Valor Mortis had a free playable demo on PC between June 7, 2026 and September 8, 2026. It was the first time the studio opened the game to everyone without a sign-up or a key, more than 250,000 players tried it, and it shaped a good deal of what the finished game will ship as. It is no longer available.
Contents
The demo held two levels, drawn from opposite ends of the chapter sequence.
Level | What it was | What it introduced |
|---|---|---|
Chapter I: Revival | A ravaged battlefield the studio described as a tutorial for the first-person combat system, familiar to anyone who played the October 2025 pre-alpha playtest. It closed on the General Lothaire fight | The sabre, the flintlock pistol, the Fire Transmutation, lanterns and Catalysts |
Chapter VII | A brand new level built around a destroyed bridge to a lighthouse, crossed using transmutation traversal. The studio said it expanded the game's scope dramatically | The rapier, the musket, a shield Transmutation, and corrupted villagers as enemies |
The build also carried a player survey at the end, the same method the studio had used for the playtest.
Both levels were, in the studio's own later words, "bespoke versions of those chapters that we recreated for Steam Next Fest" rather than the shipping versions. Details taken from demo footage should be read as demo-specific.
What Hands-On Play Found
Accounts of people playing the demo add detail the announcements did not. The General Lothaire fight was a two-phase encounter, answered by shooting his weak points, blocking to build posture damage, and stunning him with the Fire Transmutation. The later level contained a second boss, which at least one account found noticeably easier than Lothaire, though no source names it.
The build itself was in far better shape than the October 2025 playtest had been. Where the playtest drew reports of crashes, stuttering and unfinished animations, accounts of the demo raised no serious performance complaints beyond occasional failures to register an enemy attack. That gap is worth carrying forward: playtest-era criticism of how the game ran should not be read as a description of the game today.
Availability
Window | Dates | Occasion |
|---|---|---|
Launch window | From June 7, 2026 | Announced at a June showcase alongside the Release Date Trailer and the Vincent Cassel casting |
Extension | Two extra weeks from late June 2026 | Granted after the storefront listed the game among the most-played demos of Steam Next Fest |
Second window | July 20 to August 7, 2026 | Timed around a run of summer events, and left up past its announced end date |
Shutdown | September 8, 2026 | Announced on September 4, 2026 |
The studio's stated reason for taking it down was that the demo had stopped being representative. Since June it had made large improvements to the full version, but because the demo levels were bespoke recreations it was not simple to port the optimisation work, the tuned balancing and the bug fixes back into them. Its summary was blunt: the full game at launch will be much better than what was in the demo.
Hotfix History
Three hotfixes shipped during the first window.
Version | Date | Main changes |
|---|---|---|
1.01 | June 8, 2026 | Crashes from memory cleanup and from tutorial screens; players getting stuck in geometry in level one; performance in level one and in the General Lothaire fight; more consistent lantern interactions. Ray tracing was switched off with a fix in progress |
1.02 | June 10, 2026 | Upscaling support restored and extended; a compatibility check added for frame generation on unsupported cards; crashes from excessive player events and from blocking specific attacks; player stuck after respawn; skybox, blood effect, progression cap, dialogue and shader-screen fixes |
1.03 | June 12, 2026 | Crash on loading the Witch Hunt level; corrupted blood effect crash; endless audio loop after killing certain enemies; more accurate graphics-card auto detection; further performance work across both levels |
The 1.03 notes are the only first-party mention of a level called Witch Hunt. The studio never said where it sits, but since the demo held exactly two levels and the first is named Revival, the name almost certainly belongs to the second. The Chapters page treats that as an inference rather than a confirmed title.
What the Studio Took From It
An August 2026 development log, presented by the game director and the lead designer, set out what the feedback changed. The studio said most players enjoyed the first-person combat, and singled out the feel of landing a perfect parry, the boss fights, the blend of first-person shooter and Soulslike play, and the Napoleonic setting. It then named four work areas: combat readability, hitbox range and enemy stagger; boss variety and the difficulty curve; processor-side optimisation and the cost of many enemies on screen; and the balance between platforming and combat.
The most specific outcome is the General Lothaire fight. Players called him too unforgiving at the end of Chapter I, and the studio agreed the demo had put him roughly thirty minutes into the game. In the full release he closes Chapter II instead.
Speedrunning
The second level drew a speedrunning community almost immediately. The studio noted a Chapter VII clear in under five minutes within days of launch, and by late June a run under three minutes. It opened a dedicated speedrunning channel in its community server and ran contests with copies of the game as prizes.
What Is Still Open
As of September 13, 2026, the studio has not announced a return of the demo, a console demo, or a pre-launch trial of any kind, on the official store listing, the official site or its Steam development posts. The demo's own storefront entry no longer returns data. The Editions and Availability page covers how to get the full game.