[Update]: Dolmen has now arrived, though sadly with a whole array of problems.
Like many games in the past few years, Dolmen is an upcoming Dark Souls inspired action-RPG with a heavy focus on challenging difficulty, exploration, and small-scale duels against tricky enemies. However, instead of the usual dark fantasy setting that comes with most Souls-like games, Dolmen has chosen to style itself after sci-fi and cosmic horror. As such, expect to see some outlandish environments, bizarre aliens, and plenty of killer robots!
Visuals aside, the biggest difference between Dolmen and the Souls-like genre is in the use of ranged weapons. Rather than simply have the whole ranged combat system be entirely separate from its melee counterpart, Dolmen will require you to constantly weave melee and ranged attacks together in order to take down some of the tougher enemies. According to the brief description, each enemy will be vulnerable to a particular element or attack combination, so if everything ends up being well balanced, it should make for some pretty diverse gameplay.
Speaking of which, if you're wondering what all of this might look like in-game, allow me to share with you one of the original gameplay trailers. Given that Dolmen is still very early in development the footage is obviously a bit clunky and the framerate is about as stable as a tap-dancing cow, but you should still be able to get a pretty good idea of what the developers are trying to accomplish. Have a peek:
You can learn more about Dolmen, as well as follow its development moving forward, by heading over to either Steam or its now-finished Kickstarter campaign. And if you're just curious about the release date, Dolmen will be launching on PC at some point in 2019, with PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions coming at a later date.
Once a more polished trailer comes to light I'll make sure to let you know as I'm quite curious myself, but until then I'm afraid all we can do is sit and wait. That said, if you have a bit of an itch for Souls-like games, you might also want to check out the newly released Ashen. It's not the lengthiest Souls-like game around, but it's a pretty fun one regardless.
And just at the end, here's a small glimpse at Dolmen's alien landscapes