So you've decided you want to Write a Souls-like RPG. Lets be clear, "Souls-like RPG", and its abbreviated name "Souls-Like", as a genre name isn't great. "Being like Dark Souls" is a terrible name, but it's what we have to work with at the moment.
Wikipedia defines souls like as:
- "a subgenre of action role-playing games known for high levels of difficulty and emphasis on environmental storytelling."
Unlike Rogue-Like and Rogue-Lite, a definition for Souls-Like has yet to be codified in any meaningful way.
Generally, a Souls-Like must contain some of the following criteria:
- Upon player death, the player lose a resource that can be recovered by returning to where they died.
- Upon player death, non-Boss enemies respawn.
- Players must return to Checkpoints to save progress.
- Open World Environment with unlockable shortcuts to ease travel to Checkpoints and Points of Interest.
- Healing items are limited and replenish at Checkpoints.
Additional criteria that can be included:
- Higher-than-average difficulty. (Hard to Measure)
- Attacks reduce Stamina bar.
- Mysterious story that is only hinted at indirectly.
- Loot based game rewards.
- Multiplayer integration.
- Combat rolls to avoid enemy attacks.
- Backstabbing for more damage.
- Enemies telegraph attacks so players can reflexively react.
- Item customization.
Necessary Tropes
- Nintendo Hard - Not necessarily in the sense that your player will be dying over and over again, but at the very least, the game shouldn't be "afraid" of killing you. Progress may be lost when you die, but can be saved between save points.
- Money Is Experience Points - EXP is also the currency. Your player has to chose between purchasing items or leveling up.
- Calling Your Attacks - Enemies telegraph their attacks allowing for players to dodge or attack the enemy while its mid-attack.
- Weak Player - Main character is not special and can easily die. Usually the character is a Faceless Protagonist, but this is not always the case.
- Save Point - Typically a player cannot rely on Save Scumming and instead must rely on Checkpoints to bank their progress. However, letting the player make a Suspend Save is never a bad idea.
- New Game Plus - After finishing the difficult game you can go through and do it all over again.
- Resurrective Immortality - When a player dies, their corpse leaves behind either lost items or XP that they can reclaim if they make it back to where they died. They respawn at the last checkpoint they visited, or a similar device.
- Metroid Vania - The open world allows for exploration and the finding of shortcuts that can make running back to the Checkpoint/Bonfire easier.
- Limited Heals - Healing items only replenish at Checkpoints. And gain more healing items as the game proceeds.
- Mooks: Enemies that obscure the player's progression should come in many shapes, sizes, and difficulties. Their purpose is to teach the player how to act and react in combat with their skill-set. Attacking, dodging, countering, etc. "Easy" enemies are rare because of this, but regardless of challenge, they should always be a fair fight. There is no shame in being bested by a superior foe, but a cheap loss stings no matter who deals it out.
Choices, Choices
- Faceless Protagonist/Named Protagonist - This choice ends up being one all RPG games must choose.
- Story Tone - In a lot of games, the setting is Grimdark and beyond helping, but a Crapsack World is hardly mandatory. A Crapsaccharine World can work just as well.
Pitfalls
- Checkpoints - How these are spread out needs to be carefully considered, otherwise you risk either littering the world with too many of them, or diving headfirst into Checkpoint Starvation territory.
- Artificial Difficulty - Enemies should be difficult, but don't just inflate health points and damage numbers to manufacture harder difficulty. A veteran player should be able to beat the game with enough skill when they start a new save.
- Ignoring Skill - Game designers often forget that the key to Souls is player Skill should take precedent over character skills.
- Demonic Spiders - Pretty much any game with difficult enemy encounters is at risk at least some of these, and having a small handful can work well to keep the player from getting complacent. But if your entire lineup of mooks can send the player to the Game Over screen faster than you can say "Game Breaking Balance Issues", then you might need to make some changes.
Potential Subversions
- Most Souls-likes rely on Story Breadcrumbs leading around a hero who's Late to the Tragedy. This does not need to be a hard-and-fast rule of the genre.
- How about a Souls-like that takes place in a Crapsaccharine World, or even a Sugar Bowl? Black Comedy would definitely be very ripe with this sort of setting.
