FAQ

It is a first-person action Soulslike from One More Level (the studio behind Ghostrunner), set in an alternate, supernatural reimagining of 19th-century Europe ravaged by a continent-wide plague. You play as William Dowsett, a resurrected soldier of Napoleon's Grande Armée who rises from a battlefield grave and wields supernatural powers while Napoleon's disembodied voice speaks inside his mind.

The game is scheduled to launch October 13, 2026. As with any pre-release date, treat it as subject to change until the developer confirms it.

It is slated for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, and it is set to arrive day one on Xbox Game Pass.

Yes. Community-reported coverage describes a demo with two chapters: Chapter I: Revival, a mostly linear battlefield tutorial that ends with General Lothaire, and Chapter VII: Witch Hunt, a later-game slice built around the rapier, musket, Shield Transmutation and traversal. The demo also adds new weapons and powers, such as the Rapier and Musket in the Lighthouse level.

The demo has no difficulty slider — it is a genuine Souls-like, deliberate and punishing, built around reading enemy wind-ups rather than out-damaging them. Instead of an easy mode, four assist settings flatten the curve: Target Lock (keeps the camera on the boss), Combat Assist (snaps your swings toward the enemy), Instant Restart (skips the death screen on runbacks), and Quick Cast (fires Transmutations without a confirm step).

Yes. The demo includes a "Target Lock On/Off" control plus a separate Switch Target control, so you can lock the camera onto an enemy and cycle between targets.

Yes — every action takes a primary and a secondary key, with a Reset to Defaults option. Beyond fully custom key bindings, controllers offer five presets: Default, Classic, Dodge/Block Swap, Bumper Jumper, and Bumper Jumper 2. Controller icons can also be themed for Xbox Series, PlayStation 5, or Nintendo layouts.

Combat is stamina- and skill-based. The core loop is parrying to break an enemy's Posture, blocking, using a stamina-gated dash to avoid damage, pressuring weak points, and finishing with Critical Attacks. Trading hits generally loses, so the game rewards reading telegraphs and punishing openings rather than mashing.

Lanterns are the game's checkpoint equivalent. Lighting one makes it a restart point and lets you spend Catalyst there. Resting or dying resets regular enemies, so treat each Lantern as a reset of the surrounding encounter.

Catalyst is an upgrade resource spent at Lanterns. Because spending it and resetting the world are tied together, the practical advice is to bank Catalyst before heading down dangerous paths.

Ambers are survival items that come in life-steal and regeneration variants. Picking a defensive Amber can turn a brutal fight into a survivable one, making them a key choice for tough boss attempts.

Community build coverage spans Sabre, Claymore, Musket, and Fire/Stasis Transmutation builds. Exact numbers are pre-release and unconfirmed, so treat specific stat allocations as community-reported rather than final. Prioritizing Maximum Health and Melee Damage early is the commonly recommended starting point.

The demo has two named bosses: General Lothaire, the Eagle-Bearer, a two-phase commander at the end of Chapter I: Revival, and High Justicar Aurelius, Last of the Faithful, a master fencer who serves as the demo's parry check.

Lothaire fights alongside the spawn of his rage, so the fight is partly about managing adds. Keep Target Lock on the General, deal with the summoned enemies, and use Stasis Transmutation to buy space when you get swarmed. The encounter is a two-phase fight, so expect his pressure to change partway through.

Aurelius is the parry test of the demo. Bait his attack strings, parry to break his Posture, and punish with Critical Attacks. Patience beats aggression here — trying to out-trade a master fencer is the fastest way to die.

Nephtoglobin is the plague substance tied to William's resurrection. It fuels his traversal abilities and his blood-magic Transmutations. In combat, melee hits and shattered Weak Points feed your Nephtoglobin, which you then cash into a Transmutation at the right moment.

Transmutations are William's blood-magic supernatural abilities. Named ones include the Fire Transmutation (removes organic barriers and burns enemies like Carrion), the Stasis Transmutation (used to buy space and thin enemy packs), and the Shield Transmutation, which is named for the demo's Lighthouse level with no further detail published. Channeling the power correctly strengthens attacks and unlocks new supernatural skills.

Carrion is immune to blades — you have to burn it. The Fire Transmutation, or any ignite effect, destroys the mass holding it together. This is one of several counters drawn straight from William's in-game journal.

The protagonist is William Dowsett, a young and bold Englishman disillusioned with the monarchy who volunteered to fight for Napoleon, inspired by his ideal of a unified Europe. Napoleon is portrayed by Vincent Cassel (community-reported cast). In-game, William hears Napoleon as a voice in his own head, speaking as a father would to a son.

The game takes place in an alternate, supernatural 19th-century Europe, including a Napoleon-era Paris twisted by dark magic where the dead walk and monsters prowl. Napoleon's victory at Waterloo opened the way east, and his conquest has unleashed something far more horrifying than war.

No confirmed PC system requirements were published in the available source material. Any pre-release figures circulating online should be treated as unconfirmed.

Yes. The demo includes a "Save Anytime" comfort feature that lets you save at any time and resume freely, on top of the Lantern checkpoint system.

Community- and developer-reported issues include: an Nvidia crash during level loading when FSR is selected (workaround: use TSR or DLSS); a D3D12 crash or wrong-GPU launch (workaround: force the discrete GPU, e.g. via Nvidia Control Panel); an AMD crash mentioning amdxc64.dll (workaround: clean driver reinstall); and a black or endless loading screen (safe fallback: restart, update the demo and driver, and retry with TSR). Start by installing the latest Steam update and current stable GPU driver.

Not clearly. The developer's June 11 pinned list still warns that enabling DLSS may freeze loading, while the June 10 version 1.02 post says "DLSS is Back" and makes DLSS 4.5 available. Because of this contradiction, the freeze is not labeled universally fixed. If DLSS freezes on your system, switch to TSR, restart, and report it rather than force-closing repeated loads with the same setting.

Follow the fastest safe order: update the demo, update your GPU driver, restart the game, and avoid FSR on an affected Nvidia GPU. If loading still fails, verify the game is using your discrete GPU. For a missing interface, toggle HDR off and then on. Change only one setting at a time and note the upscaler, Frame Generation, HDR, preset, and display mode that triggered the problem.