# Soulslikes

- Genre: Digital genre
- Date: Demon's Souls (2009) and Dark Souls (2011); label spread in the mid-2010s
- Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/soulslike/

> You died. Pick up your dropped souls, rest at the bonfire, watch the monsters rise again, and try once more: the punishing, cryptic action RPGs that grew from Demon's Souls and Dark Souls.

**Why it matters:** The soulslike showed that difficulty, ambiguity and failure could be a mass-market pleasure. It turned FromSoftware and Hidetaka Miyazaki into defining figures of modern fantasy games and gave dozens of studios a new template.

## Quick answers

**What is Soulslikes?**
You died. Pick up your dropped souls, rest at the bonfire, watch the monsters rise again, and try once more: the punishing, cryptic action RPGs that grew from Demon's Souls and Dark Souls.

**What are the hallmarks of Soulslikes?**
High difficulty in which repeated death is expected and part of learning; Deliberate, stamina-limited melee combat built on reading enemy patterns; Sparse checkpoints (bonfires) that heal you but revive the enemies; Experience currency dropped on death, recoverable once if you return to the spot; Interconnected level design full of shortcuts that loop back to safety; Story told indirectly, through item descriptions, architecture and cryptic characters; Asynchronous online touches: player messages, bloodstains, invasions and summons.

**When did Soulslikes emerge?**
Demon's Souls (2009) and Dark Souls (2011); label spread in the mid-2010s.

**What are the key works of Soulslikes?**
Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Elden Ring.

## What it is

A soulslike is an [Action RPGs & Hack-and-Slash](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/action-rpg/) built around dying and learning. You enter a hostile, beautiful, ruined world, and something kills you within minutes. When you die, you drop the currency you have collected, which serves as both experience and money. You wake at the last checkpoint, and the currency waits where you fell. Reach it and it is yours again. Die on the way and it is gone. Resting at a checkpoint heals you and brings every ordinary enemy back to life. So progress comes less from grinding stats than from knowledge: learning an enemy's wind-up, finding the shortcut that loops back to safety, managing the stamina bar that every swing and dodge depletes. The story is withheld. It is scattered through item descriptions, ruined architecture and a handful of cryptic characters, left for players to assemble together.

## Origins

The form was created by [FromSoftware](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/fromsoftware/), the Tokyo studio behind the first-person *King's Field* series (from 1994). *Demon's Souls* is often described as that series' spiritual successor. It was a troubled joint project with Sony's Japan Studio until [Hidetaka Miyazaki](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/hidetaka-miyazaki/) took over its direction. [*Demon's Souls*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/demons-souls/) launched on PlayStation 3 in Japan on February 5, 2009. Early reactions were so negative that Sony declined to publish it in the West. Atlus released it in North America that October, expecting perhaps 75,000 sales. Word of mouth made it a phenomenon. Its hub world, its punishing combat and its online systems set the pattern. Players left warning messages on the ground, bloodstains replayed other players' deaths, and players could invade one another's worlds.

## Evolution

[*Dark Souls*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dark-souls/) (2011), published by Namco Bandai, replaced the hub with an interlocking kingdom, Lordran. Its bonfire checkpoints and ingenious shortcuts became the genre's vocabulary, and its marketing promised players they would "prepare to die." Sequels followed in 2014 and 2016, alongside the gothic *Bloodborne* (2015) and the samurai *Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice* (2019). Other studios took up the template in the mid-2010s. Examples include *Lords of the Fallen* (2014), Ska Studios' 2D *Salt and Sanctuary* (2016), Team Ninja's *Nioh* (2017), *The Surge* (2017) and, later, *Lies of P* (2023), a dark retelling of Pinocchio. Its influence spread further, into Metroidvanias such as *Hollow Knight* (2017) and blockbusters such as *Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order* (2019). A community of challenge runs and [speedruns](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/speedrunning-and-challenge-runs/) grew around the games' precision.

