Guns of Eschaton rethinks the soulslike in an interesting way

Guns of Eschaton from Eschatology Entertainment was announced earlier this year, and from what we’ve played of the game so far, it could very well be one of the best shooters of 2026.

Viktor Antonov, a designer on games like Half-Life 2 and Dishonored, served as art director on the game until his death in 2025, and his work on the game is immediately obvious by taking one look at the world.

The game features a wild west fantasy-esque setting, featuring long stretches of desert dunes, sandy cliff faces, and dusty remote towns, juxtaposed with more advanced industrial factories and twisted hellish landscapes.

In the demo I played at Gamescom, I was tasked with moving through the streets of a small town to reach my goal, with a variety of enemies in my way. There were a selection of a few classes to choose from, and I ultimately landed on a gunslinger with a single-action revolver that deals powerful shots at the cost of speed.

Although there is melee combat in Guns of Eschaton—including blocking and counter-attacks—ranged combat is the bread and butter of the game.

What it particularly excels at though is the rethinking of soulslike mechanics, which feels uncommon to find in 2026.

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Guns of Eschaton is one of the more creative soulslikes we've played in recent years

On paper, all the essentials are there: varied enemies who respawn at every rest point, huge scalability in class builds, and an ever-increasing difficulty encouraging repeated deaths to drive player knowledge.

However, there are many aspects of the game which require you to unlearn the muscle memory you gained playing games like Dark Souls or Lords of the Fallen. Utilising a first-person perspective, control of your weapon is equally as important as timing your attacks.

Developer Eschatology Entertainment has created a series of authentic 19th-century firearms for this game, and the six-shooter I used in my demo required some careful thought in order to use it properly.

The hammer has to be cocked before every shot, while reloading can be a rather lengthy affair where you need to manually load each bullet into the chamber, leading to scenarios where you need to ensure you have a long enough gap to reload without leaving yourself vulnerable to enemy attacks.

This also creates interesting scenarios later in the game where you unlock ammunition with special properties, such as armour-piercing rounds, which you must manually rotate the gun cylinder in order to use. And as with every good soulslike, there’s no pausing while you do these additional actions, so you’ll have to do it when you’re certain you won’t be attacked.

And perhaps my favourite part of the whole experience is the way you actually deal with enemies. Every single threat in the game has a book entry that your character carries around with them, highlighting several weak spots on their body that you need to attack in sequence.

One enemy, for example, can be weakened with a shot to the leg, able to finish them off with a hit in the head. Another features an armoured upper body, and so you’re encouraged to shoot both its legs in sequence to down it.

Although enemies can be killed through other methods, you’ll be using more bullets and taking much longer to kill them, which is why taking the time to learn enemy weaknesses becomes crucial.

After just 45 minutes with Guns of Eschaton, this could well be one of the most creative shooters we’re going to get this year. I’m keen to see if Eschatology Entertainment is able to keep up the momentum for the entire game.