Revision 2

Traversal in Valor Mortis covers the ways William moves through the world outside of straight running and jumping. The game pairs the slower rhythm of its Soulslike Combat with an active mobility kit drawn from One More Level's first-person action background, giving William ways to swing through gaps, scramble across walls, and reach optional side areas that simple footwork cannot.

Grapple Hook

The grapple hook lets William cover gaps and pull himself toward fixed points, often arriving above an enemy line rather than walking into it. The April 2026 Triple-i Initiative trailer showed the grapple used both to traverse environments and to set up flanking approaches in combat. Because it brings William into the fight from a different angle, it pairs naturally with the weapon-and-Transmutation loadout described on the Weapons page.

Wall-Running

William can run along certain walls for short stretches, carrying his momentum across surfaces that would otherwise force a long detour. Wall-running is most useful for crossing hazards and for taking elevated routes through arenas, and it is one of the clearest connections back to the studio's earlier first-person action work, repurposed here as an exploration tool rather than a constant combat verb.

Swinging

The studio names a third ability alongside the grapple and the wall run: swinging across wide expanses. Hands-on accounts of the earlier builds describe the same verb in a more modest form, swinging on branches over steep drops, which suggests it covers both scripted set pieces and ordinary level furniture. The demo's second level was the showcase, built around a destroyed bridge to the Lighthouse that has to be crossed on transmutation traversal rather than on foot.

Dash

In moment-to-moment play the dash is the smallest of the three mobility tools, but it does the most work. The dash is stamina-gated and is used both to reposition during fights and to clear small gaps in level geometry. Importantly it is not an invulnerable roll, so it relies on distance rather than i-frames to keep William safe. Spacing dashes correctly is part of every fight.

Nephtoglobin-Powered Movement

Marketing material around the Triple-i trailer framed the grapple and wall-running as nephtoglobin-powered abilities, tying the way William moves through the world directly to the same plague-altered compound that fuels his Transmutations. In other words, the supernatural movement and the supernatural combat draw from the same in-fiction source rather than being two unrelated systems. For the wider background on Nephtoglobin and the plague, see the Setting and Story page.

Metroidvania Gating

Traversal sits at the heart of how the game gates its optional content. The main path through each chapter is largely linear, but side routes are blocked by destructible barriers or by gaps that need a specific traversal tool to cross. Acquiring a new mobility ability is therefore a progression beat, opening earlier ground to a fresh pass for accessories, lore pieces and optional mini-bosses.

Coverage of the playable builds has pulled in two directions on how open this really is, and the two readings are reconcilable. Several accounts call the level structure quite linear, driven by a tight authored route rather than by sprawling exploration. The most recent hands-on is more specific and probably closest to the shape of it: you are expected to explore an area several times before moving on, in order to open up all the routes ahead.

The studio's own position is the boundary on all of this. Its technical director has said plainly that Valor Mortis is not an open-world game, and that the engine's World Partition feature is used to build individual levels much larger than the studio has managed before rather than one continuous map. Read the game as linear chapter progression with ability-gated backtracking inside and between levels, not as an open or fully interconnected world.

Outlook

The grapple hook, wall-running, the swing and the stamina-gated dash are the publicly confirmed pillars of the kit, and the first three are all described by the studio as Nephtoglobin-powered.

As of September 13, 2026, across the official store listing, the official site, the studio's Steam development posts and the published trailers, no further traversal ability has been named. The one loose thread is an attract-and-repel power mentioned in a single 2026 developer interview, which would sit in this kit if it is real but has not been shown or repeated. The studio has also said it still wants to answer how much of the finished game is platforming and how much is combat, so the weight traversal carries across a full playthrough is genuinely unsettled rather than merely unpublished.