Heaven Crawler made its debut at last week’s Latin American Games Showcase during Summer Game Fest 2026, revealed by independent developer Carbon Machina. Heaven Crawler is an atmospheric action-adventure roguelite with RPG elements. Players explore The Womb, a colossal forgotten tower whose peak reaches Heaven’s Gates. Whoever reaches the summit gains the power to bring back those who are no longer among the living.
The game captures the immersive, melancholic aesthetic of early 2000s titles through heavy bloom, fog, and evocative worldbuilding, and uses its roguelite structure to tell a story about loss, grief, and overcoming it. A Kickstarter campaign is now in pre-launch, with the full campaign going live in September.
Players wield mechanical arms, movement-altering masks, and magic to escape tight situations. Mixing gear, relics, and elemental modifiers, you build a unique playstyle with no fixed classes. The tower is layered across 9 unique zones, each an ever-changing environment with its own aesthetic, traps, and enemies, culminating in colossal boss encounters. Meanwhile, the protagonist’s interactions and attitude evolve throughout the journey, and the tower adapts alongside the player’s growing mastery.
“Two key members of our team lost our fathers at a young age. In a way, Heaven Crawler is our version of ICO and Zelda: a child thrown into a hostile adult world he doesn’t yet understand, forced to grow up quickly in order to survive. The game comes from the emotional experience of holding onto grief for so long that you begin losing yourself, and from the dream of wanting to bring back someone you lost, no matter the cost. We want it to feel like a good conversation with a friend at 3am – about the cost of letting go, and about how life is precious precisely because it ends.” – Carbon Machina Creative Director Diego Armando Muñoz Rodríguez
Heaven Crawler’s Core Features Explained
- Dynamic & Modular Skill-Based Combat. Mix-n-Match your gear and make your own playstyle; unleash combos and develop new tactics (for each run). Choose your battles wisely to persevere and reach the top!
- Hand-Animated Player vs Procedurally Animated Enemies. Mechanical animals roam the Tower, each with their own patterns, behaviours, and attacks. They react and interact in different ways, so you’ll need to pay attention. The Child interacts with its environment, and its attitude evolves through the game.
- A Living Tower. The Tower and its “layers” adapt to the player’s performance, creating a different challenge every run for every player. It’s also the key to unveiling the mystery of its purpose.
- Each Death a New Beginning. You’ll grow stronger over time by unlocking new content and possibilities, but so will the Tower. For advanced players, there exists a challenge system that allows them to have more risk for more rewards.
- A Story Told Through the Genre’s Structure. We use the Sisyphean structure of the roguelite genre to tell a story about loss, grief, and learning to grow up. The narrative is mostly told through the gameplay and environment, so everything in the game is a clue, and every clue has a purpose.
You can wishlist Heaven Crawler on Steam here.
