Bylina Review: Slavic Folklore Meets Souls-Like Combat

This Bylina review covers a debut action RPG from Far Far Games that drops players into Slavic mythology with souls-like combat mechanics. The game launched April 20, 2026 on Steam and is sitting at 72% positive from 738 user reviews: Mostly Positive, not the Overwhelmingly Positive that signals a clean genre entry.

Key takeaways

• Released April 20, 2026 on PC via Steam
• 72% positive from 738 reviews: Mostly Positive, still below the top tier for souls-likes
• Protagonist is Kestrel, tasked with challenging Koschei the Deathless in the Thrice-Nine Kingdom
• Combat is skill-based with weapon mastery, spells, and armor progression
• Far Far Games identifies this as their debut release after several years in development

Bylina review overview

Koschei the Deathless is the right villain to build a game around. The figure from Slavic and Russian folklore is genuinely strange: an immortal whose soul is separated from his body and hidden inside a needle inside an egg inside a duck inside a hare inside a chest buried beneath an oak tree on a remote island. He's not a stand-in for a generic death god. He's a specific, rule-bound creature with a specific vulnerability. Building an action RPG around the folklore that produced him is a different proposition than building one around yet another fallen kingdom with a corrupted king.

Bylina puts Kestrel (a young warrior) into the Thrice-Nine Kingdom to challenge Koschei directly. The Thrice-Nine Kingdom is itself a piece of Slavic fairy-tale geography: a mythological realm beyond the edge of the known world, distinct from the mortal plane by different physics, different creatures, and different rules. It's the kind of setting that most Western game studios haven't touched, which makes it immediately distinguishable from the genre's dominant aesthetic clusters.

That distinctiveness is Bylina's primary argument. Far Far Games announced its launch with the statement: "A lot of time, sleepless nights, and hard work went into this, and today we're happy to say that Bylina is now available on Steam." The sincerity is clear. Whether the execution keeps pace with the ambition is where the 77% launch score starts mattering.

For genre context, the Kristala review covers a comparable debut souls-like that launched at a similar score and improved over the following months.

Combat and gameplay

Bylina's combat system uses weapon mastery as its primary progression axis, with spells and armor layered on top. Kestrel builds an arsenal across the run: different weapon types unlock different approaches to the same enemy encounters, and magical abilities extend the options available for each boss. The top-down perspective places it closer to the Hades end of the souls-like spectrum than the over-the-shoulder Soulsborne tradition, though the design expectation is the same: learn the pattern, respond correctly, survive.

Boss encounters draw from Slavic mythology's creature catalogue. The enemies aren't reskins of Western fantasy archetypes: they're built to the specific visual and behavioral logic of their source material. A player with passing familiarity with Russian folklore will recognize things that a player without that context will only see as visually distinct.

The genre demands precision in its execution. The distance between a 77% launch score and a 90% score in a souls-like usually comes down to hitbox accuracy, input timing, and the fairness of attack wind-ups. A 77% from 86 reviews doesn't isolate which element is friction: but it confirms friction exists. First-game studios frequently discover that the gap between playable and polished in this genre is narrower than expected and harder to close than other genres.

The action RPG comparison pool is broad enough to absorb a 7.5, but the game's position in that pool matters. Kristala's post-launch trajectory is a useful reference point: a debut souls-like that launched at comparable scores and closed the gap with patches.

Bylina's top-down perspective places it closer to the Hades end of the souls-like spectrum: pattern learning over pixel-perfect timing.

GODEEPER: For context on how Bylina's combat compares to a more polished indie Souls-like at similar price, the Kristala review covers parry-based combat in a debut game that launched at 77% and climbed. Kristala Review: Cat-Warrior Souls-Like Reviewed →

World design and atmosphere

The Thrice-Nine Kingdom's environments are designed around specific Slavic mythological settings rather than the dark-fantasy generic. This is the strongest part of Bylina. The biomes, creature designs, and visual language are working from source material that hasn't been mined to near-exhaustion the way Arthurian legend and Norse mythology have been.

Koschei himself shows up as an antagonist with genuine folkloric depth rather than a boss fight at the end of a corridor. The narrative engages with the mythology's rules: his immortality isn't just a plot device, it's a problem to be solved through the logic the folklore defines.

