Grief is not an adversary you defeat once and forget. It can shadow you unexpectedly, and any reprieve is only temporary. It returns — relentless and uncanny, much like a Dark Souls foe reborn at a bonfire. In a conflict with no clear finish line, the only recourse is to refine your tactics so each encounter feels a little more manageable.
That idea sits at the heart of Death Howl, a haunting tactics game arriving on Dec. 9 for Windows PC (also available through Game Pass Ultimate). It casts you as a mother consumed by loss, traversing a mythic, wintry landscape in search of a way to bring her son back. The game translates trauma into turn-based trials: a deliberate, often punishing deckbuilding experience that borrows Soulslike language to make emotional stakes tangible. When it works, the difficulty communicates pain with purpose; when it doesn’t, the lack of mitigating tools can make progress feel exhausting rather than illuminating.
Rooted in Scandinavian folklore, Death Howl drops its protagonist Ro into a vast spirit realm as she pursues a way to resurrect her son, Olvi. The premise is woven into gameplay: by slaying spirits you collect Death Howls, which can be offered at Sacred Groves to restore the departed. Resting at a grove revives fallen foes as well as heals Ro, a clever narrative justification for a familiar Soulslike mechanic. These design choices show more than surface-level homage — they attempt to embed the genre’s rituals into the story’s emotional logic, even if the game’s overall grasp of the source material sometimes feels shallow.
Talking to spirits points you toward four Great Spirits scattered across the map; toppling them may be the key to reuniting Ro with Olvi. From there the game opens up: you can roam freely through minimalist pixel landscapes that amplify absence and sorrow. Exploration yields Death Howls to buy skills, reveals Sacred Groves that enable fast travel, and supplies region-specific materials to craft new cards. The lack of strict guidance matters — if you hit an impasse in one area you can always retreat and try another path.
But Death Howl is full of walls. Combat is a turn-based, grid-based puzzle where Ro manages a hand of attack and movement cards under a tight action-point budget. There’s no undo, so every choice is consequential — an approach that recalls Into the Breach as much as Dark Souls. Each skirmish is a logic puzzle: shove an enemy back to line up a ranged strike, sacrifice a card to trigger an armor buff, or gamble on closing the gap for extra damage at the cost of safety. The interplay of positioning, card order, and resource trade-offs is often satisfying, but unforgiving.
Image: The Outer Zone/11 Bit StudiosCareful deck construction is essential, yet Death Howl offers little leniency. Ro only has 20 health, healing options are scarce, and reaching a Sacred Grove often requires surviving multiple punishing encounters. The game rewards players who iterate and refine their decks — success comes from discovering synergies, not from climbing passive stat ladders. That design reinforces the theme: grief is a shifting opponent that demands constant adaptation rather than a foe you can simply overpower.
However, the game frequently pushes difficulty to extremes that feel arbitrary. Regional systems complicate choices: cards tied to one region cost extra action points when used elsewhere, skill trees yield bonuses only for their native area, and Death Howls serve as both skill currency and crafting material. The result is repeated grinding — and losing them all on death amplifies the sting. Some enemies possess armor-piercing moves with few counters, and their movement potential is not always clear, which can make confined arenas especially brutal. By the time you reach the Great Spirits, the fights often include one more disruptive element than you expect, and the randomness inherent to card draws can turn close calls into frustrating losses.
Image: The Outer Zone/11 Bit StudiosMy response to Death Howl is mixed. On one hand, some systems feel over-tuned and tacked-on, producing needless repetition and a sense of setback every time you change regions. The game wears the Soulslike label confidently, but it sometimes misses the subtlety that makes those titles endure: Dark Souls pairs brutal challenge with meaningful progression and room for player growth, whereas other imitators can mistake sheer cruelty for design depth.
On the other hand, the emotional force is real. Ro’s desperation is wrenching — she risks everything to pull her son back from oblivion — and the game’s systems are often aligned with that narrative: the world seems designed to break both character and player. There were moments I wanted to stop, to let the game take what it wanted. Still, I kept returning for Ro, tuning my decks, repeating tedious fights, and memorizing enemy patterns until I could push a little further. I wanted tangible upgrades — more permanent ways to bolster her resilience — but perhaps that would have softened the point: grief doesn’t yield to incremental stat gains; it grows with you.
Death Howl demands patience, persistence, and willingness to step away and return. You may set it aside for days, or decide it’s not for you. When progress does come, however small, it feels earned — and worth celebrating.
Source: Polygon
