Upcoming multiplayer game The Duskbloods is impressive from its opening. You step into its world as one of the Bloodsworn, a mysterious warrior empowered by blood, and are immediately greeted by a gothic, towering world of monsters that is as breath-taking as it is horrific.
In a similar vein to previous FromSoftware title Bloodborne, this adventure is heavily inspired by gothic literature and the genre’s version of 1800s Europe. Your world is all large castles with pointed spires, with dark clouds that hide an enormous blood moon.
It’s perpetual dusk in this game – the hour where the Bloodsworn are most powerful and best prepared for fighting horrors as they wander within a cloistered arena.
Unlike Bloodborne, this is a multiplayer-focused experience. The crux of gameplay is a multi-part epic Dusk Battle where players vie to be the final Bloodsworn standing, after surviving multiple rounds of competitive gameplay that see the weakest players culled.
This loop meansThe Duskbloods is likely only for those with a strong will, or those able to press on through hordes of powerful creatures, all intent on certain death, as well as wily players looking to stake their advantage early on.
The Duskbloods preview – quick links
The wheel of gameplay in The Duskbloods
Our first look at The Duskbloods, taking place during the early network trial, comprised a lengthy tutorial for the incoming Dusk Battles, and opportunity to take on other players online.
The tutorial provided some hope. It revealed an array of enemy types, all of whom have their own difficulty level and recognisable attack patterns to work around. While many of the game’s monsters showed themselves to be absolute beasts capable of tearing and squishing warriors with ease, there are also smaller monsters that help to build both your confidence and your experience level.
Dusk Battles take place in multiple stages, where the goal is to gather strength (known as Virtue) to pass through the four distinct phases of battle. In each of the first three stages, you can wander the world of The Duskbloods and explore its every nook and cranny.
The overarching goal is to defeat enemies for strength, to find special items and weapon upgrades, and to eventually claim various special items that can buff you for a final battle against the other Bloodsworn. You must be the most powerful player in the arena, and must demonstrate your prowess in a battle to claim the coveted Blood Bestowal.
That’s how it works in theory, anyway: building up power, maybe forming alliances with special Kin creatures or other players, and then rallying together for a final, fair fight. But what happened across multiple rounds in the test version, and likely as reflective of future behaviour in the final release, is that players go at each other from the very beginning.
It’s all for the power and the glory.
Stopping rivals from growing too strong
In a reasonable battle, players would leave each other alone to strengthen, fight monsters and discover new items on the battlefield. But that does also leave open the possibility of players gaining an early advantage or finding some key treasure coveted by others.
So, many players are going PvP mode (player vs player) from the very beginning of the action, using their meagre strength to ensure that other players have their stature reduced and that they may be sacrificed to the culling.
To be fair, some are also forming alliances and working together to take down enemies, thereby gaining shared strength, a strategy that the The Duskbloods is seemingly intentionally designed to encourage. That’s because if you spend your time taking down other players, you don’t get enough of a chance to build up your own strength.
But the full breadth of human experience and desires is being represented in this game and its battles. As we all know, there are plenty of folks who aren’t satisfied with playing by the rules in any game, and who want to cause chaos for the sake of chaos.
Regardless, there’s ample fun in seeing how this chaos plays out – even when you’re the one being targeted by those meaner, higher-level or more experienced players.
Encouraging by design
On the whole, The Duskbloods does seem a bit more forgiving than other games in the FromSoftware library, and death is just the beginning of your journey. There are also more smaller, weaker enemies than usual, which can be picked off to grow your strength, and you can get to the point of feeling genuinely powerful without the need to fight carefully.
It’s an encouraging game by design, with a natural pathway for players who want to advance and survive through multiple rounds. If you’re clever and curious, you can find all sorts of useful items in your early rounds that can give your weapons special abilities (lighting and fire powers are two examples) or just help you put away smaller enemies until you buff your health or learn attack patterns well.
The Duskbloods gives you the sense that you can succeed, and that maybe the idea of victory isn’t so remote as to be intimidating.
That ceiling is likely to rise in future as more players trickle in and come to grips with what The Duskbloods has to offer, and how far the limits of alliances may stretch. Any player looking to get an early advantage, to really comprehend the demand of Dusk Battles, should consider getting their head start by any means necessary.
The gates of The Duskbloods are slowly opening, and players are already cut-throat in their approach to be the best of the Bloodsworn and make their impact on the battlefield. The chance to explore so freely, and to consider yourself a potential glorious victor, is shrinking.
The Duskbloods launches exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026.
A code for the Duskbloods Network Test Version was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this preview.
