Development

Development Valor Mortis is being developed by One More Level and published by Lyrical Games. As an original IP, it represents a new direction for the studio while building on its established strengths in fast, first-person action. The game is in active development for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S, and is set to launch on October 13, 2026, arriving day one on Xbox Game Pass.

The Studio

One More Level is a Krakow-based studio best known for Ghostrunner and its sequel Ghostrunner 2, both first-person action games celebrated for their precise, high-speed combat. That pedigree is a natural fit for a first-person Soulslike, where timing, reading enemies, and deliberate movement are central. With Valor Mortis the team applies its first-person expertise to a slower, more methodical combat style grounded in stamina management, parrying, and weighty melee exchanges rather than the breakneck pace of its earlier work.

Publisher and Technology

Lyrical Games handles publishing duties for the project. On the technical side the game is built in Unreal Engine 5, and dev updates have called out engine features such as World Partition and Nanite that underpin the expansive environments and atmospheric, horror-leaning visuals of its corrupted alternate-history setting.

PC System Requirements

Ahead of launch, the Steam store lists provisional minimum and recommended PC specifications. The studio notes the specification is subject to change for the final release, so treat the figures below as a pre-launch target rather than a locked requirement. An SSD is listed as required at both tiers, and both call for a 64-bit operating system, DirectX 12, and 50 GB of storage.

Direction and Music

The project is led by game director Radosław Ratusznik. The score is composed by Arkadiusz Reikowski, whose credits include Silent Hill 2 Remake, The Medium, and Layers of Fear, together with Oskar Bala.

Announcement and Reveal

The game was revealed during Gamescom in August 2025, introducing its premise of a Napoleonic alternate history overrun by a supernatural plague. The reveal was paired with an extended Gamescom demo that gave press their first hands-on, with a focus on the opening level and the first major boss.

2025 Playtest

A pre-alpha global playtest ran from October 6 to October 13, 2025, distributed first through a Firstlook portal and then on Steam in staggered waves. The playtest covered a condensed first level with combat mechanics, skill tree branches, and a challenging boss encounter, and ran a five-day public window followed by community speedrun, fanart, and screenshot contests. A hotfix patch addressed crashes, save corruption, equipment bugs, and control mapping issues partway through.

Late 2025: The Crimson Plague

In November 2025 the team published a new gameplay trailer titled "The Crimson Plague", showing a darker nighttime village level with a stronger horror tone, mutated villager enemies, and an elite unit called The Relentless. The trailer also introduced a second named boss, Sergeant Gaspard "Cannonhand" Dubois, alongside the first round of playtest statistics.

Combat Improvements Devlog

In December 2025 the developers published a video addressing three combat issues raised by playtest feedback. They committed to improved enemy readability through clearer windups and audio cues, more flexible keyboard controls with custom binds, and refined target lock behavior for fights with multiple enemies at once.

Spring 2026: Emerging From Winter

A March 2026 developer update titled "Emerging from Winter" previewed new weapons, the design of the Relentless elite soldiers, and the technical achievements the team is hitting in Unreal Engine 5. The update included concept art of a blunderbuss carried by William and a first look beneath a Relentless helmet, and it pointed to an interview with technical director Krzysztof "Dalton" Pachulski on the studio's engine work. Pachulski was clear that Valor Mortis is not an open-world game: World Partition is being used to build sprawling levels that are much larger than anything in either Ghostrunner title rather than one continuous map. The same update credited Nanite with holding visual fidelity down at a manageable processing cost, and Niagara alongside atmospheric lighting for the particle work. The studio also travelled to PAX East in Boston that month.

Triple-i Initiative: Fall 2026 Confirmed

On April 9, 2026 the team appeared at the Triple-i Initiative showcase with a new gameplay trailer that locked in a Fall 2026 release window. The trailer revealed grapple hook and wall-running additions to the traversal toolkit, the new rapier melee weapon designed around timed parries and precise dodges, and a new boss called The Orphan, described as a Nephtoglobin abomination living in the city sewers. The studio characterized the project as content complete with alpha buttoning up, framing the remaining work as the final sprint to launch.

PAX East 2026

Valor Mortis returned to the show floor at PAX East 2026 with a roughly thirty-minute hands-on demo that covered the opening section and the first boss. Coverage from the demo confirmed concrete combat-system details, including a posture meter that drains as the player parries, an approximately seven-to-eight-slot weapon wheel, a perfect-parry punish on common enemies, and Metroidvania-style destructible barriers gating optional side areas with accessories and lore pieces.

