Soulframe is the spiritual successor to the live-service game Warframe, and was announced at Tennocon in July 2022. While Warframe already had anti-capitalist and -consumerist undertones, particularly in the form of the exploitation of natural resources in the Orb Vallis region of the game and the environmental damage this causes, the ecological sensibilities of Soulframe are more explicit.
According to a Washington Post interview, developer Steve Sinclair indicates that “the inspiration for the world itself comes from stuff like Princess Mononoke and The NeverEnding Story. It’s a game world that’s ‘a little angry about what’s been done to it,’ meaning, ‘the grounds underneath tend to shift throughout the day,’ leading to procedurally-generated areas set in places like caves.”