Soulslike
In short A soulslike is a demanding action game built on the death-and-recovery structure of FromSoftware's Souls games.
Definition
A soulslike is an action game modeled on the structure FromSoftware set out in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls: deliberate, demanding combat against enemies that punish carelessness; resting points that restore health but revive enemies; and a death penalty in which the player drops their accumulated currency and must return to the spot to recover it. Levels tend to loop back on themselves, and the game explains little, leaving players to learn from repetition and from each other. The label names a debt to particular games rather than a neutral description, which is why its edges are argued over. Difficulty alone does not make a soulslike; the death-and-recovery loop and the patience it demands do.
Not to be confused with
- Roguelike
Both make death costly, but a roguelike regenerates the world and erases the run, while a soulslike keeps its hand-built world and lets the player recover what they lost.
- Metroidvania
A metroidvania opens up an interconnected world through new abilities, and while many soulslikes share that looping layout, the soulslike is defined by its combat and death penalty.
- Theme
The dark, ruined fantasy setting of the Souls games is a theme many imitators borrow, but it is not what makes a game a soulslike.
Where the game lives
- rules: used
- goals: used
- feedback: used
- uncertainty: used
- choice: used
- play: dropped
Exact, readable feedback in combat and a real cost to each mistake make choice consequential, while withheld explanations keep the player uncertain about how the world works. There is little room for play without stakes.
used dropped · What the six structures are
Examples
Demon's SoulsFromSoftware, 2009
Introduced the dropped-currency death penalty and the deliberate combat the label is named after.
Dark SoulsFromSoftware, 2011
Joined the structure to a single interconnected world with bonfires as resting points, and became the game the label most often points to.
NiohTeam Ninja, 2017
An outside studio's game that adopts the death-and-recovery loop and resting points around its own faster combat.
Where the field disagrees
Critics disagree about whether “soulslike” names a genre or only a set of borrowed features, and how many of those features a game needs. Some use it for any hard action game; others for any game with a dropped-currency death penalty. Second Playthrough uses it for games that adopt the death-and-recovery loop and the deliberate, punishing combat together, and describes difficulty or a dark setting on its own in other terms.
In the essays
No essay takes this term on directly yet. Its neighbors in the guide are linked above; the newsletter announces new essays.
Sources
- PaperNo Mastery Without Mystery: Dark Souls and the Ludic Sublime. Game Studies 15(1), 2015. Reads Dark Souls as a game whose withheld knowledge keeps full mastery out of reach.
- BookYou Died: The Dark Souls Companion. BackPage Press, 2016. Reading list