FromSoftware's The Duskbloods: A Competitive Multiplayer Departure for the Studio Behind Dark Souls
FromSoftware has offered the first hands-on look at The Duskbloods, a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive where eight players take on the roles of vampiric characters called the Bloodsworn in a dark fantasy action RPG set across multiple time periods. The Verge previewed the game at FromSoftware's offices in Tokyo, and what emerges is a studio applying its signature combat design to a competitive multiplayer format with structured elimination mechanics. The Verge
The studio, known for Dark Souls and Elden Ring, has built The Duskbloods around a "virtue" system. Players earn virtue points through several activities: collecting items, killing enemies, defeating bosses, exploring, defeating other players at map points, or making pledges at altars. Each match is divided into four phases, and at the end of each round, players who lack enough virtue points are eliminated through a mechanic called "the culling." The Verge
The structure borrows from battle royale conventions, where the player count shrinks across discrete rounds, but routes elimination through a currency system rather than a shrinking map. A player who avoids combat but prioritizes exploration or altar pledges can potentially survive a culling that claims a more aggressive but less efficient opponent. The multi-route virtue economy means the best approach likely varies by character build, phase timing, and the composition of the lobby, though how much strategic depth that yields in practice is something the broader player base will need to assess.
Nintendo has opened applications for a global network test, which is scheduled to run later in August. Nintendo's store pages list the game as a 2026 release, and American English appears among the supported languages. Nintendo
The Switch 2 exclusivity is worth noting. FromSoftware's most recent titles, including Elden Ring, shipped across multiple platforms with PC as a primary target. Building a new multiplayer title exclusively for Nintendo's hardware places the studio's combat and encounter design inside Nintendo's online infrastructure and player ecosystem rather than Steam's or Sony's. Whether that constraint shapes netcode decisions, match scaling, or the overall tempo of play is something the network test should begin to reveal.
For a developer whose multiplayer heritage runs through asynchronous invasion systems and limited co-op, a structured eight-player competitive format with round-based elimination is a meaningful departure. The Dark Souls invasion model embedded player-versus-player combat inside a fundamentally single-player progression structure; The Duskbloods appears to invert that relationship, making competitive multiplayer the core loop and FromSoftware's combat vocabulary the ingredient that distinguishes it from other entries in the increasingly crowded multiplayer elimination space.
The virtue system's design is the detail that catches attention. Six distinct point-generating activities, spread across combat, exploration, and ritual mechanics, suggest a design that wants to accommodate multiple play styles within a single match rather than funneling all players toward a single optimal path. Whether the balance holds across skill levels, and whether the culling thresholds create the kind of tension that drives replayability, are questions the network test is designed to pressure-test. For now, FromSoftware is asking players to apply, and the answers will start arriving before the month is out.
