Valor Mortis brings Soulslike combat to a Napoleonic zombie apocalypse

Valor Mortis is a first-person action role-playing game from One More Level, the studio behind the Ghostrunner games.

It imagines an alternate version of the Napoleonic Wars, with the year set at 1817 and a plague turning soldiers into monsters.

Players control William Dowsett, a resurrected British soldier serving in Napoleon’s army.

The game uses Soulslike combat, where players fight dangerous enemies and return to checkpoints after dying.

Resting at a checkpoint restores health but brings defeated enemies back, and dying twice before recovering lost upgrade materials makes those materials disappear.

A review describes the fighting as brutal but says forgiving features make it less frustrating to retry.

Its war-scarred forests, villages and mountain paths offer a quiet, mournful setting rather than constant horror; the review covers 13 hours and four chapters, but gives no details about what happens next.