# Demon's Souls

- Work: Action RPG
- Date: 2009 (PlayStation 3)
- Made by: Hidetaka Miyazaki (Director & writer)
- Houses: FromSoftware
- Platforms: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 5 (2020 remake)
- Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/works/demons-souls/

> A failing Sony–FromSoftware project, rescued by a director who had nothing to lose, became a cruel, fog-shrouded kingdom of five worlds and one hub, and the seed of the entire soulslike genre.

**Why it matters:** Demon's Souls is the founding game of the soulslike: its punishing but fair combat, lost-souls death system and ghostly asynchronous multiplayer created a design language that FromSoftware refined into Dark Souls and Elden Ring and that countless other studios adopted.

## Quick answers

**When was Demon's Souls first released?**
Demon's Souls was first released in 2009 (PlayStation 3).

**Who created Demon's Souls?**
Demon's Souls was made by Hidetaka Miyazaki (director & writer).

**Who published or developed Demon's Souls?**
FromSoftware.

**What kind of work is Demon's Souls?**
Demon's Souls is an action RPG in the Action RPGs & Hack-and-Slash, Soulslikes and Dark Fantasy tradition, released for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 5 (2020 remake).

**Why is Demon's Souls important?**
Demon's Souls is the founding game of the soulslike: its punishing but fair combat, lost-souls death system and ghostly asynchronous multiplayer created a design language that FromSoftware refined into Dark Souls and Elden Ring and that countless other studios adopted.

## Overview

The kingdom of Boletaria is lost. Its king, Allant, revived the forbidden Soul Arts and woke the Old One, a being that exhaled a colorless Deep Fog full of soul-eating demons. Adventurers who enter the fog die, and the player is no exception: the first proper boss usually kills the new character, who wakes as a soul in the Nexus, a gloomy temple tended by the eyeless Maiden in Black. From there the player ventures back out into five worlds to kill the demons and take their souls.

*Demon's Souls*, developed by [FromSoftware](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/fromsoftware/) with Sony's Japan Studio and released in Japan on February 5, 2009, for the PlayStation 3, was hard, bleak and obscure, and Sony nearly buried it. Instead it became a word-of-mouth hit, won GameSpot's Game of the Year, and introduced the design that [*Dark Souls*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dark-souls/), *Bloodborne* and [*Elden Ring*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/elden-ring/) would build into a genre: the [Soulslikes](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/soulslike/).

## Origins

FromSoftware was known for its *King's Field* dungeon crawlers and *Armored Core* robot games when Takeshi Kajii of Sony's Japan Studio proposed reviving what he called a "lost breed of action game." The project, a high fantasy RPG, struggled without a clear vision. [Hidetaka Miyazaki](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/hidetaka-miyazaki/), who had joined FromSoftware in 2004 and worked on *Armored Core*, heard it was considered a failure and asked to take it over. If it was already failing, he reasoned, he could take it in any direction he wanted.

He wanted to go back to basics: to recreate the challenge and dark atmosphere of older games such as *King's Field* and [*Wizardry*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/wizardry/) with modern technology and online play. Rather than the Japanese folklore common in Japanese action RPGs, he drew on European myth, [Arthurian](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/arthurian-fantasy/) and Germanic legend, the films [*Conan the Barbarian*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/conan-the-barbarian-film/) and [*Excalibur*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/excalibur-film/), the paintings of [Frank Frazetta](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/frank-frazetta/) and old [gamebooks](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/gamebook/). Because he feared that Sony would insist on an easier game, Miyazaki worded his pitches for the soul-loss system carefully and, with Kajii's agreement, said little about the difficulty until release. A permanent-death mode was considered and rejected as going too far. Shunsuke Kida, known for Japanese television music, wrote an orchestral and choral score, and the voice cast, recorded in English for all versions, was largely Scottish.

## How it plays

From the Nexus the player reaches five worlds, each split into areas ending in a boss: the castle of Boletaria, the mines of Stonefang, the prison Tower of Latria, the Shrine of Storms and the swamp Valley of Defilement. Combat is deliberate. Attacks, blocks, rolls and parries drain stamina, and every weapon moves differently; mistakes are punished quickly by enemies who hit hard. Killing enemies earns souls, which serve as both [experience](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/experience-points/) and currency. Dying sends the player back to the start of the area in soul form, with reduced maximum health, and leaves their souls in a bloodstain where they fell. Reach it and the souls return; die on the way and they are gone.

Online play was quietly radical. Through the PlayStation Network, other players appear as fleeting ghosts. Bloodstains replay other players' deaths as warnings. Players can write short messages on the ground from a set vocabulary, helpful or mischievous. Up to three players can cooperate, and "Black Phantoms" can invade another player's world to hunt them. Miyazaki said the idea came from a snowy hillside where drivers pushed one another's stalled cars uphill and went on their way without ever meeting. A "World Tendency" system shared across servers shifted each region between lighter and darker states, unlocking different events.

## Reception & impact

The Tokyo Game Show demo in 2008 was, in Kajii's word, a "disaster"; players thought the combat was unfinished. Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida gave up after two hours and called it "an unbelievably bad game." Sony chose not to publish it outside Asia. Japanese sales started slowly, then word of mouth pushed them past 100,000. Atlus picked it up for North America, forecast 75,000 sales and shipped just 15,000 at first; it sold 150,000 in its first month after its October 6, 2009, release and 250,000 by March 2010. Namco Bandai Partners released it in Europe in June 2010. It passed a million copies worldwide by 2011.

Western critics embraced what the demo audiences had rejected. GameSpot, which called the difficulty "fair," named it its overall Game of the Year for 2009; GameTrailers and IGN named it the best RPG. Eurogamer's Keza MacDonald wrote of the "heart-in-mouth euphoria" of finally killing a boss that had destroyed her in seconds. Yoshida later said he regretted his dismissal of the game.

## Legacy

FromSoftware moved on to a multiplatform spiritual successor, [*Dark Souls*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dark-souls/) (2011), and its partnership with Sony produced *Bloodborne* (2015). Critics credit *Demon's Souls* as the first soulslike, and its asynchronous messages and invasions influenced games well beyond the genre, including *Journey*. The official servers closed in February 2018, and fans soon built a private server to restore them. Bluepoint Games' remake, announced at the PlayStation 5 reveal in June 2020, launched with the console on November 12, 2020. The original's challenge culture also fed the communities of [challenge runners](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/speedrunning-and-challenge-runs/) who would flourish around its successors.

## Facts

- Hidetaka Miyazaki took over the project because it was already considered a failure: if his version failed too, nothing would be lost.
- Miyazaki kept the game's difficulty quiet in meetings with Sony, fearing he would be told to lower it.
- Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida played the demo for two hours, failed to leave the starting area and called it 'an unbelievably bad game'; he later regretted not publishing it in the West.
- The players' ghostly messages and helping phantoms were inspired by Miyazaki's memory of drivers pushing one another's cars up a snowy hill.
- Atlus expected to sell 75,000 copies in North America; it sold 250,000 by March 2010.
- The Maiden in Black has no eyes partly because eyes were the weakest part of the game's character models in close-up.
- Its official servers closed in February 2018; fans built a private server that restored the online features.

## Sources and further reading

- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon%27s_Souls)
- [Official site (Atlus)](https://atlus.com/demons-souls/)

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