No gaming for me this weekend, sadly. Though I have recently finished playing Deep Dish Dungeon (a coop dungeon puzzle game), and the map layout of that game threw me straight back to the first days of me playing Dark Souls 1. It’s all connected, and some of the shortcuts are genuinely mind boggling. You can explore 20 minutes in a direction just to find a staircase or tunnel that’ll lead you right back to the very start of the game, it was amazing. And the game has no map, so you need to memorize everything (or map the game yourself).

If you like adventure, puzzles, exploration, give it a go! Combat is very basic, and the game has some simple crafting and cooking as well, and you can also make an impromptu little base of your own (no base crafting, just some decor and functional stuff, like chests and cooking pot).

Idk if that counts but I’ll be playing Queen’s Domain (which is a great indie “King’s Field-like”). I’ve been completely obsessed with this game since I bought it, unlike few other games before it (Dark Souls 1 did a similar thing to me originally)

I’m on a morrowind kick so that’ll be what I’m playing.

By far my favourite elder scrolls game, world feels super alien and the way it’s presented makes me want to explore it. The lore is odd a times, lots of mixing of myth and reality, kinda central to the story. It’s been around for a long time so it’s got quite the dedicated fanbase, playing with Tamriel Rebuilt for the first time, has built a ton of the mainland of morrowind, follows the established lore at time of release so there’s a lot to experience.

Death’s Door for me this weekend! I know basically nothing about it other than “tagged with soulslike on Steam”, “friend recommended it to me”, and “was very cheap on sale”

I want to respond to the Outer Wilds comparison because dear lord do I adore that game, but I don’t think I can do so without significant plot spoilers so I won’t.

I think one of the pieces that actually most evokes the soulsy atmosphere to me is All Tomorrows. For those who don’t know it, it’s a sci-fi speculative evolution short story of humanity spreading to the stars and then encountering a vastly more powerful and unbelievably cruel alien species. The seemingly hopeless situation, the persistence of humanity despite it, and the manner of the storytelling is very like From’s games. It can be read for free online too!

Dopesmoker by Sleep and Mirror Reaper by Bell Witch both have an ambiance that fits in nicely while playing the souls games. I listen to both albums quite frequently while playing, especially the slower earlier games. Those albums are now linked mentally for me with dark souls and demon souls

I’ve talked about it before at length, so I am sorry for nagging but I did get very DS1 ✨vibes✨ from Withering Rooms - it’s part of why it spoke to me so much. They’re quite different games, but there is something about the world building, the lore in item descriptions, the characters and how they speak, the feel of exploring (both the exploration itself and the danger) as well as some interconnected level design too. It made me feel similar emotions as I had the first time I played Dark Souls.

If we’re going slightly farther off I actually kind of get a similar vibe from the STALKER universe. Even down to a somewhat esoteric and quite interesting lore. It too has that element of desolation and loneliness that Dark Souls has. Maybe even more so. It’s bleak and it’s grey, it’s a large and alien and hostile world. And yes, it’s a world that existed before you entered, and will exist after you exit, and will not really notice you were even there. There is just the Zone, and you are an ant before it.

I don’t know what I’ll be playing this weekend, if anything. I’m a bit between games. I finished Withering Realms, and I was planning on playing The Sinking City Remastered next, but I can’t get into it. Maybe I’ll give it another shot, but I may need something that is more… dopamine heavy, or something. More action-oriented. I’m considering trying out Salt & Sanctuary, perhaps.

I have three and I know two are a cop out because of the literary influence

1- Lovecraftian Horror. specifically with Bloodborne. this is the cop out answer as I know Dunwich Horror(? could be call of cthulhu i forget the second) and Shadow over Innsmouth were sources for inspiration by Miyazaki, I think the Fishing Hamlet in old Hunters is very Shadows over innsmouth with the fish people as well as a fishing town on the coast coming into contact with The Deep ones. The Labyrinth under yharnam and research into that contact leading to eyes growing on the inside but also to madness from the person is very in line with Lovecraftian protagonists and their declining mental stability. I think the best example of this is in the illustrated Call of Cthulhu from Baranger and the movie “The Color out of Space” starring Nicolas Cage which is based on the story The Colour out of space.

2- Signalis while not a traditional Soulslike, its very much influenced by the Lovecraftian horror and has bosses, which I know you can say for alot of games since “has bosses means its soulslike” is a broad characterization, however I think Signalis does this concept the best and keeps the lovecraftian and Robert W Chambers influence present. Signalis is much in the vein of classic Resident Evil and Silent Hill games and even has its story from Silent Hill 2 and has many homages to those games series but shot into space and about a replika lesbian, yay lesbians, trying to fulfill her promise, all the while contending with a universe thats beyond corrupted and her cyclical life as every time she dies or fails her mission, Ariane (the person LSTR, the main protag, kept a promise to) resets the world by pulling it apart and putting it back together, though without looking at any instruction manual and just kinda putting things together haphazardly. The King in Yellow makes a direct appearance as well as allusions to The Festival from Lovecraft being present. the soulslike part is similar to Bloodborne with its lovecraftian/weird horror roots in its writing, though I do think people being familiar with Silent Hill 2 – remake or original – is doing a lot of the heavy lifting with its story. they took the David Lynch approach with its story and made it feel dreamy and hard to understand in its entirety. if you couldnt tell I really like Signalis

3-Jidaigeki Films (this is mainly on Sekiro) this is another easy answer as Sekiro and Japanese period pieces share the same setting of that being before the meiji restoration in the 1860s. Jidaigeki is the japanese word for period piece and they share alot with Sekiro, being mostly about Ronin and Samurai and bonds that tie them to their lord. these came out mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, same time period as Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns in Italy, and good examples of them are any Kurosawa film, Harakiri and Sansho the Bailiff as well as 13 assassins from Takashi Miike, which to be honest is just a Seven Samurai remake. Sekiro being in the Sengoku era feels right at home, especially if it had a black and white filter like Ghost of Yotei and Tsushima, in that era of film.

well I guess I wrote about things I like that have similar feelings to Sekiro and Bloodborne than souls as a whole but oh well. seriously, read lovecraft, it gave me a deeper appreciation of Bloodborne knowing where those references and ideas came from. also play signalis, that is just a good as fuck horror game. if the formatting is off im sorry, writing is hard

Its a King’s field-like so obviously shares a lot of soulslike traits but I have been enjoying Queen’s Domain.