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Valor Mortis
And a new demo is available while you wait.
It didn’t take long into this year’s Summer Game Fest to recognize that, in the rush to escape GTA 6’s gravitational pull, the games industry has created a new issue: a September 2026 so crowded with titles that players will need serious dedication—along with time and money—to get through even a portion of them. So it was inevitable that someone would blink first. Enter Ghostrunner developer One More Level, potentially the first of many to announce it’s pulling out of the fray, with its promising Napoleonic first-person Soulslike Valor Mortis now scheduled for release this October.
More specifically, Valor Mortis has abandoned its original 24th September launch date in favor of a 13th October release on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC—placing it in the current relative gap (until everyone else also reshuffles their calendars, that is) between September’s congestion and GTA 6’s all-consuming 19th November debut. Announcing the date change, One More Level explained, "September has become absolutely stacked with incredible looking games. We knew this was a possibility, but when you are in a partner showcase as we were, dates get locked weeks in advance. We want to give Valor Mortis (and your wallet) some room to breathe."
Additionally, the studio says it will use the extra time before release to respond to feedback from Valor Mortis’ newly released Steam demo. That demo, if you’re interested, includes two chapters: one set on a grim battlefield that introduces the game’s core combat system, while the second is a mid-game level where players use protagonist William’s transmutation abilities to cross a destroyed bridge to the Lighthouse. This, it notes, features a steeper difficulty curve, providing a taste of the challenges ahead.
Valor Mortis was unveiled last August and transports players to an alternate-history version of the 19th century. Here, the Napoleonic Wars are ongoing, and you—a soldier in Bonaparte’s Grande Armée—are unfortunately dead. That is, until you wake up on a battlefield devastated by a mysterious supernatural plague, only to find your former friends and foes transformed into terrible abominations.
Eurogamer’s Dom Peppiatt spent some time with Valor Mortis at last year’s Gamescom and enjoyed what they saw. "It's compelling, gratifying, and it will get its hooks into your brain and make you think 'OK, I'm not putting this pad down until I've beaten this monster'," Dom wrote. "One More Level, indeed."