Soulframe has been wrapped in mystery ever since its reveal at TennoCon 2022, with Digital Extremes drawing in fantasy fans through a game that does not want to celebrate decay and darkness, but instead asks players to restore harmony to the natural world. The project is still in development, and early versions are currently being tested through the Preludes pre-alpha program, but many players were surprised to find that the combat does not really behave like a soulslike at all. According to the studio’s leadership, that confusion starts with the title itself.

After those early builds became playable, a number of players took issue with the combat system because the name had led them to expect something very different. In an interview with Game Informer, Digital Extremes CEO Steve Sinclair said it was an idiotic decision to put the word soul in the title, because the team more or less invited those comparisons on itself. In his view, soul was never meant as a wink toward the soulslike subgenre, but as a more literal reference to the soul of the world and of its characters, which sits at the thematic center of the project.

Sinclair also argued that the problem became worse because the team initially leaned too heavily on the kind of combat feel it already knew from Warframe, and that simply did not fit Soulframe’s slower encounters. In Warframe, enemies often vanish from the screen in a heartbeat. Here, by contrast, they can stay in front of the player for 15 to 20 seconds, which means every flaw becomes much more visible. If a foot slips awkwardly, if a character reacts strangely to impact, or if a body clips into the environment, the player notices it immediately.

Digital Extremes now openly admits that the first version of the combat system did not land the way it needed to. Geoff Crookes, the creative director of Soulframe, said players responded well to the overall feeling of the world and to the kind of stories the team was trying to tell, but mechanically they missed the mark. He added that this was both a lesson and a communication failure, because the studio probably never did enough to properly explain what the title of the game was actually supposed to mean.

It Wants Disney-Princess Fantasy, Not Another Rotten Apocalypse

This is not the first time the developers have had to respond to comparisons with FromSoftware and the wider soulslike crowd. Back in 2024, they were already saying that the central idea of the project was about repairing the soul of the world, which is why they chose to keep the title even though they could have changed it at any point. In other words, Soulframe stayed Soulframe on purpose, even if that choice created the exact misunderstanding the studio is now trying to untangle.

In the same Game Informer conversation, the team also made it clear that it never wanted the setting to become another bleak fantasy wasteland built around violence and decay. Quite the opposite. As a response to the cynicism of the modern world, Sinclair said he wanted something more natural, softer in tone, and less interested in glorifying brutality. In his own words, fantasy so often feels harsh and unpleasant that he deliberately pushed this project in a different direction, giving it something closer to a Disney-princess touch.

Soulframe still has a long road ahead of it, but Digital Extremes seems determined to keep refining it through the Preludes program. That naturally includes continued work on the combat, which means the studio is not just trying to explain away the confusion around the title, but also trying to bring the game itself closer to the experience it originally intended to deliver.

Source: 3DJuegos