Then [*Elden Ring*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/elden-ring/) (2022) opened the formula onto a vast world. [George R. R. Martin](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/george-r-r-martin/) wrote the deep history of the Lands Between, and Miyazaki cited [*RuneQuest*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/runequest/) and [Michael Moorcock](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/michael-moorcock/) among its inspirations. The open structure let stuck players simply ride elsewhere. The result swept Game of the Year awards in 2022 and sold 30 million copies by April 2025, carrying a cult genre to one of the largest audiences in games.

The label arrived after the games. Accounts differ on who first wrote "Souls-like." By the mid-2010s it was common in the games press and on storefronts. Critics pushed back early. In 2017, *PC Gamer*'s Austin Wood called it jargon, and Mark Brown of *Game Maker's Toolkit* warned that it confined design to a template. Developers interviewed in 2020 mostly welcomed the tag as a useful signal to players.

## How to tell it apart

**Soulslike vs. [Action RPGs & Hack-and-Slash](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/action-rpg/).** Every soulslike is an action RPG, but the reverse is rarely true. [*Diablo*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/diablo/) is fast, loot-driven and forgiving: you click through hordes, and death costs a walk back. [*Secret of Mana*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/secret-of-mana/) is bright and cooperative. The soulslike is defined by a cluster of choices: stamina-bound melee, few checkpoints, respawning enemies, the drop-and-recover death penalty, bosses learned by pattern, and a narrative you must dig out yourself. Remove most of these and you have an action RPG. Keep them and add guns, as *Remnant: From the Ashes* (2019) did, and players still argue.

**Soulslike vs. hack-and-slash.** Character-action games such as *Devil May Cry* reward speed, combos and style. Soulslikes reward patience, spacing and commitment. Once an attack animation begins, it cannot be canceled.

**Soulslike vs. [Roguelikes](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/roguelike/).** Both are hard and treat death as teacher. But a roguelike erases your character and regenerates the world. A soulslike keeps your character and the world exactly as they were, and only your pride takes the hit.

**Soulslike vs. [Dark Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/dark-fantasy/).** The Souls games wear dark fantasy's decaying kingdoms and melancholy gods, but a soulslike is a design, not a mood. *Another Crab's Treasure* (2024) is a comedy about a hermit crab.

## Where to start

- [*Demon's Souls*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/demons-souls/) (2009): the origin, remade for PlayStation 5 in 2020.
- [*Dark Souls*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dark-souls/) (2011): the defining text, with the most admired level design.
- *Bloodborne* (2015): faster and more aggressive, in a gothic city.
- *Hollow Knight* (2017): the formula's influence in two dimensions.
- [*Elden Ring*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/elden-ring/) (2022): the most accessible, and the biggest.

## Hallmarks

- High difficulty in which repeated death is expected and part of learning
- Deliberate, stamina-limited melee combat built on reading enemy patterns
- Sparse checkpoints (bonfires) that heal you but revive the enemies
- Experience currency dropped on death, recoverable once if you return to the spot
- Interconnected level design full of shortcuts that loop back to safety
- Story told indirectly, through item descriptions, architecture and cryptic characters
- Asynchronous online touches: player messages, bloodstains, invasions and summons

## Facts

- Demon's Souls came out in Japan on February 5, 2009. Sony declined to publish it in the West, so Atlus brought it to North America that October.
- Atlus expected about 75,000 sales and initially shipped only 15,000 units before word of mouth took over.
- The genre is named for Dark Souls (2011). FromSoftware's games are also called 'Soulsborne,' combining Souls and Bloodborne (2015).
- Dark Souls' Windows port was titled the Prepare to Die Edition, after the series' marketing slogan.
- In 2017 PC Gamer's Austin Wood criticized 'Soulslike' as jargon that 'ignores what makes [the games] unique.'
- Elden Ring (2022), with worldbuilding by George R. R. Martin, sold 30 million copies by April 2025.

## Sources and further reading

- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soulslike)
- [Wikipedia: Demon's Souls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon%27s_Souls)

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From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.