In November 2021, the Golden Joystick Awards asked gamers to vote for the Ultimate Game of All Time as part of its celebration of 50 years of gaming. Dark Souls I bagged this coveted title, beating Minecraft, Doom and other legendary games. The Golden Joystick Awards is the longest-running video game award ceremony, and the fact that Dark Souls won this award via an audience poll underscores the meteoric rise to prominence of the souls-like. In a previous blog, we made no bones about the difficulty of these games. Nevertheless, it was not critics or tastemakers who voted for Dark Souls, but gamers themselves.
Why are souls-likes so popular? We will try to answer this by tracking the evolution of the souls-like formula and its coming of age in 2023. We will argue that the souls-like is an audience favourite because it’s a hotbed of innovation, it offers punishing but ultimately rewarding gameplay, and developers are now taking it in directions that few studios would risk, imbuing the souls-like with its own identity.
Must-Play Souls-Likes: Evolution and Experimentation
In most souls-likes, you are never more than seconds away from death, you need skill to survive, and stamina in combat. We will take a look at how From Software established and iterated on the core gameplay of Souls titles, and how studios like Team Ninja introduced novel variations on this formula: no two souls-like are alike.
Demons’ Souls
The first Souls game might well have been the last. Shuhei Yoshida, the then President of Sony Worldwide Studios, played a buggy final demo with framerate issues containing none of the game’s promised multiplayer elements. Sony decided not to publish the game worldwide. But soon, Atlus USA published the game in the US and Bandai Namco released it in Europe after reviews of imported copies made it clear that the game was 2009’s sleeper hit. At a time when mainstream games were criticised for holding the gamer’s hand and making things too easy, Demons’ Souls broke the mould and introduced the core gameplay concepts of the Souls games, with punishing combat, dark themes, an indirect narrative, death penalties, and more. As Demons’ Souls was released before the term ‘souls-like’ was coined, it was called an RPG and drew praise for its build variety and challenging combat.
The Dark Souls Franchise
If Demons’ Souls was almost nipped in the bud, Dark Souls I was against nigh-impossible odds. 2011 saw the release of Skyrim, Portal 2, Batman: Arkham City and other hugely successful games. Yet, Dark Souls drew critical praise and fans who guided each other to make the experience less punishing. Dark Souls improved upon the Souls formula: healing supplies are replenished when you respawn at a checkpoint, combat is more fluid, and the environmental storytelling is more nuanced.
Dark Souls II (2014) was not very popular on release because of performance and design issues. But it is now recognised for pioneering many of the elements that Elden Ring would feature: it is a quasi-open world allowing room for exploration, it offers more variety in builds, and has stances with unique movesets. If nothing else, Dark Souls II was a failed experiment that laid the groundwork for the best-selling souls-like to date.
Dark Souls III (2016) broke sales records on launch, becoming publisher Bandai Namco’s fastest-selling game until Elden Ring was published. A lot of hype surrounded the game before release; the term souls-like was now known, if not common, and most importantly, Bloodborne (2015) was a smash hit, giving From Software a chance to bounce back from Dark Souls II. And Dark Souls III didn’t disappoint. The game expands on many souls-like concepts: the parry system is more refined and magic builds are stronger with the Ashen Estus Flask, which can either regenerate health or magic. The new Weapon Arts system also arms the player with a variety of movesets. The world of the souls-like was now brimming with possibilities.
Bloodborne
Few games are as unique as Bloodborne, a souls-like that plays like a horror fantasy inspired by the author H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Bloodborne encourages fast-paced, aggressive combat by depriving the player of any shield or defensive weapon and giving them guns that can deal damage and repel attacks. If an enemy attack deprives you of health, you can counterattack within a narrow time frame to regain lost health points. This ‘Rally’ mechanic, along with Bloodborne’s gunplay, is a significant departure from the deliberate, methodical combat of other souls-likes.
Moreover, Bloodborne has a twist on the horror elements as well. A faculty called Insight keeps increasing as you progress through the game. This allows you to see the world as it really is – filled with Lovecraftian monstrosities. According to Lovecraft’s mythos, people who truly see the world’s cosmic horror go mad. Bloodborne’s developers translate this fictive conceit into a brilliant gameplay mechanic.