Most soulslikes send players into ruined kingdoms, cursed castles, or dying fantasy worlds. Valor Mortis is taking a stranger route: it drops the genre into an alternate version of the Napoleonic Wars, then drags the battlefield through plague, resurrection, and supernatural horror.
That is the hook that makes One More Level’s next game stand out. The studio behind Ghostrunner is not just making another hard action game with stamina, checkpoints, and bosses. It is using a brutal piece of European history as the base for something uglier, stranger, and far less predictable.
Valor Mortis follows William, a soldier of Napoleon’s Grande Armée who rises from a battlefield grave into a world that has gone horribly wrong. The war is still there, but it has been twisted by a mysterious plague and the corrupting power now running through William himself.
That setup gives the game a different mood from the usual fantasy soulslike. This is not about a chosen knight wandering through ancient ruins. It is about a soldier waking up after death and realizing the army, the country, and the cause he served may have become part of something monstrous.
The Napoleonic setting also gives the horror more texture. Military uniforms, ruined battlefields, old weapons, and imperial imagery become part of the nightmare instead of background decoration.
Valor Mortis is a first-person action soulslike, which immediately changes how its combat looks and feels.
That perspective makes the danger more personal. Parries, dashes, finishers, ranged attacks, and supernatural abilities happen right in front of the player’s face, leaving less distance between William and whatever is trying to tear him apart.
Ghostrunner proved the studio knows how to build fast, precise first-person action. Valor Mortis looks slower and heavier, but the same experience with timing, movement, and close-range pressure could help the game avoid feeling like a standard soulslike with the camera moved forward.
The genre label will grab attention, but the setting may be the real reason to watch this one. Valor Mortis is not just using the Napoleonic Wars as a costume. The game’s world is built around a Europe poisoned by endless conflict, where soldiers and monsters start to blur together.
William is not cutting through anonymous fantasy creatures. He is facing plague-ridden abominations tied to the same war machine that brought him back.
The supernatural powers help push the game further from historical fiction. William can use corrupted abilities, unlock new ways to move through the world, and uncover secrets hidden across the battlefield. That mix of military history and body-horror fantasy gives Valor Mortis a tone most soulslikes do not have.
Valor Mortis is currently set to launch on October 13, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. It was previously dated for September, but One More Level and Lyrical Games moved it out of a crowded release window.
A weird first-person soulslike from the Ghostrunner team needs space for players to notice what makes it different, especially in a year packed with big releases.
The real test will be whether the combat feels sharp enough to support the premise. If One More Level can make first-person parries, boss fights, and exploration feel as tense as the setting sounds, Valor Mortis could be one of 2026’s stranger and more interesting action games.