Pre-Launch Outlook

In May 2026 the studio's game director said in a devlog that another playtest would be opening soon, building on the October 2025 round, with details to be announced through the official Discord. With the project content complete and the alpha being buttoned up, the remainder of 2026 is framed around closing out polish, additional pre-launch playtests, and the launch. On June 11, 2026 the studio moved the release date from September 24 to October 13, 2026, citing a crowded September release window and the extra time to fold in demo feedback. The studio shipped several demo hotfixes in the days after launch to address crashes, performance, and graphics-card support.

Xbox Games Showcase 2026

At the Xbox Games Showcase on June 7, 2026 the studio premiered a narrative-focused Release Date Trailer announcing a September 24, 2026 launch across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S, with day one availability on Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere support. The same trailer revealed the actor Vincent Cassel as the voice of Napoleon Bonaparte, and a free playable demo went live on Steam alongside the showcase. The demo contains two levels: a refined version of the playtest battlefield, called Chapter 1: Revival, which teaches the combat system and ends in the General Lothaire boss fight, and a brand new level where the destroyed bridge to the Lighthouse must be crossed using transmutation traversal. Its second level also introduces a new blade weapon, the rapier, a new firearm, the musket, and a new shield Transmutation.

Steam Next Fest 2026

The free demo took part in Steam Next Fest in June 2026, the first time the studio opened the game to everyone without a sign-up. Steam highlighted Valor Mortis as one of the event's top demos, and the team responded by extending the demo for two extra weeks while it kept gathering feedback on the combat system. The demo's platforming drew a speedrunning scene, with runners clearing its later traversal level in only a few minutes, a nod to the fast movement of the studio's earlier first-person games. One More Level framed the extended window as time to keep fine-tuning and optimizing the game ahead of its October 13, 2026 release.

Summer 2026: Demo Return and Event Tour

The studio brought the demo back to PC for a second window running July 20 to August 7, 2026, timed around a run of summer showcases. One More Level said the team would be taking Valor Mortis to COREBLAZER and to ChinaJoy in Shanghai, and that the game would take part in a Steam publisher event running under the banner From Poland with Love. The studio described it as a chance to meet players around the world in the run-up to the October launch, and confirmed afterwards that the ChinaJoy showing had gone ahead, thanking attendees who played the game in Shanghai at the start of August 2026.

The same announcement doubled as a behind-the-scenes post, publishing production concept art for Sergeant Gaspard "Cannonhand" Dubois, for the corrupted villagers introduced in the Crimson Plague trailer, for the rapier, and for a set of ordinary world objects such as letters, notes, keys, and books. The studio noted that these smaller props were drawn to fit the Napoleonic setting even though most players will pass them by, and said it posts this kind of material regularly through its community channels.

Commercial Announcements

Two commercial details were disclosed in June 2026 through the developer's regulatory filings. The first, on June 7, confirmed an agreement between Lyrical Games and Microsoft placing the game on Xbox Game Pass from its release day for PC, Xbox Series X and S, and Xbox Cloud, with the payment from Microsoft counted toward recouping publisher costs under the co-publishing arrangement between the two companies. The second, on June 10, opened pre-orders for a boxed edition and set a recommended price for it. That figure was superseded on July 23, 2026, when a further filing lowered the recommended boxed price to 39.99 US dollars, expressly amending the June filing and applying only to the physical edition. The studio said the decision was taken together with its publishing partner after reviewing market conditions. Around the same time the studio also reported a change on its management board, with a vice-president stepping down effective June 9, 2026. Further detail on what each version includes lives on the Editions and Availability page.

August 2026: Responding to Demo Feedback

On August 9, 2026 the studio published a developer log built entirely around feedback from the public demo, presented by game director ', B('Radosław Ratusznik'), ' and lead designer ', B('Łukasz Wabik'), '. The studio said more than 250,000 players had tried the demo across its two windows, and described the project as being in its polishing phase, with the game playing and performing better day by day ahead of the October 13 launch.

The team reported that the responses it liked hearing most were about the first-person combat system, and singled out the feel of landing a perfect parry, the boss fights, the way the game blends first-person shooter and Soulslike play, and the Napoleonic setting and atmosphere. The log then set out four areas the team wants to improve before release.

The demo jump the studio referred to is also the clearest statement so far that the finished game is divided into numbered chapters, and that the two demo levels sit at Chapter I and Chapter VII of that sequence. The total number of chapters has still not been given.

The studio confirmed separately that its ChinaJoy showing in Shanghai went ahead at the end of July 2026, thanking the players who came by and the feedback they gave.