Release Date & Launch Times

Announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live

One More Level reveals its first wholly owned IP as a first-person soulslike set in an alternate-history Napoleonic Europe.

First Steam playtest

An invite-style Steam playtest lets press and players sample the combat loop before the demo goes public. Player accounts of it describe roughly an hour of content, one area, two elite enemies and one boss.

Public Steam demo goes live for Next Fest

Free, Steam-exclusive. It peaks at 1,886 concurrent players on its first day (SteamDB) and places among the showcase's top demos. Note for later: the studio has since confirmed the demo levels titled Chapter I and Chapter VII were bespoke reconstructions built for Next Fest, not the retail chapters.

Release date announced at the Xbox Games Showcase

Dated for September 24, 2026 with day-one Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere support.

Delayed to October 13, 2026

Lyrical Games and One More Level push the date back roughly three weeks.

Steam Next Fest begins

The studio's welcome post already flags the design risk it will spend the whole project fighting: the first-person perspective causing problems with spatial awareness and combat readability.

Demo returns for the summer showcase season, and the Rapier arrives

The studio's post introduces the Rapier and states its mechanic outright: unlike the Sabre it has no block at all, defending only through perfectly timed parries, and in exchange it can break enemy weak points without using a firearm.

The studio answers the demo's four biggest criticisms by name

A development log commits to four areas: combat readability, hitbox range and enemy staggering; boss variety and the difficulty curve caused by skipping from Chapter I straight to Chapter VII; CPU optimisation and enemy performance cost; and the balance between platforming and combat.

Gone gold

The disc version is ready for printing. The same post names the first-person readability problem again, in the studio's own words: environmental awareness, field of view and sense of depth perception are all harder to convey in first person.

Story trailer at gamescom

Establishes William's dilemma, Napoleon as a voice rather than a presence, and The Shrike as the other pole of the loyalty choice.

Final stretch update: demo offline date, and what the demo actually was

The studio announces the demo goes offline on September 8, states that the demo chapters were bespoke reconstructions that could not receive retail fixes, and confirms that in the full game General Lothaire is the Chapter II boss rather than a Chapter I wall.

Demo goes offline

The free demo is delisted from Steam. There has been no trial since and none has been announced.

Price revealed, pre-orders ruled out, 20-hour story confirmed

The publisher states $39.99 standard and $59.99 Deluxe, confirms the game is a 20-hour story, commits to multiple free post-launch updates, answers the pre-order question with a no, and mentions dynamic FOV scaling as a readability system for large bosses.

China region pricing announced

¥168 standard and ¥248 Deluxe, reported identically across Chinese outlets.

Press hands-on embargo lifts

Preview coverage lands from Fextralife, WayTooManyGames, Game Rant and others, generally framing the combat as closer to Bloodborne than Dark Souls.

Full voice cast revealed

Vincent Cassel as Napoleon, Jennifer English as The Shrike, James Alexander as William Dowsett, plus the supporting cast.

Gameplay overview trailer

A nine-minute narrated walkthrough of the combat loop, the weapon philosophy and the Catalyst, Lantern and Amber progression. Still the best single piece of official material about how the game works.

Full trophy list published

39 trophies appear across trophy trackers, naming ten encounters that the pre-release footage never showed.

Launch

Unlocks at 11:00 AM PT across PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Day-one on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. No preload exists, so the 50 GB download begins at unlock.