Finishing a brutal soulslike campaign usually lets players roll the credits, exhale, and convince themselves that their survival was pure skill. Publisher Crunching Koalas clearly thinks your endgame confidence needs a reality check. Following its Xbox premiere, dark fantasy action-RPG Fountains has brought its punishing Gauntlet mode to consoles to test whether high-tier builds are genuinely resilient or just skating by on lucky panic rolls.
Originally designed on PC for seasoned soulslike veterans craving supreme punishment, this post-campaign arena gauntlet refuses entry to casual tourists. You must defeat the campaign's final boss before the gate opens. Once that monster is down, an audience with the gauntlet keeper, an NPC modeled quite literally after a knight's armored metal glove, initiates the trial.
The standard Gauntlet run strips away trash mobs, maze navigation, and ambient strolls. All ten base campaign bosses stand in line, thrusting you directly from one victory into the next arena without a second to admire your damage numbers. Those holding the Shattered Shape expansion can also access a dedicated DLC variant to battle those extra bosses.
Boss rushes are notorious for shattering glass-cannon setups that rely entirely on one weapon or passive buff. Fountains forces you to confront ten distinct encounter mechanics in sequence, where an over-reliance on a single playstyle can quickly ruin a run. Clashing against aggressive opponents like Commander Varka reveals in seconds whether your endgame build holds up under sustained pressure.
To keep the trial from becoming purely masochistic, the Gauntlet paces out structured respites. Intermission rest zones appear right after the third, sixth, and ninth skirmishes. These campfires restore your depleted healing flasks and allow you to swap weapons and gear before facing the final boss in fight ten.
The challenge also eliminates the usual resource hoarding anxiety that plagues soulslike inventories. Every consumable you burn during an attempt is automatically refunded back into your bags once the run finishes. You can pop rare potions and throw high-value consumables without worrying about wasting your stash on a failed run.
Because the challenge can be repeated as many times as you like, you can treat each dive like an endgame combat laboratory. Packing multiple loadouts to counter diverse boss archetypes makes the mid-run rest stops genuinely strategic rather than ornamental. Consumable counts remain finite within each segment, so timing your burst buffs during key phases is still vital to survival.
The Gauntlet update is live now on Xbox, as highlighted in the official announcement on Xbox Wire. For players who have not stepped foot into the labyrinthine kingdom, Fountains: Extended Edition is currently 20 percent off, bundling both the base campaign and the expansion content into one package.
