When is the Soulframe release date? If you can believe it, Warframe developers Digital Extremes are hard at work on a new game called Soulframe. Yes, that’s right, the team behind the ever-popular action RPG MMO is developing another game. With the developer describing this new game as less of a sequel and more of a parallel experience, there’s a lot to look forward to.
With Warframe being one of the best PS5 games and best Xbox games available, the hype for Soulframe is understandably quite high. If you’re hoping to play the upcoming title soon, here’s when to expect the game to arrive.
Soulframe release date speculation
It is expected that the Soulframe release date will arrive in late 2024. Game director Steve Sinclair has suggested on Twitter that a closed alpha for the RPG will hopefully begin in 2023, making a late 2024 release date likely.
In July 2022, it was confirmed that Steve Sinclair would move to start work on the newly announced Soulframe, while Rebecca Ford became Creative Director of Warframe in his place.
Since then, we’ve also got some Soulframe gameplay from the Warframe dev stream 169. While this is evidently still early footage, it suggests that development on Soulframe is steadily progressing.
You can see the Soulframe gameplay below:
Soulframe gameplay
Soulframe appears to be a very different game from Warframe. Rather than the fast-paced action players are used to, Soulframe takes a much more methodical approach. Instead of huge hordes of weak enemies, Soulframe seems to feature fewer, more demanding opponents.
From the Soulframe gameplay above, we can see that melee combat is more in-depth than the hack ‘n’ slash players might have expected. You’ll have to take it slow and block enemy attacks while looking for openings to counterattack. With that said, abilities will still play a major role. For example, we see the character seemingly drain the life out of their opponent and later sent birds out to attack and stun.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Soulframe Creative Director Steve Sinclair noted that “[Soulframe] will share Warframe’s focus on cooperative players-vs-environment combat and procedurally generated environments, but it will be the mirror universe version of Warframe… Where Warframe is focused on shooting, this one’s focused on melee. Where Warframe is super fast and crazy high-speed, this one’s going to be a lot more slow and heavy.”
In addition to Sinclair’s comments, creative director Geoff Crookes has also pitched in with the following comments.
“There’s going to be proceduralism within the cave networks and crevasses and so on underneath the world… [Soulframe will have] a focus on exploration that Warframe never had.”
While we still know very little about the Soulframe gameplay, it’s already sounding like an interesting step for the next Digital Extreme game.
Everything we know about Soulframe’s genre and setting
When Soulframe was announced, the development team released a six-minute cinematic reveal trailer on YouTube. As you can see below, Soulframe is going to dabble in high fantasy – however, it also looks as though it’s going to preserve the slick sci-fi aesthetic ever-present in Warframe in some capacity.
It’s quite hard to pinpoint where exactly this game takes its inspiration from, but it’s safe to say that we’re obsessed with how it looks and we can’t wait to know more. In that same interview with The Washington Post, Steve Sinclair explained that “the game will focus on themes on nature, restoration, and adventure as inspired by works like Princess Mononoke and The NeverEnding Story”. He also noted that while “Warframe is a unique, flesh-mech-powered spin on the sci-fi genre; Soulframe will be a suitable strange take on fantasy.”
Soulframe is certainly shaping up to be a unique take on the fantasy setting, weaving in sci-fi aspects and themes of nature.
That’s everything we currently know about the Soulframe release date so far, but we’ll hopefully hear more news before the end of 2023. Until then, make sure to check out the best free shooting games available right now, especially if you want something new, but similar to Digital Extremes’ Warframe.