Dolmen

Dolmen is a 2022 action RPG developed by Brazilian studio Massive Work Studio and published by Prime Matter, released May 20, 2022 for PC, PlayStation 4/5, and Xbox One/Series X|S. A science-fiction Soulslike with an explicitly Lovecraftian bent, it holds a Metacritic score of 61 on PS5 with other platforms lower, and an OpenCritic rating of 58 (“Weak”) with just 13% of critics recommending it — placing it among the lowest-reviewed notable releases of 2022.

It’s worth covering honestly for exactly that reason: Dolmen is a recurring answer in “worst Soulslike you’ve played” threads, but the actual reviews tell a more specific story than simple failure — a genuinely interesting premise from a small studio in a region with little AAA-adjacent development history, undone by execution.

Technical Specifications

Revion Prime

Players land on Revion Prime, an uncolonized alien planet, tasked with retrieving Dolmen crystals — a resource critical to interstellar travel — only to find the planet crawling with Lovecraftian horrors and evidence that something went very wrong for everyone who arrived earlier. The cosmic-horror-in-space framing was consistently the most-praised thing about the game; even negative reviews tended to open by acknowledging the setting deserved better.

The Energy System

Dolmen’s one genuine mechanical signature is a shared energy meter that fuels ranged weapon fire, healing, and elemental melee-weapon infusions all at once — forcing constant triage between shooting, healing, and buffed melee, layered onto otherwise familiar stamina-based Souls combat. Reviewers generally credited the idea while finding the execution stiff: sluggish animations, floaty hit feedback, erratic difficulty, and technical roughness across platforms were the recurring complaints, alongside bosses that swung between trivial and brutal. Multiplayer boss summons — with other players pulled in to help, Souls-style — rounded out the package but couldn’t anchor a lasting community.

Reception

The critical consensus settled on “interesting ideas, rough game”: GameCritics, GamingTrend, and others credited the atmosphere and the energy system’s ambitions while cataloguing combat feel, enemy variety, and polish problems that mounted over a full playthrough. At OpenCritic’s 13% recommendation rate, Dolmen sits in genuinely rare territory for a boxed retail release — though its Steam user reviews have drifted slightly warmer over time among players who picked it up at deep discount, a common trajectory for flawed-but-cheap genre entries.

Where to Play It Today

Dolmen remains available on Steam, PlayStation 4/5, and Xbox One/Series X|S, and spends most of its life in steep-discount territory — regularly under $5 during sales, which is the price point at which most of its remaining recommendations happen. For players curious about sci-fi Soulslikes with more polish, Hellpoint and Mortal Shell occupy adjacent territory with warmer receptions.