If there was one thing I wasn’t expecting the developers of Ghostrunner to announce was Souls-like game. It was such a huge departure, that watching the announcement trailer, I never would have guessed One More Level was going to pop up at the end. Going from a fast paced cyberpunk acrobatic game, to a slow hardcore Souls-like set in a gritty alternate 19th century where Napoleon creates supernatural super-soldiers wasn’t expected. Nevertheless, I was eager to get my hands on Valor Mortis and play it for myself.

The demo starts out with me being woken up, after what I presume to be dead, by Napoleon’s voice beckoning me to continue. I was disoriented, it seems I’ve been infected with something, and there is so much death around me. Stumbling through muddy paths, destroyed buildings, and rotting corpses paints a picture that the battle here has been done for a bit. Quickly I come across my first enemy, a crazed soldier hacking away at an animal corpse. He is an ally, part of the same army, but the madness has consumed him.

What happened during this war?

The beginning of this demo is a slow and gory guide to teach you what to expect with the combat. Right trigger to attack, hold it to heavy attack, parry, dodge, sneak for assassination kills. All pretty standard in a first person melee action game, but the finishers are nice and brutal. You will need to manage your stamina which is used when blocking, dodging, and attacking. If you’ve played a Souls-like you’re already familiar with that concept. Pretty quickly I grabbed my first side arm, this one is a revolver pistol which had plenty of uses. Besides the obvious use of ranged damage, I had to use it to blow up pustules of corruption on environments to open up pathways, as well as shooting pustules on enemies for critical damage and to obtain Nephtoblobin orbs that refill your abilities.

In Valor Mortis you do unlock special abilities. The plague that is rampant in the land that Napoleon has unleashed has infected you as well, allowing you to wield special abilities when acquired. Soon after I unlocked a fire ability after coming across a nasty looking mangled corpse propped up by flesh and sinew. It sprung alive and grabbed my left arm infusing me with fire. I now had the abilities to blast a wide arcing flame out of my hand that uses up Nephtoblobin. The fire is great for crowd control as it will set multiple enemies on fire and, if sustained long enough, cause them to stun opening them up for attacks. Like the gun, the fire ability also allows you to unlock paths in the environment by burning down organic blockades.

Obtain powers from these twisted relics of Napoleons corruption.

The demo ramps up some difficulty as I head into a larger battlefield area with smaller optional paths, ranged enemies, and a crazy soldier who was running on all fours like an animal. The optional path had an elite type enemy that through grenades and did AoE attacks, shooting its weak spot on its arm did critical attacks. Coming up to the only path forward is a cage, knowing how this would likely go I tried preparing for the ambush. While I was correct about the ambush, I was not prepared for the fight and had my first death.

Valor Mortis being a Souls-like, death means you spawn back at your last checkpoint, you have one opportunity to get your XP back from where you died, and of course, all enemies respawn. Anytime you rest at a checkpoint or respawn, expect the enemies to be back. That’s okay, I knew the area and I knew the trap, second run was a piece of cake.

What ungodly plague did Napoleon spread through his soldiers?

Before I knew it, my demo time was almost already up and I was being told I had five minutes left, I didn’t want to stop, not when things were just getting really good! The developer did tell me that a bit of Ghostrunner DNA is still in there with wall running and such, unfortunately I didn’t get to play any of that, but I’m very eager to dive deeper into Valor Mortis.

Valor Mortis is set to launch October 13th, 2026 on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.