Valor Mortis Launches October 13, Day One on Game Pass, From the Ghostrunner Studio

By Previously Staff, Previously

October 13, 2026

One More Level trades cyberpunk parkour for a Napoleonic nightmare in Valor Mortis, a first-person Soulslike out October 13 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC — $39.99, or day one on Game Pass Ultimate.

Some studios ease into a new genre. One More Level has decided to sprint at it, sword out. Valor Mortis, the first-person Soulslike from the Polish team behind the Ghostrunner series, launched worldwide today, October 13, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam — and it arrives day one on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass, according to coverage from Notebookcheck, Pure Xbox and Video Games Chronicle.

This is a meaningful swing for the studio. Ghostrunner and its sequel were stylish, demanding cyberpunk action games built around speed. Valor Mortis keeps the first-person perspective and the demand for precision, then slows the heartbeat down into the deliberate, punishing rhythm of a Soulslike — and swaps neon Tokyo-inspired rooftops for the mud, smoke and plague of Napoleonic Europe. It is also, notably, the studio's first wholly owned IP, published by Lyrical Games, which makes today less a release and more a statement about what One More Level wants to become.

A Soldier Who Would Not Stay Buried

You play William Dowsett, an English volunteer serving in Napoleon's Grande Armée, who is pulled back from a battlefield grave into something worse than death. A plague is sweeping through the ranks and turning his former comrades into monsters, and Dowsett — armed, changed and apparently very hard to keep dead — has to fight through them. It is a strong hook, and the casting around it is not shy: Vincent Cassel voices Napoleon, James Alexander voices William, and Jennifer English plays the rebel leader known as the Shrike, per the launch coverage.

The campaign runs around 20 hours, which in 2026 feels almost refreshingly honest — long enough to build a character and learn a world, short enough to actually finish before the next big release lands on top of it. And plenty are landing, which brings us to the smartest decision in this whole launch.

$39.99 in the Most Stacked Fall in Years

Valor Mortis costs $39.99. Pure Xbox reported that publisher Lyrical Games deliberately avoided full price because the fall slate is so stacked — an unusually candid admission, and a correct read of the calendar. Asking seventy dollars for a new IP, in a new genre for the studio, against the autumn's heavyweights would have been brave to the point of self-sabotage. At forty, with a Game Pass launch underneath it, the game gets to be an impulse try instead of a researched purchase.

There is a Deluxe Edition at $59.99 that includes story DLC due next year, for players who know on day one that they are all in. On PlayStation, there is no full-game PS Plus inclusion, but PS Plus members do get a 90-minute trial with progress carrying over if they buy — a fair way to let the curious test whether first-person Soulslike combat clicks for them before spending anything. One important Game Pass note: the day-one inclusion covers the Ultimate and PC Game Pass tiers only, not Premium or Essential, as Pure Xbox and Video Games Chronicle both outlined.

Parries, Posture and a Supernatural Left Hand

Combat is stamina-based and built around parrying, dashing and finishing moves, with a posture system that rewards players who stay aggressive and break an enemy's guard rather than chipping safely from distance. The arsenal mixes the period and the personal: a rapier and a claymore for steel, a flintlock pistol and a two-handed musket for gunpowder. Then there is William's left hand, which channels supernatural abilities the game calls transmutations — conjuring fire, raising a shield that absorbs attacks and releases the energy back as a shockwave, and a grapple that doubles as a traversal tool for getting around the world.

If that sounds like a lot of systems, it is — deliberately. The Soulslike formula lives or dies on whether its combat stays interesting for the full run, and One More Level is clearly betting that layering period weaponry over supernatural powers keeps encounters from settling into a single solved rhythm. The Ghostrunner games were, at heart, about mastery through repetition; expect the same philosophy here, just at a heavier, bloodier tempo.

The Reviews: Impressed, Divided, Worth Watching

Early reviews land in the interesting zone — positive on balance, split in the details. Pure Xbox's review roundup put the Metacritic score at 77 on PC and 83 on PS5 at the time of writing, with individual verdicts ranging from enthusiastic 9s down to a 6 from GamesRadar+. That spread usually means a game with a real point of view: reviewers agree on the craft and disagree on how much its friction is a feature.

That is, frankly, exactly where a first-person Soulslike from a studio reinventing itself ought to land on day one. Safe games do not produce score spreads like that. Whether Valor Mortis becomes One More Level's defining franchise or a fascinating one-off will depend on word of mouth over the next few weeks — and Game Pass puts it in front of millions of players who can form that word of mouth without spending a cent beyond their subscription.

Also on Game Pass Today — and What Leaves This Week

Valor Mortis is not arriving alone. Video Games Chronicle reported that Battlefield 6 and Deep Dish Dungeon also join Game Pass on October 13, making today one of the service's busier drop days of the fall. The other side of the rotation lands October 15, when Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Pacific Drive and Evil West all leave the library — so if any of those are sitting half-finished in your backlog, your deadline is Wednesday, not someday.

Our read: this is how you launch a new IP in 2026. A fair price, a subscription launch that removes the risk, a demo-style trial on the rival platform, and a setting — Napoleonic horror, Vincent Cassel as Napoleon — that nobody else in the fall slate is offering. Valor Mortis is out now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Steam. More games coverage is on the Previously games hub and the news front.