There’s a good reason why Dark Souls has been a major reference point for developers since its release, and why so many games it inspired have fallen short. Its difficult combat tends to get the most attention, but it’s the feeling of wandering a crumbling world made of tightly coiled levels that really makes Dark Souls what it is.
So many Soulslikes only focus on the combat half of the equation that I’m skeptical going into any new one. Prison of Husks, featured in multiple showcases over Summer Game Fest weekend, stirred that same doubt, but its impeccable vibes drew me in anyway. Set in a world that developer Glass Head Dolls describes as “a painted afterlife,” Prison of Husks immediately calls to mind not just Dark Souls but also Ico, with its hazy, dreamlike aesthetic.
In Prison of Husks, you inhabit an animated doll on a quest to find your lost love. Its new Steam demo doesn’t offer any more of a story than that, and in Dark Souls fashion, you’ll probably have to work hard to find more clarity within the game itself.
Its demo might not reveal just how deep the story will go, but it gives a promising impression that Prison of Husks’ haunted world will be well worth exploring. The demo’s setting is, appropriately enough, a prison. A handful of cells and empty hallways with a chapel underneath, the prison is tiny, but the demo’s tight level design makes it feel much larger. Twisting corridors loop back on each other, forming shortcuts and dead ends. Locked doors offer rewards or disappointment, and you’ve only got enough keys to open a few of them. False walls give way to hidden items if you can discover them. There’s even a secret boss you can find by interpreting a cryptic item description.
That may just sound like a list of ways that Prison of Husks effectively mimics the world of the game that inspired it, but the key here is how well it makes those ideas its own. Yes, it’s borrowing the language of Dark Souls, but to tell a new story. You’re not trying to save the world here; you’re trying to reunite with your beloved, and that feeling of desperation is palpable in the world and combat.
While its Soulslike inspirations are clear, Prison of Husks rewrites that blueprint in some interesting ways. Combat feels extremely aggressive: your dodge is a quick dash that lets you close distance on enemies just as easily as it can give you room to breathe. Enemy attacks come quickly, but timely blocks refill your stamina rather than depleting it. In maybe the game’s best twist, successfully blocking, dodging, and attacking fills an adrenaline meter that makes you both do and take more damage, forcing you to push every advantage you get while punishing you hard for slipping up. That makes combat feel both terrifying and exhilarating, as the tide can turn on any fumbled dodge or well-timed attack.
As an early demo, it’s not perfect. Some enemy attacks seem to hit well outside of their visible animations, and that secret boss granted me a sword that, at least when I played, bugged out and locked me in place for several seconds whenever I blocked with it.
Aside from these issues, Prison of Husks makes an astounding first impression. It feels sparse in a way that suggests mystery, not emptiness, and its many idiosyncrasies left me constantly surprised over the roughly 30 minutes the demo took. I walked away thinking that Prison of Husks feels less like a game modeled after Dark Souls and more like a dream about playing it. It’s similar and full of clear references, but strange and beautiful in its own inscrutable ways.
