Warframe developers Digital Extremes have announced a new round of early access for their 2025-bound fantasy action-RPG Soulframe, which I saw a bit of last year and think is pretty promising. They’re now adding 2000 players to a Preludes build of the game every week, with each invite email including an additional four invite codes, so you can get your friends involved.
If you’re new to Soulframe, it’s a stately swords-and-sorcery affair with a hazy golden open world and procedural dungeons. It has the same visual opulence as Warframe, with richly woven costumes and an interface of painted scrolls and sigils, and the same appetite for screwy jargon-tastic lore writing. But it plays things quieter. Everything looks old and dusty and the pacing of exploration and encounters seems closer to From Software’s work – you’ll weigh up every blow. Last year, director Steve Sinclair summarised it as follows: “Where Warframe is fast and frenetic, Soulframe is going to be slow and pensive.”
A bit of plot: you’re a downfallen amnesiac soldier who must form pacts with the spirits of their ancestors. These pacts are the game’s loadouts, encompassing character stats and sets of abilities. You also get access to the Nightfold, an extra-dimensional progression hub akin to Bloodborne’s Hunter’s Dream. You can expand the Nightfold’s crafting and customisation facilities by asking your ancestors to move in.
Soulframe is another free-to-play offering from Digital Extremes, and the big worry as ever is how much the monetisation will sabotage the experience. That aside, I’m looking forward to it. Some smaller flourishes: when you die, you reincarnate as a bird at the last respawn site and have the option of flying back to resurrect your body. When you move between dimensions, your character falls backward through a portal with arms outspread, as though tumbling into bed at the end of a long day.
You can sign up for Preludes access here. If you don’t manage to scrape an invite, Digital Extremes have also lifted restrictions on streams and videos of the Preludes area, so by all means fire up the Youtubes and have a gander. I’m sure somebody’s published a 10 hour Let’s Play already.