In 6 Articles – What Is This Soulslike?

Dark Souls is one of the most influential, inspiring games in the gaming world in the last 10 years. But now we’ve reached a stage where we see the soulslike tag being glued to most games that they don’t deserve, as if the only criterion is that the game is difficult. That’s why we’ve become so beloved to call irrelevant genres “the Dark Souls of the don’t know.”

– Dark Souls of this game platform games!
– Why would that be? Is there Stamina, is there a bonfire, is the risk rewarded?
– No, but they did it very hard, brother, my belly cracked until I passed a screen.
– Okay then.

– Here’s the Dark Souls of football games!
– Football, boo now, how is that?
– They’ve made it incredibly difficult to score, man, goalkeepers are a monster.
– Well, dear, good luck to you.

Although Demon’s Souls laid the foundation for what we call soulslike , the popularity of the genre was due to Dark Souls. But at some point, the essential characteristics of this species began to be ignored, and for some reason we reached the level of “just make it very difficult, here you go soulslike”. However, there are very important mechanics that a game must have in order to belong to this genre.

1 – Spirits

Spirits come up with different names in different games, and the common feature is that they can be used both as money for the game and as experience points to jump the level. Spirit in Souls, Blood Echo in Bloodborne, Scrap in The Surge, Amrita in Nioh, Salt in Salt & Sanctuary. Especially in the Souls series, the use of spirits for everything from repairing items to improving, from purchase to level jumping, is one of the factors that drives the player to choose how to evaluate the spirits at hand.

2 – Bonfire

Again, we’ve seen different versions of it in different games, such as Shrine in Nioh, Lamp in Bloodborne, Site of Grace in Elden Ring. It’s kind of a checkpoint, they offer the possibility to continue from that point when you die. If you rest at these points, your health will be full, but in return, all the enemies you have killed will be resurrected. Souls games don’t offer you anything for free.

3 – The weight of death

It’s easy to die in souls games, but it’s also serious. The spirits you carry when you die (see article 1) remain at the point where you die, you need to reach the same point without dying once again so as not to lose everything you have. If you don’t make it, it’s all gone. In Bloodborne, an enemy near where you died can steal the Blood Echo from you and you have to kill that enemy to get it back. This mechanic requires you to act extra cautiously if you have a large amount of souls on you that have not yet been spent.

4 – Fights based on Stamina

A soulslike’s must-have is that your character can’t attack or defend unlimitedly, he can’t run forever. Every move you make takes away some of your stamina, and when you’re done, you’re vulnerable. It is imperative to manage the stamine well, especially in boss battles, or you can neither swing your sword nor block that final blow when your stamina is finished.

This mechanic can also appear in more advanced situations in different games. For example, a ki-pulse with the right timing at Nioh will give you back some of the stamina you spent, while in The Surge, different implants allow various actions to spend less stamina. But in all of them, the basic logic is the same.

5 – High difficulty level

A true Soulslike game doesn’t have a selective level of difficulty, and the game really presents an above-normal challenge. But in father games of this genre, this is never an artificial challenge to punish the player. These games reward the player for their patience, make progress as you get to know the enemy and their movements, learn the game and get better and better. The Souls series always rewards players for their patience and determination.

6 – Ambiguous storytelling

All Soulsborne games tell their deep stories in a highly ambiguous way, leaving the work of merging the pieces mostly to the player. Even the most mundane-looking item has clues to that world and the events that precede you, in the spirits of the bosses you kill, in the equipment you collect… Even your dialogues with NPCs are not the key to mystery alone, you gradually complete the story jigsaw puzzle by combining this knowledge you have learned with other clues.

We’ve actually seen different types of games that use this feature, such as Hollow Knight, which is intrinsically a metroidvania, but it’s directly modeled after the Souls series when it comes to storytelling. Metroidvania games such as Salt & Sanctuary, Unworthy, Vigil, Ender Lillies, Blasphemous have also created a new genre called 2D Soulslike, preferring ambiguity in storytelling, in addition to feeding soulslike mechanics beautifully to the genre.

Of course, there are exceptions to this, such as one of the most successful soulslike games made outside of From Software, although Nioh tells a clearer story. But it’s also true that this feature is a common feature of Soulsborne games.

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