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The Return has opened its Eighteen Hells on Steam, although only seven of them are ready to punish you
The Return begins with what amounts to an administrative mistake in the afterlife. A living person who was never supposed to die is dragged into Hell anyway. With no appeals department in sight, the solution is to grab a weapon and start fighting back toward the mortal world.
By Kader The Return 
The Return entered Steam Early Access on September 15. Developed and published by YIN WEN CE, it is a side-scrolling 2D action roguelite built around Chinese underworld imagery, skill construction and artifact synergies.
The current build is deliberately incomplete. It contains the prologue and Chapters 1 through 7, for eight chapter nodes in total. The developer estimates roughly eight hours for the content currently available.
The final plan is considerably larger
The intended full game contains nineteen nodes: one prologue followed by eighteen layers of Hell. Each major chapter is planned around a different infernal punishment, enemy roster, visual theme and combat rhythm.
The journey draws on locations involving tongue-ripping, scissors, iron trees, mountains of blades and the river of forgetfulness before eventually moving toward the courts of the underworld.
It is a lot of Hell for a small indie game to build.
A run starts with a character and becomes a build along the way
Players choose a character before entering the underworld, then collect spiritual essence, skills, artifacts and attribute upgrades as the run develops.
The focus is on interactions between those systems rather than simply stacking unrelated statistical bonuses. YIN WEN CE also plans to add more playable characters, abilities, artifacts, equipment and permanent progression during Early Access.
Room progression is handcrafted instead of relying entirely on procedural generation. Variation is therefore expected to come primarily from builds, rewards and combat decisions.
Even the loot has an unpleasant explanation
The Return ties its roguelite rewards directly into its fiction. Chests contain remnants of people who rebelled before the player: unjustly dead souls, failed escapees and powerful warriors eventually consumed by the underworld.
Spiritual essence is even darker. The story frames it not as a natural magical resource but as material refined from living people who should never have died. The power used to challenge Hell is effectively residue produced by the same system the protagonist is trying to escape.
Early Access is expected to last six to twelve months
The developer currently expects the Early Access period to take approximately half a year to one year, although that schedule can change.
Feedback is being requested on combat feel, difficulty progression, room pacing, bosses, skill and artifact balance, controls, performance and quality-of-life features. New chapters or playable characters are targeted at intervals of roughly three to six weeks.
Town systems, shops, equipment and permanent upgrades are also planned as the game expands. The price may increase when Early Access ends, with any change to be announced beforehand.
Its Hell borrows heavily from shadow-puppet silhouettes
Visually, The Return uses black silhouettes, deep reds and enormous background structures inspired by Chinese shadow puppetry. Human characters often appear deliberately tiny beside infernal judges, towers and machinery.
The Steam page also includes a generative-AI disclosure. The developer says the technology is used for some monster prototypes, some background music and enhancements to store images.
The game is currently available only for Windows and includes interface localization in eleven languages, including English, French, Japanese, Korean and both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
Seven main chapters are playable today. Eleven more stand between the current build and the complete journey it is promising.