Writers' Lounge
Suggested Themes and Aesops
- Futile Nature of War and Conflict
- The Meaninglessness of Life
- Perseverance Equals Salvation
Potential Motifs
- Since such games are often set "Half-Past the apocalypse," lots of crumbling castles, burnt-out towns, and festering corruption.
Suggested Plots
- Hide the Plot - Many Souls Like games keep plot relegated to the background in favor of the gameplay. People remember characters and some moments, but can't often remember the plot.
Departments
Set Designer / Location Scout
- Ancient Ruins
- Ghost Towns
- Abandoned Cathedrals
- Castles
- Towers
Props Department
Costume Designer
- Protagonist
- Best if the protagonist's appearance changes with different armor types.
- Heavy Armor - Slows down Player, but gives better damage reduction.
- Light Armor - Not very protective, but allows the player to react more quickly.
Casting Director
- Enemies
- Undead Soldiers - Bonus points if they are a skeleton or zombie.
- Husks - Mindlessly hostile and dull-witted civilian zombies, often encountered in large packs.
- Desperate People - Roving bands of Disaster Scavengers looking for a good haul. And your protagonist sure looks like they've got full pockets...
- Annoying Flying Bug - An Airborne Mook who dodges, weaves, and stings, interrupting attacks meant for real threats.
- Poison Wizard - An enemy who inflicts status effects; often sorted into various subtypes depending on which specific curse they slap you with.
- The Giant Mooks - Big, ugly monstrous humanoids, such as ogres or trolls.
- Abominations - Hulking Mix And Match Critters, such as animals with the wrong heads (including human heads on animal bodies) or "the top half of a human attached to the bottom half of something other than one of the two things a human torso should be attached to" are a popular choice.
- Came From Beyond - An outright Eldritch Abomination or an especially freaky kind of demon.
- Lethal Joke Monster - They're out of place and vaguely amusing, right up until they drop-kick you across the area.
- Giant Bosses - Typically the moment most Players will remember because they will die the most to these overpowered enemies.
- NPC's:
- Hopeless and/or insane, for the most part. Nine times out of ten, the Apocalypse is ongoing, and everyone in the world's "putting the chairs up and mopping the floor," as it were.
- Shopkeepers - There's always someone out to make a dollar, and these guys are it. Not much for talking, much more interested in trading things for cash.
- Patches - Halfway between a shopkeeper and an enemy, Patches exists to prank your character by kicking them up the arse while they're looking down a cliffside. Often has the best stuff and is insufferably smug about it.
Stunt Department
- Back Stab - Do more damage if you hit a target from behind.
- Combat Roll - Avoid attack.
- Blocking - Makes hits drain stamina instead of health.
- Drink Potion - Often the only way to heal.
Extra Credit
The Greats
- FromSoftware's library is famous for the genre for a reason.
- King's Field - The progenitor of the Souls genre. First Person Fantasy game.
- Demon's Souls - The original Souls Game.
- Dark Souls - The popular Souls Game.
- Bloodborne - The Steampunk/Victorian Gothic Horror Souls game from FromSoftware.
- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - The Feudal Japan Souls Like.
- Elden Ring - A more recent FromSoftware game that is similar to Dark Souls.
- Jedi: Fallen Order - Star Wars Souls Like.
- Tunic - The Legend of Zelda Souls Like. Intentionally breaks a lot of rules in regards to the genre when it comes to story tone and how it's delivered, but the gameplay's a dead ringer. It's also not as crushingly hard as most other games here (though it's still pretty tough), which makes it a great entry point for the genre.
- Remnant: From the Ashes - The first "Dark Souls with Guns" Souls like, and the best of those by far. Actually breaks some of the common gameplay traits of the genre, such as separating your currency from what you use to level up, not having the player drop or lose anything upon death, and even doing away with the incrementally raised character stats entirely, and replacing them with a unique "trait" system that this game pioneered. Its still an identifiable souls like though.
The Epic Fails
- Any Self Proclaimed Souls Like - Steam and other platforms have been inundated with Souls Like games. So much so that the genre is saturated with low effort Souls Like games.
- Lords of the Fallen - Souls like without much soul. Feels like a copy more than its own game.