The result is a game that looks and feels like it came from a different tradition than the field it's competing in. That's worth paying for when execution is close enough to justify the ticket. At 72% positive, the execution is still short of the genre's standard.

The same key art doubles as the launch trailer's cover image: Koschei's silhouette is doing a lot of the game's visual heavy lifting.

Where this Bylina review gets complicated

77% positive at launch was not a disaster. In context, it was the launch score of a debut studio in one of gaming's most technically demanding genres. The mechanics that make souls-likes work (animation cancel timing, hit feedback, enemy telegraphing, camera behavior in complex geometries) each require iterations of testing that first-time developers are still learning to recognize. Launching at 77% from the first 86 reviews was launching with the learning curve still visible.

Three months and eight patches later, that number has settled rather than climbed: 72% positive from 738 reviews, still Mostly Positive. That's the more useful number for a reader deciding today, since it reflects a much larger sample and a studio that's already shipped its post-launch fixes rather than a snapshot of opening-week noise. Far Far Games' patch notes (performance, quest flow, combat behavior) suggest the studio is addressing what reviewers flagged, even if the aggregate score hasn't moved into Very Positive territory yet.

For value benchmarking against the current indie game field, the best indie games under $20 provides a frame for whether Bylina's $24.99 price is competitive, especially when no discount is running.

The 30-to-60-day window after launch, where a debut's score usually settles, has now passed. At 72% positive from 738 reviews, Bylina's score looks stable rather than still forming. Some players will find the remaining friction tolerable given the distinctive setting. Others will wait for further patches. Both approaches are rational given the available data.

Verdict

Rating: 7.5/10

Bylina's premise is the most original in the souls-like subgenre this year. The Thrice-Nine Kingdom is a real place drawn from real folklore, Koschei the Deathless is a villain with more depth than his visual design alone conveys, and Far Far Games made genuine design commitments to their source material rather than using Slavic mythology as set dressing on familiar systems.

The execution carries the marks of a debut release. It launched at 77% positive from a small first wave of reviews, and three months and eight patches later sits at 72% positive from 738 reviews: a signal that the combat timing and polish still aren't fully matching the concept's ambition. Far Far Games has kept patching, and given what the studio built, there's reason to believe they're still working to close the gap.

Buy Bylina now, at full price with no discount currently running, if the setting alone is worth it to you. If you need the combat to feel finished first, eight patches haven't moved the score out of Mostly Positive, so that wait may need to continue a while longer.

GODEEPER: If you're weighing Bylina against other indie action games this spring, the Saint of Chains review covers another 2026 debut in a different horror direction. Saint of Chains Review: Horror FPS Verdict →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Bylina a souls-like game? Yes. Bylina is tagged as a souls-like on Steam and built around the same core loop: skill-based combat with punishing encounters that require pattern recognition. Kestrel wields weapons, unlocks spells, and fights through a progression of legendary creatures from Slavic folklore.

What is the Thrice-Nine Kingdom in Bylina? The Thrice-Nine Kingdom comes from Russian fairy-tale tradition: a realm beyond the known world where magical rules apply and where figures like Koschei the Deathless hold power. In Bylina, it's the setting Kestrel must cross to challenge Koschei directly.

Who developed Bylina? Far Far Games developed Bylina, with Digital Vortex Entertainment handling publishing. Far Far Games describes this as their debut release, with the team noting significant development time invested in the project.

How long does it take to beat Bylina? No playtime data was publicly available at launch. Based on the game's structure (boss fights against legendary creatures, weapon progression, and spell unlocks) a first run likely falls in the 8-15 hour range, shifting based on build choices and difficulty.

Is Bylina worth buying at its launch price? For players drawn to the Slavic mythology angle, Bylina is worth it if you can catch a sale. At full price ($24.99, no discount running as of this writing), the 72% positive score is a flag worth waiting out: eight patches have shipped since launch without moving the score into Very Positive territory.

What platforms is Bylina available on? Bylina launched on PC via Steam on April 20, 2026. No console versions were announced at launch.

References

• Bylina on Steam
• Far Far Games on X (Twitter)
• Bylina launch trailer on YouTube