Last updated: 5 September 2026

Valor Mortis vs Ghostrunner — What One More Level Changed

One More Level built its reputation on Ghostrunner's split-second cyberpunk parkour-and-swordplay. Valor Mortis keeps the same studio and the same first-person view, but almost everything else about the pacing, structure, and tone has changed. Here's what the developers themselves have said is different — and what carries over.

01Pace: From Split-Second to Deliberate

The single biggest difference previewers keep pointing to is speed. Ghostrunner was built around one-hit-kill precision platforming and combat where a single mistake meant instant death and an immediate restart — fast, punishing, and largely about pattern memorization at high velocity.

Valor Mortis is described as much slower by comparison. One More Level has framed the slower pace as a deliberate visual choice as much as a mechanical one: Ghostrunner players speed past the environment mid-run, while Valor Mortis's soulslike pacing gives the studio's artists room to actually let players see and appreciate the world they built — the same visual team behind Ghostrunner's cyberpunk look is behind this game's Napoleonic horror aesthetic.

Lead level designer Damian Wójcik put it more directly: the tempo is slower overall, but combat can still get fast once you've mastered its systems — the game isn't abandoning speed entirely, just not building the whole experience around it the way Ghostrunner did.

02Structure: Soulslike Levels Instead of Discrete Challenges

Ghostrunner's levels were largely a series of self-contained combat-platforming challenges, each one a tightly scripted gauntlet. Valor Mortis instead adopts a more traditional soulslike structure — semi-open environments with optional side paths, exploration, and climactic boss encounters, closer to how Dark Souls or Lies of P organize their levels than to Ghostrunner's linear challenge rooms.

03Combat Feel: Familiar Verbs, Different Rhythm

Despite the overall slowdown, some of the underlying combat verbs carry over in spirit. Previewers have noted that dodging and parrying in Valor Mortis feel similar in principle to Ghostrunner's evasive systems, even though the overall combat rhythm is much slower and more grounded — Valor Mortis replaces Ghostrunner's frame-perfect, one-hit-kill precision with a stamina-managed exchange of hits, blocks, and parries.

One More Level has framed this as trading the pitch-perfect, narrowly-defined combat design of Ghostrunner for something more expressive and open-ended — more room for different approaches to a fight rather than one "correct" way through a challenge.

04Storytelling: A Deliberate Course Correction

One More Level has openly acknowledged that Ghostrunner was criticized for its storytelling, and the studio says it's addressing that directly in Valor Mortis by leaning on more classical narrative techniques — environmental storytelling through letters and notes, alongside more conventional cutscenes and voiced performances (including Vincent Cassel as Napoleon).

05What Carries Over

Despite the shift in genre and pacing, the studio has been explicit that it doesn't want to fully leave the Ghostrunner identity behind. The confirmed holdovers:

• First-person perspective — the studio's signature viewpoint carries directly into Valor Mortis's soulslike combat.
• Mobility tools — a grapple hook and wall-running are both present, giving fights and traversal an extra layer beyond a standard souls-style stand-and-fight loop.
• Visual team continuity — the same visual/art team behind Ghostrunner's cyberpunk aesthetic is behind Valor Mortis's Napoleonic horror look.