Do We Need a Soulslike Genre?

This video about game design is the Dark Souls of videos about game design.

It's no surprise it took the Dark Souls' developer to innovate their own design. Bloodborne is still the same game in essence, but the simple switch to offensive over defensive mechanics was enough to make it original in it's own right. The issue I have with games like The Surge is that it doesn't justify some of it's mechanics such as respawning. Dark Souls builds the bonfires and death into it's lore while The Surge just happens to have it.

>it's just a renamed versions of estus flask from dark souls >health potion

11:38 and ironically the only guys creative enough to make a soulslike game entirely different than the landmark ones...is From themselves, with Sekiro

It's really frustrating going into Steam or other online game stores and having the "RPG" section be filled with every game that happens to have leveling and/or a skill tree.

Imo the key take away from Souls-inspired games I see are: - Well placed checkpoints between hordes of enemies, which you need to activate manually. - You lose experience/currency on death, which you may collect after respawning, from the same location you lost it. - The surprise factor from enemy placements with maybe some subtle foreshadowing preceding it. - Combat mostly designed around 1v1 fights. - Enemies respawn after saving at a checkpoint, or leaving and entering an area. - "Door does not open from this side".

its been 2 years and i am extremely disappointed that "souls em up" didnt take off as the genre name

a soulslike series is just a reverse dynasty warriors, where you're able to get flung into the air like paper and the enemies are the OP avatars of gods.

You guys remember when we used to call FPS games "DOOM clones"? Me neither. I was a small child.

The big difference between Doom and Dark Souls is that Doom spawned an entire new genre where as Dark Souls is spawning a new subgenre much like how Metroid spawned a subgenre of the 2d action platformer. This is the big reason that we had to transition away from calling FPS' "Doom Clones" but never had to transition away from calling Metroidvania games Metroidvania games.

HOLD UP i just realized. Hardcore Minecraft is a roguelike

I remember when people were still calling Demon's Souls a hack-'n-slash. My how time flies. To me these "bonfire games" have always been a combination of several other genres, namely hack-'n-slash, metroidvania, and rpg.

Soulslike games like Lords of the Fallen, The Surge, Nioh, Crash Bandicoot N.sane Trilogy

don't know why, but I think Mark Brown may like spelunky

10:16 small something i would like to add. Once there is a formula the marketing team will use that too predict sales. In other words games that do not follow the formula will be regarded as dangerous investment.

This is amazing insight. Thank you!

I want to call the new genre of dark souls roll'em'ups. 420 praise it.

I've had this discussion a lot with friends, most imitators of an iconic game try to make what they view it as, and usually miss the mark on what made it so good to begin with. You end up with a slightly empty game that is evocative of the original, but leaves you thinking "why don't I just play that instead". That being said I think Dark Souls and Bloodborne encompass what you were saying about taking a concept and making it a genre. I played both to completion and they still feel like entirely different games to me, you just have to look at some different boxes. This is how they would look in my book: Dark Souls - Intentional combat (make your swings count, and don't get too risky or you'll be punished) - Resource management (Set number of flasks, need them to last from bonfire to bonfire) - Fair patterned bosses (Bosses have set routines with obvious areas to attack) - Gear Weight management (Do I want more defense and less mobility, or more mobility and less defense) - Structural level design (Levels are designed with some semblance of realism and connect logically) - Sharp Increasing power level (start out weak, but get stronger in power and in sustainability as game goes on) - Under-doggedness (fights leave player feeling disadvantaged and afraid, shown in victory message "victory achieved") Bloodborne - Aggressive combat (Taking risks is rewarded, as health can be regained by attacking more) - Situational preparedness (all items have set quantities, and bringing the right items affects success dramatically) - High-difficulty bosses (Bosses attack with intensity and rarely give the player clear open windows to strike) - Gear optimization management (Gear has no weight, but bringing the right clothes/runes/weapons into combat is important) - Dreamlike level design (Levels are made with little sense of realism and do not connect as logically) - Light slope power level (Start out powerful, end feeling slightly more powerful, end bosses still 1-3 shot you regardless) - Power fantasy (You're out to hunt your prey, not survive against it shown in victory message "prey slaughtered") This is just a quick write up, but hopefully it shows how two games that start with the same concepts are approached and feel very different from each other. Ironically both are put out by the same studio, but hopefully other developers will catch onto the nuance and leave us with some interesting new places to push this potential genre.

It's funny to me that dark souls is considered the first in it's genre, when it used lots of existing conventions of games in the action RPG genre. I think it's helpful to compare dark souls to a game like Kingdom Hearts and see what they have in common. The save-point system in KH is actually extremely similar to bonfires. The MP system for casting isn't the same as attunement slots, but is very similar to FP in DS3. Potions are very similar to how life gems function is DS2. Items are scattered around a level, and are meant to draw they player's eye and guide them in the right direction. You have multiple branching paths you can go down (in KH this is world selection), but the difficulty of one path might encourage you to try a different path first. The big difference between the two is how the combat is handled, how experience is gained, and how a character is built. The biggest similarity is how an individual level is built, and how level design is used to naturally guide a player in a particular way. They both also have very weird plots that are convoluted, and a player might not understand the deeper lore of the game the first time through. In addition to that, there is a simpler surface version of the plot that is pretty easy to get. Another thing they both do is use large beast type boss fights in addition to person type boss fights with similar abilities to the player. There is quite a bit of overlap between the boss designs, and KH1 even has a dodge roll! They are remarkably similar in a lot of regards, but kingdom hearts is rarely talked about in the same breath as dark souls. This might be because of the tonal disparity, or because kingdom hearts suffered from a lot of bad design choices that were a product of it's time, and dark souls players liked dark souls specifically because a lot of these mistakes were absent. I think the most important thing Fromsoft brings to the table when it comes to action JRPGs is level design. This really clicked for me when I recently did a blind play through of bloodborne, as I could easily navigate it's world just by being familiar with the conventions of From's level design.

This channel is basically Skillshare game design but on YouTube