{"id":751,"date":"2026-09-08T00:14:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T00:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/x.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php\/826479403162894336\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T00:14:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T00:14:27","slug":"826479403162894336","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/x.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php\/826479403162894336\/","title":{"rendered":"I have noticed a number of mid to indie devs love to make souls-like games. As a game dev, can you explain what is the appeal of the genre for someone who makes and sells games? I am not a fan of these types of games because of their punishing difficulty. So why would smaller dev companies make games with hard combat and put off people?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>First, let me put on my speculation hat. I don&#8217;t pretend to know for certain and I have no data. This is all speculation on my part.<\/p>\n<div class=\"npf_row\">\n<figure class=\"tmblr-full\" data-orig-height=\"270\" data-orig-width=\"480\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/64.media.tumblr.com\/787262b6f1c38212600d2b223e69e556\/909791443fdf732a-90\/s640x960\/28a4414ae1d1b6ed6e90fe66aa013f974e5a8864.gif\" data-orig-height=\"270\" data-orig-width=\"480\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Let&#8217;s examine what generally <i>makes<\/i> a Souls-like game and consider why this style of gameplay might be attractive to indie devs. A Souls-like game typically follows a formula:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Commitment-based combat. The player chooses and commits to a move in a fight. She recognizes that any consequences to choosing the wrong move are due to her own choices.<\/li>\n<li>Consequences to death\/failure. Dying in game means the player risks losing her earned stuff.<\/li>\n<li>Challenging but fair difficulty. The enemy movesets are telegraphed and consistent. The player is rewarded for patience, pattern recognition, and execution instead of time spent leveling up or grinding character stats.<\/li>\n<li>Lots of Boss Fights. The game is primarily finding new boss fights and defeating them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think the main reason that Soulslikes resonate so much with developers come down to a handful of core reasons: <\/p>\n<div class=\"npf_row\">\n<figure class=\"tmblr-full\" data-orig-height=\"275\" data-orig-width=\"500\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/64.media.tumblr.com\/9845e4ce67c320c8eb9732f0f4ae876d\/909791443fdf732a-a9\/s640x960\/37ed6bb7d3e0bb89efe146041315eed1c95b559a.gif\" data-orig-height=\"275\" data-orig-width=\"500\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>First, the formula is exceptionally engaging. The commitment and the challenging-but-fair elements allow for natural and elevated amounts of tension building, followed by an enormous catharsis once the player finally defeats the boss. This generally makes a distinct and formative impression on the player-turned-developer who is inspired to come up with their own versions of boss battles. <\/p>\n<div class=\"npf_row\">\n<figure class=\"tmblr-full\" data-orig-height=\"180\" data-orig-width=\"320\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/64.media.tumblr.com\/4db45b54a213dd8a2ad7b71a5b5157d5\/909791443fdf732a-7c\/s640x960\/43fa8f0daff805a732fff3f055c38bd57ad7dd3a.gif\" data-orig-height=\"180\" data-orig-width=\"320\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Second, the formula does not require significant visual fidelity. The boss battles need to be telegraphed and the features must be well-built, but a soulslike game doesn&#8217;t need high fidelity visuals, animation, lighting, environments, or whatever &#8211; as long as the visuals are &#8220;good enough&#8221; to convey all of the needs of gameplay, the developers actually don&#8217;t need significant resource expenditure to provide a satisfying gameplay experience. <\/p>\n<div class=\"npf_row\">\n<figure class=\"tmblr-full\" data-orig-height=\"225\" data-orig-width=\"400\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/64.media.tumblr.com\/91d7145bebeef5ccf5f2246d66ebcac3\/909791443fdf732a-7e\/s640x960\/706ecfdd0a64d88d1dec3f4afb377761a8ede422.gif\" data-orig-height=\"225\" data-orig-width=\"400\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Third, the heavy lifting in these games is done by the encounter designers. The core gameplay in these games is built around the boss battles, so the encounter design makes or breaks the game. Encounter design is heavily dependent on iteration and tuning for each encounter, which is often the &#8220;fun&#8221; part of the design process.<\/p>\n<div class=\"npf_row\">\n<figure class=\"tmblr-full\" data-orig-height=\"270\" data-orig-width=\"539\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/64.media.tumblr.com\/2905be928fd01bfeb9a1b5d31b4a47e0\/909791443fdf732a-28\/s640x960\/4c4a788a7d743b2766c0f7919cd93cad2cee4899.gif\" data-orig-height=\"270\" data-orig-width=\"539\"><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>I believe these three reasons work together to encourage many amateur developers to build a Soulslike game. They&#8217;re engaged by the Soulslike games they&#8217;ve played, the bar to entry isn&#8217;t terribly high because it doesn&#8217;t need significant visual fidelity, and the Soulslike genre often doesn&#8217;t need too many other &#8220;table stakes&#8221; features that must be developed, so the developers can focus on the &#8220;fun&#8221; stuff like encounter design. Soulslike games are, in my opinion, some of the easier games to get started building. I love them.<\/p>\n<p>[<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/discord.gg\/jB3R8BZ\">Join us on Discord<\/a>] and\/or [<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/m\/axl99_aagd\">Support us on Patreon<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Got a burning question you want answered?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Short questions:\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/2voZm5N\">Ask a Game Dev on Twitter<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Short questions:\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/askagamedev.bsky.social\">Ask a Game Dev on BlueSky<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Long questions:\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/askagamedev.tumblr.com\/ask\">Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Frequent Questions:\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/askagamedev.tumblr.com\/faq\">The FAQ<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/askagamedev.tumblr.com\/post\/826479403162894336\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First, let me put on my speculation hat. I don&#8217;t pretend to know for certain&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[753,752,1620,1619],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design-principles","category-how-things-work","category-in-my-experience","category-soulslike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/x.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/x.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/x.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/x.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/x.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/x.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/x.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/x.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/x.sheep-mine.ts.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}