Soulslike

Video games
Platforms Arcade video game Game console Home console Handheld console Electronic game Audio game Electronic handheld Online game Browser game Social-network game Mobile game PC game Linux Mac Virtual reality game
Genres Action Platformer Shooter Action-adventure Adventure Casual Fighting Horror Survival Music Puzzle Role-playing Action Tactical Turn-based Simulation Sports Racing Strategy
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Part of a series on
Role-playing video games
Subgenres
Action RPG Looter shooter Soulslike Dungeon crawl Monster-taming MUD MMORPG Roguelike Tactical RPG Turn‑based RPG
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Social interaction in MMORPGs Character creation Dialogue tree GNS theory History of Eastern RPGs History of MMORPGs History of Western RPGs Non-player character Player character Quest RPG terms Statistics Threefold model
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Free MMOs MMORPGs MUDs Roguelikes RPGs TRPGs
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A Soulslike (also spelled Souls-like) is a subgenre of action role-playing games known for high difficulty level, large worlds filled with enemies and emphasis on environmental storytelling, typically in a dark fantasy setting. Japanese developer and publisher FromSoftware and director Hidetaka Miyazaki are largely considered to have created and established the genre, pioneering it with Demon's Souls (2009) and further popularizing with similar subsequent games, including the popular Dark Souls trilogy (2011–2016), from which the genre's name is derived. These games and subsequent FromSoftware releases are often called Soulsborne games, a portmanteau of their Souls-titled games and Bloodborne (2015).

While the soulslike description is typically applied to action role-playing games, the core concepts of high difficulty, repeated character death driving player knowledge and mastery of the game world and pattern recognition, sparsity of save points, and giving information to the player through indirect, environmental storytelling are sometimes seen in games of very different genres, the mechanics of which are sometimes described as Soulslike.