Valor Mortis: Release Window, Platforms, and What Makes This Soulslike Stand Out

A first-person soulslike that wants you to think before you swing

Most soulslikes ask you to memorize attack patterns and time your rolls. Valor Mortis wants you to do that and decide whether the fight is even worth having. The upcoming first-person action RPG from developer One More Level (the studio behind Ghostrunner) has been quietly building buzz since its reveal, and with a 2026 release window now locked in, it's worth understanding what separates it from the crowded soulslike field.

Release window and platforms

Valor Mortis is currently slated to launch in 2026. The studio has not narrowed it to a specific month or quarter, and given the usual churn of game development, treat any narrower date you see floating around with skepticism until it comes from an official channel.

On the platform side, the game is confirmed for:

• PC (via Steam and the Epic Games Store)
• PlayStation 5
• Xbox Series X|S

There's no word on a last-gen version, which tracks with the game's visual ambitions and the general industry shift away from PS4 and Xbox One. A cloud or handheld release hasn't been announced either, so don't count on a Switch 2 version just yet.

The pitch: Dishonored meets Elden Ring

The elevator pitch that's followed Valor Mortis around is "Elden Ring with Dishonored's toolkit," and for once the comparison isn't just marketing shorthand. You play as a revenant — a soldier resurrected by a dying empire and bound to a cursed blade — navigating a plague-ravaged capital city that's been sealed off from the outside world.

What makes it notable is how it handles stealth and combat. Rather than treating stealth as a fail state before the "real" fight begins, Valor Mortis lets you approach most encounters from multiple angles. You can:

• Sneak through rooftops and sewers to bypass patrols entirely
• Use environmental hazards — collapsing scaffolding, oil fires, loose gargoyles — to thin out groups
• Engage directly with a stamina-based melee system that rewards parries and punishes greedy combos
• Retreat and reposition mid-fight, because enemies lose track of you if you break line of sight

The last point is the big one. In most soulslikes, once a boss aggros, you're locked in until one of you dies. Valor Mortis lets you disengage, which changes the rhythm of every fight. It's closer to how Dishonored handles confrontation: violence is always an option, but it's rarely the only one.

First-person combat that actually works

First-person melee is notoriously hard to get right. For every Chivalry 2 that nails the weight and timing of a sword swing, there's a pile of games where hitting things feels like swinging a pool noodle at a piñata. One More Level has experience here — Ghostrunner was all about first-person momentum and precision — and early hands-off footage suggests they've carried that lessons over.

The key features here are:

• Directional attacks and blocks that map to your mouse or right stick, so you're not just mashing a single button
• A posture system similar to Sekiro, where breaking an enemy's guard opens them up for a critical strike
• Weapon-specific movesets — the cursed blade plays nothing like the greatsword or the whip-chain you pick up later
• A stamina bar that actually matters, meaning you can't just spam light attacks and hope for the best

It's not a power fantasy. The game wants you to feel like a scrappy survivor, not a demigod.

The world and the "death loop"

The setting is a sealed capital city — think Bloodborne's Yharnam by way of a Renaissance plague ward. The streets are cramped, the rooftops are your friend, and the architecture is designed to support vertical play. One More Level has said the level design is metroidvania-adjacent, with shortcuts that loop back on themselves and areas you'll only be able to reach once you've found the right tool or key.

Death works a little differently than you might expect. When you die, you don't just respawn at the last bonfire equivalent. Instead, you're pulled into a spectral overlay of the city — a sort of ghost-realm version of the same map — where you can scout ahead, find hidden passages, and sometimes bypass a tough encounter entirely. It's a clever twist on the usual corpse-run, and it gives the game a distinct identity beyond "soulslike in first person."

What makes it notable

The soulslike genre is crowded, and 2026 is shaping up to be a busy year for action RPGs. Valor Mortis stands out for three reasons:

1. It respects your time. The disengage-and-retreat mechanic means you're not stuck banging your head against a boss for an hour if you don't want to be. You can sneak past, find a shortcut, or come back later with better gear.
2. It's genuinely tense. First-person perspective makes every enemy encounter feel more intimate and more dangerous. You can't see behind you. You have to listen.
3. It's not afraid to be weird. The spectral overlay, the cursed blade that whispers to you, the plague-mask aesthetic — this is a game with a point of view, not a genre checklist.

What to play while you wait

If you want a taste of what Valor Mortis is going for, Ghostrunner (from the same studio) is the obvious starting point — it's fast, first-person, and brutal in the best way. For the stealth-and-consequence angle, Dishonored: Definitive Edition still holds up. And if you want a soulslike that rewards patience and positioning over pure reflexes, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice remains the gold standard. Keep an eye on official channels for a firmer release date as 2026 approaches.