Death Howl gets what makes From Software’s Souls games so good. The loop of checkpoints resetting enemy spawns, grinding up specific gear, learning enemy attacks, and spending dozens of attempts perfecting strategies against bosses. Taking those genre stalwarts and bringing them to an excellent deckbuilder is a stroke of genius. As Ro in 6000 BCE Scandinavia, you will traverse the spirit world to find your dead son. It’s a damned near perfect 30 or so hours of video game, and it’s day one on PC in Xbox Game Pass. (Coming to consoles on February 19th, 2026)
The Mesolithic Age
The game’s premise is simple yet unique. You play as Ro, a mother who has lost her son after he went out hunting with his father. Ro’s father was a Shaman, and she uses those same skills to traverse into the realm of spirits. There are five major zones in this spirit hub, each with its own leader whom Ro hopes to gain aid from in the search for her son, Olvi.
Death Howl looks like it could run on a PC from the 1980s, and it is beautiful. The story is primarily told through a visual novel style, 2D portraits talking, and short cutscenes. Both feature emotionally fused animations despite the simplistic pixel-graphic style. Every region has a dominant color palette, letting you know exactly what you’re in for
The white area is full of snow and cold. The swamp area is as toxic as From Software’s Miyazaki himself would demand, and so on. It took me roughly 30 hours total to beat each region and the final zone. The story told as you explore every nook and cranny of the map is an emotionally heavy one. Despite being set over 8000 years ago, it is something anyone can relate to.
Ro’s grief over the loss of her child, the guilt, and the rage are all embodied in the game’s bosses. As she defeats them, she tears away the masks representative of her inner torment. It is a brilliant journey, aided in large part by excellent tactical gameplay.
What is a ‘Soulslike’
The term Soulslike makes most think of dodge rolling and lock-on combat. The true nature of a ‘Souls’ game for me is:
- Enemies respawn when you activate a checkpoint
- There is a focus on grinding resources to level up
- You can lose those resources when you die, unless you fight to gain them back
- Each region of the world wants you to gear up in a specific way to varying degrees
- Combat is focused on learning enemy attack patterns
- Bosses may require dozens of attempts to finally beat
- The game world is surprisingly deep and brilliantly laid out
Death Howl nails every single one of these, starting with the various Realm (and Realmless) cards. You begin the game with a basic card set called ‘Realmless’. In the first world, as you defeat enemies, they will drop their ‘Death Howl’s. This currency is used to create new cards or level up. At each checkpoint you unlock, you can choose to cash in your Death Howls for Teardrops.
Teardrops are used to level up realm-specific passive buffs, unlock cards, and allow you to equip more totems (more on them later). Much like a Souls title, if you die while carrying Death Howls, they will be lost until you retrieve them. As this is a grid-based, turn-based deckbuilder, they will invariably end up in the middle of the combat arena you just died in. If you choose to immediately reinitiate combat, you’ll have five turns to pick them up before they vanish.
Should you defeat your enemies, they will drop items that you need to craft new cards. Each region has unique enemies, letting you craft cards that work best in that region. If you try a card from another realm, it will cost one more mana to play. As you only have five mana per turn, this is a huge detriment and means you need to build up a deck for each realm to have any shot of advancing. The UI allows you to save up to 20 different decks and is easy to set up and change in both on controller and mouse & keyboard.
Each region has a different playstyle, as dictated by the Teardrop level-ups associated with it. As you perform various actions such as hitting enemies, gaining block, losing health, or playing cards, you will fill a meter. Once that meter is full, it will give you a bonus based on which realm you are in. The northern realm wants you to block, so the meter fills as you gain it, and the meter bonus gives you mana back. Your cards in that realm are mostly block-based, with various attacks costing less the more blocks you have.
Contrast this to the swamp area, where the gameplay jumps between losing and gaining health. Every move hurts you and the enemy, filling the meter as you take damage. Once the meter is full, you can gain health back, as well as use damage cards, which heal you in certain situations. As this is a grid-based playing field, you have a mix of melee, ranged, movement, buff, and debuff cards with which you’ll need to practice on how to best use them. It is an expertly tuned experience in which defeat is always just around the corner, as you traverse the map.
Progression
Every subzone in each Realm is a gauntlet. Some are easy, others are incredibly difficult, and all of them are fun. The map shows little at first, with the fog of war only lifting when you activate the first checkpoint in each zone. Once you do, the entire layout is shown, letting you see how many fights getting to each new checkpoint will take.
While there is a main quest you can focus on, don’t. You will need the rewards of the side quests and various hidden caves that litter the map. These quests offer up new cards, teardrops, and totems. The totems are up to four passive buffs/modifiers that you can change at any time out of combat. Gaining a free movement every turn or starting with one block lets you customize your build beyond just cards.
Some quests will stick an extra card or more into your deck, which can normally only hold twenty. Easier quests give powerful cards, while harder ones give you obstacles. No matter what, when on a quest, you cannot fast-travel. Normally, you can instantly fast-travel to any active checkpoint. Having to traverse across a map, facing numerous fights, is a challenge, though you can still heal up at any checkpoints along the way.
Alongside the quests are the aforementioned caves. As you walk through the world, you’ll notice areas you can activate. A cave door will appear out of a sheer rockface, and inside is, typically, an incredibly difficult gauntlet of fights with a highly rewarding item at the end. Whether teardrops or totems, every side activity felt worth it as I gained in strength both of character and in knowledge.
Olvi
I got to play this one on my PC and Xbox Ally X, the video footage is a mix of both, where it ran in the hundreds, FPS-wise. Death Howl is an easy game for nearly any modern PC to run. I have little fear that it will not perform well if/when it comes to Xbox consoles, and it plays just fine on a controller. I wish I could use the d-pad to move around instead of the analogue stick; it’s just a hair less precise, and my impatience led to a few mistakes while playing on the Xbox Ally.
Where the game doesn’t miss is the overall presentation. While those graphics may look ‘basic’, the art style is fantastic. You see the emotional intent of each scene as it plays out. In combat, everything is easy to discern, and the music fits the somber yet hopeful themes well. Ro’s search for Olvi always felt both doomed to failure and still worth it. No spoilers, but I was heavily moved emotionally as a father by the time the credits rolled.
The version sent out for review had a few bugs, like combat getting stuck during a move for a minute or two. The devs had every minor issue listed in their review guide, so hopefully, version 1.0 at launch is a smooth experience. As is, the bugs I ran into were few and far between and easily remedied with a combat reset.
Wrapping Things Up
Death Howl is amazing. It takes the deck builder and the Soulslike and makes something I didn’t know I was missing. As a Day One Game Pass title on PC, it’s there and ready if that interests you. The game comes to consoles on February 19th, 2026. It is a 30+ hour playthrough with incredible highs, even at its most frustratingly difficult moments.
Death Howl
Played on
PC via Steam
PROS
- Deck Builder Soulslike = Brilliant
- Atmosphere
- Progression systems
- Map Layout
CONS
- Can’t use D-Pad for movement
