Void Sols is FromSoftware without the third dimension, and it’s coming soon

One of my most anticipated soulslikes, we finally have an imminent Void Sols release date alongside a brand new demo coming to Steam.

The soulslike explosion brought on by FromSoftware hasn’t always yielded the best results. Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring set the bar high, while not many imitators manage to reach it. There are some neat ideas but the mechanical friction and the world’s disregard for the player, both of which are needed to make a soulslike play like its namesake, are often missing or poorly designed. Not in Void Sols, though, as I played the upcoming “top-down minimalist” soulslike earlier this year and came away thoroughly impressed. Now, at long last, we finally have an imminent release date, and an updated demo on the way too.

To give you an elevator pitch: Void Sols is Dark Souls with the entire third dimension missing. You explore, fight, and find upgrades like you would in Lordran, just from a top-down perspective instead. Void Sols has a much slower pace than the work of FromSoftware, too, but I found that to the soulslike game’s benefit.

It’s a game about friction, but it doesn’t rely on raw difficulty like many other Dark Souls imitators to achieve that. The world is dim, enemies hit hard, and you need to creep around every corner if you hope to survive. There’s also so much Void Sols doesn’t tell you, and finding out about mechanics and secrets through play is by far the best part of the genre.

Either way, the team at Finite Reflection Studios still perfectly understands the visceral nature of the genre, and I learned as much in my Void Sols interview.

“A soulslike isn’t defined by just difficulty,” Void Sols lead developer Kartik Kini told me. “It’s defined by this indifference that the world has to you. The world has these rules. It just exists. They narrowly skirt the border of power fantasy and whatever the opposite of power fantasy is where the world is just like, ‘Oh, that’s nice.’”

Finite Reflection Studios is launching Void Sols on Tuesday November 12 on Steam for $19.99 / £16.99. The team is also releasing a new demo for Steam Next Fest between Monday October 14 and 21. There’s even an older demo you can try in the meantime, alongside wishlisting the game right here.

If you’re looking for even more buried in Steam’s halls, we’ve got all the best indie games you need to try. Otherwise, there’s a whole host of upcoming PC games to keep an eye on.

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