Genre for Dark Souls-esque games

[crypticracer]

On a lot of sites these days I see people use action rpg to refer to Diablo clones, dungeon crawler, as the main genre tends to refer to first person games, those inspired by wizardry, like eye of the beholder or Legend of Grimrock. There is enough of a difference between these games, and souls likes that they could use their own term.

I don't like using game names in genres because it is only useful if you are already familiar with the term. Souls or Rogue like mean nothing if you aren't familiar with the games. FPSs use to be called Doom Clones for the first part of the nineties. That eventually got it's own term. Rogue likes on the other hand, have kept the name for so long, that I don't see it changing. Of course that was never much of a problem because for thirty years it was such a niche genre. Monster Hunter for it's part already spread it's own genre, hunting games, like God Eater and Toukiden. Not like Cabella's which are also hunting games. -_-

In the broadest sense, the souls games are indeed action rpgs and dungeon crawlers, but games inspired by them may not be. I've heard terms like Tactical Action Games or such, but that too only captures one aspect of those games. I don't know if we need a term for them. With Dark Souls done for now, it will just be a matter of whether or not games inspired by them will slow down, before From Software's inevitable reboot.

 

[SupahEwok]

People who think that Soulslike will stick forever either don't know or have forgotten that back in the 90's we called FPS's "Doom Clones."

If the subgenre stays alive, it will inevitably diversify until a more generic name is needed to cover the category. At which point it's just a matter of time before such a name becomes part of the gamer lexicon.

 

[sXeth]

Ambient Action RPG. If you really want to whip the storytelling style in there. I'm not sure how you could distill the Soul mechanic into a single word description, and that's about the only unique facet to the gameplay side. Maybe Dark Souls is more fine tuned then Devil May Cry or Elder SCrolls, but it doesn't have the monopoly on big difficult bosses or stamina meters.

Roguelike at least sounds sort of descriptive, since most folks don't even remember Rogue being a specific game. Reroller or Playover might be more generally descriptive.

Metroidvania has always been a goofy one. The gameplay system it describes isn't unique to the those titles, even in the era it was conceived (Zelda notably also has the whole "Get powers, use powers to unlock progression or secrets in areas previously passed over"). And since those two franchises have other unifying traits (Being 2d action platformers and occasional Bullet Hell) it can create a weird dissonance to use the concept somewhere other then a 2d platformer)

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

The phrase has already been coined for what you're describing. In the same way many games today are described as "Rogue-like" or having "rogue-like elements", the term Souls-like can be used to describe games in the still small, but hopefully expanding sub-genre of RPG. Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1-3, Bloodborne, Lords of the Fallen (ewwww) and The Surge are the most obvious members of this category, but Salt and Sanctuary and some others also fit the bill. Souls-like will generally refer to more punishing gameplay/higher difficulty and a more methodical kind of combat. Other aspects of Souls games (setting, level design, bosses, etc) aren't strictly speaking the important parts.

In addition to Souls-like, we also have Shock-like, coined from System Shock (2) for that sub-genre of game, including Bioshocks, Deus Exes, the new Prey game, Dishonored 1-2 and some others.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

People who think that Soulslike will stick forever either don't know or have forgotten that back in the 90's we called FPS's "Doom Clones."

If the subgenre stays alive, it will inevitably diversify until a more generic name is needed to cover the category. At which point it's just a matter of time before such a name becomes part of the gamer lexicon.

Possible. The term first person shooter didn't come into vogue until the late 90's. I also remember a time of 'Command & Conquer clones', 'Diablo clones' and 'GTA clones'.

Then again, maybe Soulslike will stick around anyway. After all, Metroidvania has been around for a good while[footnote]Earliest documented mention I could find is this 2001 Usenet post [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/metroidvania/rec.games.video.nintendo/Iq7Q2fqdkIE/hOLAJKzHR8QJ][/footnote]. And it is still the most commonly used name for its particular subtype of games

 

[gsilver]

In addition to Souls-like, we also have Shock-like, coined from System Shock (2) for that sub-genre of game, including Bioshocks, Deus Exes, the new Prey game, Dishonored 1-2 and some others.

That one actually has a proper genre term by now: Immersive Sim

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

I'm not sure if Dark Souls and its derivatives are fundamentally a different genre than, for example, Zelda. They're somewhere on the borderline between action adventure games with RPG elements and action RPGs.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Yeah, it's basically an adventure RPG. Only differences between Dark Souls and stuff like Monster Hunter or Zelda is XP and difficulty.

Unless we want "nihilistic" as a videogame genre. Most "soulslike" games are called that due to atmosphere, not mechanics.

 

[sXeth]

I'm not sure if Dark Souls and its derivatives are fundamentally a different genre than, for example, Zelda. They're somewhere on the borderline between action adventure games with RPG elements and action RPGs.

Yeah, while it varies a bit from Zelda to Zelda, the core genre is identical. Obviously there's a different difficulty curve on paper (and a stamina meter in Souls, though Breath of the Wild has one, so lol).

The main differing point is that Zelda tends to use a lot of puzzle and/or "Metroidvania" (which you could literally jam Zelda onto the name of that one) gameplay mechanics as well.

 

[Rangaman]

What's wrong with Souls-like? It's far more descriptive than most genre names.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

I would put stuff like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Nioh, the Surge, etc under the same umbrella as survival horror. Like survival horror games the tension is from the oppressive atmosphere that comes as a result of being outmatched by a brutal, dark world. You are all alone in the game, relying on only yourself and what supplies you can scavenge from the environment, including from those who came before you. And like survival horror a lot of it is knowing about picking your battles, managing your supplies, and getting over the next hurdle.

Heck, even the storytelling is similar what with you having to piece together what the hell happened from what you find lying around. In survival horror it's stuff like journal entries, audio logs, photographs, stuff that lets you patch together what happened in the world before, though admittedly Soulsborne relegates this to item descriptions (which I'm conflicted about). Overall, I would put these games into an RPG sub-category of survival horror.