Game Design Deep Dive

6 Intro to Soulslikes

DOI: 10.1201/9781003450078-6

6.1 What Is a Soulslike?

Thankfully, defining what is a soulslike is going to be far easier than trying to define what an RPG is from my previous Deep Dive. Being considered a subgenre like metroidvanias means that there are specific design qualifiers that must be present for a game to be called a soulslike (Figure 6.1). In the last chapter, I brought up the three pillars of design and I want to explain them a little more in depth before we talk about the implementation and philosophy in Chapter 8.

Figure 6.1 Many people look at Sekiro’s design and structure and immediately label it a soulslike. ...