An Ankou

About this game

With death comes a new job. An Ankou is a fast-paced action roguelike where you usher souls from the land of the living whilst battling hordes of demons. As the servant of Death, explore a haunted open environment, scavenge resources, and craft equipment to help in your task.

With multiple professions to imbue the Ankou, each with its own items and skills, random events scattered across the maps, and optional challenges to tackle, there is tons of replayability, and each playthrough is unique.

Servants of Death

Death has given you a new purpose. Legends state that the last dead of the year becomes the Ankou, who helps lost souls depart the land of the living. And for some reason, this is a busy year.… With your scythe, cart, and tools from your living profession, collect resources and souls to craft weapons, upgrade and survive.

The Tools of Your Trades

Each run, a newly dead person inhabits the role of the Ankou, and they bring the knowledge and tools from their profession in life. Each version of the Ankou gives you access to new weapons and abilities to unlock as you dispatch unruly demons. How many souls can you aid using the skills of a blacksmith, a soldier, an apothecary, a cook and others?

Forage and Craft

Roam the haunted lands searching for resources to craft and upgrade your gear. Use your scythe to harvest wood, plants and metal, or hunt dangerous beasts for rare and precious components.

Legions of Demons

Most of your challenges will begin with a handful of evil creatures to defeat, but they will quickly escalate into waves of hundreds of demons fighting alongside increasingly powerful bosses. An Ankou has a fast-paced progression and swiftly shifts from careful exploration to frenetic fights.

Choose your Gear and Gameplay

Multiple tools of your old trade are ready to be used, but more can be unlocked as you play. Choose your gear based on the available resources, challenges you have to overcome, and the playstyle you prefer. But can you craft what you need before waves of deadly demons overpower you?

Customise your Experience

• Multiple game modes with game durations between 15 minutes and 1 hour
  
• Tackle objectives and increase difficulty at your own pace
  
• Different control schemes for all profiles: 2 sticks, 1 stick, 1 stick with auto-aim, mouse and keyboard
  
• Regular updates. Always know when the next update is due.

Latest news

• Patch Notes·7 Oct 2025Official

  Important Security Update Available ✅

  Update – Oct 10, 12PM CET: ✅ Good news! The new patch resolving the Unity-related vulnerability is now live. This update fully addresses the issue, and it’s now completely safe to launch and enjoy the game again. Thank you for your patience and understanding while we worked to keep your experience safe and secure. _ Update - Oct 7, 9PM CET: We’ve encountered some issues with the update addressing the Unity-related vulnerability. Our team is already working on a new patch that will be available very soon to permanently resolve the issue. In the meantime, we recommend not launching the game until the upcoming update is deployed. Thank you for your patience and understanding. _ Your safety while playing our games is our top priority. We’ve been informed of a recent security vulnerability affecting Unity. Although no malicious activity has been detected in connection with this issue, we’re taking immediate action to keep our players protected. A new update is now live on An Ankou and includes the necessary security fixes. We strongly encourage all players to update the game as soon as possible to ensure the best and most secure gameplay experience. You can find additional details on Unity’s official website here: https://unity.com/security/sept-2025-01 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2281650/An_Ankou/
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• Patch Notes·7 Dec 2023Official

  V0.5.2

  It's December and holidays are coming soon! For you all to enjoy your cozy winter gaming sesh, we've added some exciting cool stuff this time with many new Steam Achievements to aim for. Like are you gonna be the ghosts' best friend? Or you're gonna collect almost all the possible badges of honor ? V0.5.2 changelog : A bunch of new Steam achievements ! Auto-aim has been improved and can now be overridden when using the movement input (keyboard & controller) or when using the aim input (only for the controller). It means that you can use the auto-aim and yet be able to focus on a specific enemy when you want. The Volatile Gift is not volatile now and won't trigger anymore when you're hit while protected by the Parry skill of the Soldier. Follow for more updates by joining our Discord and wishlisting the game now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2281650/An_Ankou/
  Read full article on Community Announcements (Krobill)

• Patch Notes·10 Nov 2023Official

  V0.5.1b

  Important Balance change: - The Soldier now starts with the Crossbow instead of the Sword. Sorry we really wanted to do that and forgot to push this change yesterday. Fixes : - The Crossbow spirit was broken and didn't hit a lot of enemies with its bolts - Filled some missing German & Chinese localizations (still a few missing left)
  Read full article on Community Announcements (Krobill)

• Patch Notes·9 Nov 2023Official

  Quality of Life V0.5.1

  New Features: The second music track (music of Noz-Ha-Deiz) is now in its complete and glorious state with live recordings of violin! The in game pause menu now features a character sheets with all stats A lot of items now have a far more precise description of the bonus they give per level / max Leaving a game and deleting a game now trigger a confirmation dialog box The Harvesting UI now show additional information (how many resources remain, how much you can carry, how much you have) The Crafting Wheel has been completely overhauled All upgradeable items are grouped in a parent category (Upgrades) : weapon, pieces of armor and spirits Alchemy subcategory has been moved in the tools parent category All weapon subcategories have been removed and weapons have been grouped (accessible weapons and how you can gain them will be changed in a future update) You can now cancel a craft at the cost of 1 resource (always of the first type of the recipe) Some Attack VFX have been added on Undeads and Spitters The in game interface show all armor slots, even empty ones. Items ready to be upgraded (weapons, spirits, armors) now all show a plus symbol on the new inventory UI Threat barrier aspect has been improved and you now have to actively interact with it to pass through (and raise the threat level) You have to interact with the barrier of Blue Arenas to leave them. No more risk of leaving by accident. Spirits are now orbiting your character as blue balls of light when you run and appear automatically as soon as you stop. Balance Changes: Ker Koad has been modified to have an Altar right next to the starting point Players are now forced to choose a Spirit at the first altar of their first game Some tutorial steps have been removed You can now craft a Cursed Soul from 3 regular Soul Darkness difficulty modifier for Arenas has been significantly increased Ring of the Backpacker has been nerfed to grant only quarter of an heart when lucky instead of half an heart Fixes : Mouse ...
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• Patch Notes·30 Oct 2023Official

  V0.4.2c

  It's Halloween! Features : - You can't craft a healing potion when you're full life - You can't craft ammunitions when you're already maxed out Balance Changes : - Spiders are now a bit slower and only make a half heart of damage per attack - Fast Spiders and Undeads attack a bit less frequently - Floating Eyes move and turn when they aim a bit more slowly Fixes : - 2 reward icons were swapped for the Nun - Added some missing texts for Chinese - Hopefully the "double nature whistle" bug should be fixed now
  Read full article on Community Announcements (Krobill)