Prison of Husks Demo Preview
In 2022, I took a big step into the future by buying a top-of-the-line gaming PC. In 2025, I took a big step into the past by buying an old CRT from Facebook Marketplace. And now, in 2026, I need to figure out how to connect the two to play Prison of Husks in its ultimate form. I just have to hope that NVIDIA has a component cable driver for their 4000-series GPUs.
Prison of Husks is a third-person Soulslike action game, but I was transported by its visual aesthetic even before the first enemy started swinging. The retro Playstation and Playstation 2-era visual style is all the rage in indie games these days, but this takes it a step further, embracing the chunky polygons and jagged, warbling edges to not just call back to the visual style of the early 2000’s, but to more specifically feel like you’re playing the game on the wrong type of screen, like firing up Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on a 4K monitor with the stock emulator settings. Coupled with the highly desaturated color palette and airy, empty soundscape, Prison of Husks whisked me away, not only to a new world, but also to revisit a core memory.
In 2013, I picked up a copy of Dark Souls for Xbox 360 on the recommendation of my friendly neighborhood guy behind the GameStop counter, and what waited for me when I popped the disc in wasn’t an immediate rewiring of my brain (that would come soon after)- the initial experience was an intense adjustment period. Why does my character move like that, what do these stats mean, how do I level up…and why can’t I stop playing, no matter how mad I am? Subsequent FromSoftware games and descendants have been a ton of fun, but none have replicated that first-time experience quite like my short demo experience in Prison of Husks.
Prison of Husks tasks the player character, an animated doll, with escaping the titular Prison of Husks, exploring a painted afterlife and seeking their lost love. The doll starts in a prison cell, quickly encounters hostile doll enemies- so far we are still firmly in the Dark Souls design handbook, but the deviations come fast and furious after that. The doll starts with no weapon or sense of where to go, so all I can do is follow my curiosity, trust that I didn’t miss anything yet, and frantically run away from an enemy that is suddenly chasing me. I find that the dodge and sprint buttons are one and the same. I run through corridors and find a weapon, but get wrecked by a two-on-one encounter in a corridor as I acclimate to the idiosyncratic lock-on and persistent attack animations. I pick up an item with a very opaque description, and the only way to figure out what it does is to use it and hope for the best. I test out the light and heavy attacks, also mapped to the same button. I pick up a limited set of consumable keys, but realize that there are more locked doors than keys, and I’ll need to be very intentional about opening the cells…and hope that the locked-up NPC I’m about to set loose is friendly. The demo culminates in a boss fight, which is difficult in no small part due to the control adjustments I’m still trying to make- learning the block-and-parry system, figuring out how many attacks I can get in before running out of stamina and reading the boss’s attack patterns.
All of this feels vaguely familiar, but I’m off-balance. I’ve played a thousand hours of games like this, but I legitimately have no idea what the next mechanic will be- the controller still has several buttons unaccounted for, which makes me think that the demo didn’t come close to introducing the doll’s full toolkit. All of that may sound frustrating, and to be honest, it was! I appreciate the off-putting design even if I’m three deaths away from crashing out- I contain multitudes, after all. Despite the frustration, there was an irresistible momentum pulling me through, that same momentum that rewired my brain over a decade ago while the armored boar near Undead Parish ground my face into the stone. I need to see what’s down that hallway. I have a key that surely unlocks the critical path, but I still have a few corridors to check out. The boss has killed me a handful of times, but the next attempt is sure to be the winner. An enemy chased me around a corner into a bottomless pit, and all I can do is laugh and try to get the jump on that enemy the next time.
As an ordained minister in The Church of Soulslikes, I relish new entries in the genre that bring fresh ideas to the table, but they very rarely make me feel like I’m brand new again. So while my demo experience with Prison of Husks was equal parts awe and frustration, I cherished the feeling of not knowing what the hell was going on, and I can guarantee that there are more surprises in store.
Big thank you to Dave for writing this preview for the Six One Indie Showcase on May 21st, 2026. Follow Dave on Bluesky and Tales from the Backlog.
Great preview! Prison of Husks has such a haunting look - that dark, painterly world is instantly intriguing, and a demo is the perfect way to test the waters. Thanks for championing indie games like this, merge fellas
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