Summary
- Indie games approach Soulslike elements thoughtfully, not just relying on punishing combat or stamina systems.
- Games like Blasphemous and Mortal Shell exhibit influences from Souls games with their combat and level design.
- Soulslike genre isn't limited to dark fantasy; games like Tails of Iron and Another Crab's Treasure show varied settings.
A deluge of Soulsborne games hit the gaming industry after the runaway success of Dark Souls, with many of those design trends no💜w integrated into many games without much thought. This is especially true at the AAA level, and there have been so stella🌜r games, though indie games have been influenced massively as well.

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Without the budget of AAA games, many indie games h𝕴ave to find more thoughtful ways of incorporating Soulslike elements. You don't need a stamina system to be a ಞSoulslike, or overly-punishing combat. Sometimes it just needs strong level design, enticing enemies, and some strong direction.
7 ꦜ Blasphemous 🌱
- Released
- 🐭 September 10, 2019
- Developer(s)
- 𓃲 The Game Kitchen
- Publisher(s)
- Team17
- Platform(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nintendo Switch, PC, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Blasphemous, as the name likely already informs you, is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a game deeply influenced by religion. It seeps into every part of the game, pulling e🐓specially from the historical religious presence in Spain. Blasphemous takes that to the extreme, with so much of the game's atmosphere based around penance. You w♉ill bleed, it is divine.
Blasphemous uses the Metroidvania genre as its foundation, giving you the freedom to explore the world in a non-linear fashion. It's combat is indeed difficult, but it's more in the style of environmental storytelling and the more mไethodical approach to combat that it resembles thဣe Soulslike genre.
6 𒁏 Mortal Shell
- Released
- August 18,🌃 2020 𓆏
- Developer(s)
- ಞ Cold Symmet🌸ry
- Publisher(s)
- Playstack
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox One, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Series X, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Series S, PS4, PS5
Mortal Shell is as close to an homage of the Souls games as you can get without outright being them. Riffing off the original Dark Souls especially, combat in Mortal Shell is immensely slow. Every hit you take has to be planned for or will be severely punished. The areas a�♛�nd overall medieval stylings bring it somewhat closer to Dark Souls as well, though with less of the demons.

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The real selling point of Mortal Shell is꧅ the ♈eponymous shells. You inhabit the shells you come across, giving you access to new abilities and weapons, rather than crafting a build yourself. You can't change these freely though, so be prepared to commit once you step into a new shell.
5 Lunacid
To many, Dark Souls' unique atmosphere is unique to the game itself, or taken from Demon's Souls at most. Except FromSoftware has been making games like this for decades, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:most notably in the 🎶King's Field series. And while From has yet to return to the series, something of a sp🍬iritual successor can be f🌺ound in Lunacid.
If you wanted to know what the Dark Souls makes would feel like in a first-person perspective, Lunacid is one of the closest games to achieve that. The graphics🎀 are chunky, the world is non-linear, the moon cycles f🐟orm a part of the gameplay. It's an eccentric game by all means, but that's one of the finer aspects of the Souls series, not just the combat.
4 ꧂ Tails Of Iron
- Released
- ⛦ September 17, 2🅘021
- Publisher(s)
- CI Games
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Series X, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Series S
- Developer
- ꦜ O🦄dd Bug Studio
Rats are fascinating animals because despite being saddled with a plague-ridden reputation, they are also the stars of plentiful media, Tails of Iron among them. In this game, you play as Redgi as you work to reclaim your kingdom from invaders. It's a b🧜rutal world for one ra꧃t to fend off though, and that's where much of the Soulslike aspects come in.

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Despite being a side-scroller, the emphasis is fully on combat here💮. You have to worry about the weight of your armour, parry timing, how long it takes an attack to connect. There is build variety, there𝕴 are brutal bosses, and there is plentiful weapon crafting. All wrapped up in a rat-shaped game.
3 Another Crab's treasure
- Released
- 🍒 April 25, 2024
- Developer(s)
- 🅺 Aggꦕro Crab
- Publisher(s)
- ♈Aggro𒉰 Crab
A lot of Soulslike games tend to be dark and gritty, fantasy works that revel in misery. Not only is that a surface level interpretation of Dark Souls' own hopefulness, it also limits what the genre can do. These gameplay systems need not be strapped to hopeless fantasy worlds. They could instead be latched onto a crab that uses litter as a sh🃏ield, for example.
Another Crab's Treasure is as light-hearted as it comes, though with a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:ജmeaningful commentary on environmentalism. However, combining the impermanence of your own equipment with Soulslike combat is quite fun, meaning no encounter ✤is fully down to just skill but a degree of prep too.
2 Thymesia
- Released
- August 15, 2022 🍸
- Developer(s)
- OverBorder Studio ও
- Publisher(s)
- Team17
Thymesia puts you in the role of a mysterious Plague Doctor-styled character known as Corvus. Self-explanatory name there. And while the game does indeed pull heavily from the Soulslike genre, it takes quite a bit💮 of inspiration from another of FromSoftware's titles - Sek𝐆iro.

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Thymesia is not so grueling as any of these games, but still has a high skill ceiling. Parrying and deflection are essential components of the game, and🐼 the many spectral weapons you can summon offer great variety. It's more about using all the tools at your disposal, rather than creating a single build.
1 ♑ Salt And Sanctuary
When the Souls games started to take off, it was a while before many games actually had the chance to adapt their style. Salt and Sanctuary wa♋s one of the earliest to do so, and did so with flying colours. It was grim and brutal, but it also had a world that was rewarding to explore in its own right and a very distinctive art style.
Salt and Sanctuary focused on combat and exploration in equal measure, but also in granting you a frankly obscene amount of build variety. There's a reason even now that it is seen as one of the best Soulslike games of its style. Even its sequel went in a different direction, owing to 🌸how specific the original was in what it achieved.

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