighty Doom is a roguelike - or roguelite, if you're a genre pedant - and will feature upgradeable weapons and gear to keep you progressively powering up for greater challenges. Here's where I feel some trepidation, as I could see the gating for these items and upgrades being built to funnel you toward microtransactions - that's generally how mobile games make their money, after all.

The official release date for Mighty Doom is March 21 across iOS and Android, though technically some people have already been playing it for a while. The game's been available in a limited test release on Android since 2022. Here's hoping all that testing time has smoothed out whatever issues Mighty Doom may have had along the way.

If you're curious, Alpha Dog Games is leading development here. It's a mobile-focused studio that was acquired by Bethesda parent ZeniMax in 2019, and is thus now under the Microsoft umbrella.

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