The Rise of the Soulsbornes and the Souls-likes
By Douglas Faulkner
It’s been a month since the trailer for Elden Ring's first and potentially only downloadable expansion was released.
Despite it serving a game released in 2022, the trailer itself is nearing 9 million views, indicating that Elden Ring’s popularity was no trend.
Having sold over 23 million copies recently and being the second best-selling game of its release year, only behind the newest entry in the established Call of Duty franchise, Elden Ring has left its mark. Considering this success, it brings up a question, how did a new property immediately establish itself among the giants of gaming?
While Elden Ring is technically an original property, it builds itself off the formula of the “Soulsborne” games. The term Soulsborne is an unofficial name given to the set of action role-playing games developed by FromSoftware, with the words that make up the term being derived from their first three properties, Demon Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne. The term was coined not only to define the formula that these games share but also to identify the elements that make these games unique from those within the same genre.
The Soulsborne titles are action role-playing games, and what they're well known for is how they spin elements of both the original genres on their head. Instead of making the player feel powerful like most action games, they are made the underdog for the majority of their journey. Most role-playing games feature party-building mechanics that get players attached to their companions, but in the Soulsbone games, they would be lucky if even half of their allies survived by the end of these games.
These elements are what make the Soulsborne games naturally harder than their competitors. It gave them a unique niche in the gaming market, but this alone wouldn't be enough to make the games immediately succeed.
The original Demon Souls was released in 2009 and sold around 500,000 copies, a meager amount when compared to what the series has made in the past decade. Come 2016, the trilogy ending Dark Souls III is released and sells over 10 million copies, becoming the publishing company's fastest-selling game ever until Elden Ring. What occurred between these two releases was the rise of online communities and the discussions that would come up in gaming corners regarding video game difficulty.
It became a common opinion during these times that video games were getting easier and lacked challenge when compared to games of the past. Regardless of how people felt about the topic, it got people wondering what the hardest game of that generation was. Come 2011, Dark Souls was released and became the number one answer to this question, and with it a chance for gamers to show off.
People started treating their completion of Dark Souls as a crowning achievement that identified their skill as gamers, and with this glorified treatment came people also wishing to prove themselves. Millions of people would end up buying the game and find more to love about it than just its challenge, inspiring developers and creating the subgenre known as, “Souls-likes.”
As for what defines this subgenre, that’s a bit more complicated. There are many things that people admire about the Soulsborne games, and with difficulty being a defining trait of these games, it wasn’t uncommon for games to be mislabeled as souls-likes just for being difficult.
Games that are tagged as souls-likes by their publishers also tend to come in a variety of genres, adding to the term's misuse. STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor shares the same base genre as the Soulsborne series, while a platformer like Hollow Knight only overlaps in ideas with the previously mentioned games.
Things like a dodge button, limited healing per attempt, and bosses that demand predicting and reacting to their attacks in real-time to win are some of the elements the mentioned games share, and perhaps that's what defines these games as souls-likes. The Soulsborne games may not have been the first games to introduce the mechanics and ideas presented in this article, but their combination and balance of these things would prove to be something special considering the success of the games I’ve mentioned.
I hope that Elden Ring’s expansion sees as much success as the base game, and I can’t wait to see what lessons future games will take from this entry's success and design choices.