Do We Need a Soulslike Genre? | Game Maker's Toolkit

A lot of my friends are a big fans of these games, and I think you covered the topic quite well! I myself have always found them... overly similar to castlevania and megaman, but more forgiving. However, your breakdown of the mechanics quite helped me see the differences and similarities.

I agree with pretty much everything you said in this video. Perhaps I don't like the title and the introduction very much. It does make sense, but it looks like you just used Dark Souls to make a greater argument, so it might (?) turn off people who otherwise don't care about "soulslikes" OR care about them too much and just assume that this video is going to bash their favorite games. This is just speculation though. Anyway, I just watched a great Super Bunnyhop video from two years ago that I found somewhat relevant: "How Design Trends Ruin Great Games" <a href="https://youtu.be/jCmmYF4rOwo" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/jCmmYF4rOwo</a> - It's not about genres, but about design tropes and clichés - but those get repeated and called a "genre" all too often.

Parachuting Turtle

A great example of people being inspired by a game without turning it into a genre, is all the games inspired in various different ways by Earthbound, yet managing to turn out completely different from one another.

I've noticed sort of a trend with survival horror genre's that almost reinvent themselves as action games rather than horror. Which is interesting since horror is about dis-empowering the player while action empowers the player. Resident Evil and Dead Space come to mind. Great job on those episodes btw.

Bravo Mark. Another well put together video. That 4 part stage on how a genre is born helped answer my question about Doom clones in greater detail. Does anyone think Grand Theft Auto is at step 2 or 3 in regards to clones? Puzzle games like Portal?

I have put a lot of time into this subject. So it's great to see talk. From my research into the topic, I found that the key mechanics to be "death-punishment" that coincides with "steep learning curve", and "to reward patient gameplay". Two of the three mechanics aren't even mechanics but rather concepts but I think this sums up the best of all the soulslike games without being restrictive. Assuming this is true we can just call it something like 'death punishment'. Of course I'd love to have a heated debate about what you can consider the new genre. Some people think genre's are restrictive but the reason they aren't restrictive is for the very reason that new genres can be made! You mentioned the feeling something gives you which also could relate to soulslike. A sense of accomplishment, which is why stuff that follows to closely to the genre often feel worse, because the familiarity makes the game easier. Survival Horror is a weird genre because of this. And even though it is one of videogames' most recognizable genres, it sort of sticks out. Lastly is the one that's really been on my mind. I believe adventure games have been destroyed by Breath of the wild. And I propose that there is more effort to categorise the adventure genre a bit more strictly by splitting the genre into story-driven adventure (mostly linear adventure) and player-driven adventure (the original zelda, and breath of the wild).

Dingle Dee

I saw that you removed the part about fighting games and street fighter (or just missed it completely). Any reason to do it?

Gabriel Henrique Dalposso