Soulframe looks like Warframe crossed with Princess Mononoke

At Digital Extreme's annual event TennoCon, the Canadian studio revealed what's coming in the next update and expansion for its flagship game Warframe, with the timeloop-themed Duviri Paradox. Digital Extremes looked to the past for the other big announcement to come out of TennoCon 2022: it's making a fantasy game called Soulframe.

Digital Extremes are calling Soulframe a "free-to-play action hybrid-MMORPG", so it's fair to expect it won't be a million miles from Warframe in how it plays, only with less electric ballerinas and mechsuits made of dead people and more magical swordfights. The cinematic trailer features a stag covered in ritual paraphernalia as well as a friendly bird and a giant wolf in need of rescue, which gives it a definite Princess Mononoke vibe.

Conflict between humans and nature will apparently be a theme of Soulframe. "With Soulframe's worldbuilding and thematic elements, we are really looking to go back to our childhood favorites and pull inspiration from the elaborate fantasy worlds that we fell in love with growing up," said Geoff Crookes, Soulframe's creative director. "Our team is really interested in this idea of nature and humanity colliding and we'll be exploring a lot of those themes through our own lens while playing with ideas of restoration and exploration."

Though no release date has been announced, Digital Extremes says Warframe fans will be familiar with the build-up to its release, which will be "transparent, collaborative, and an iterative process" and those interested in finding out more can "visit the Soulframe website at www.soulframe.com for an interactive puzzle before registering their email for updates and given an opportunity to reserve their in-game name by declaring their Envoy." 

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.