Dark Souls Marks 15 Years of the Soulslike Era It Created
On September 22, 2011, FromSoftware released Dark Souls for the PlayStation 3, a launch date that now marks the game’s 15th anniversary. The action RPG went on to earn worldwide acclaim as the first entry in what became a three-game series. Carrying forward the lineage of Demon’s Souls, it is widely credited with igniting the so-called “death game” (shi-ni ge-) boom of high-difficulty releases and with spawning countless follower titles now commonly described as Soulslikes.
FromSoftware’s Dark Souls followed directly in the lineage of Demon’s Souls, the earlier title that built a global reputation and is credited with launching the punishing action RPG trend. Dark Souls stands as the first, landmark installment of a trilogy that today spans three released games. The series’ defining trait remains its notorious difficulty. Players confront traps seemingly built to kill on first contact, such as iron balls rolling down corridors, alongside areas flooded with poisonous swamps — countless elements designed to test the player’s resolve.
Central to that tension is the “Souls” system. Souls function as both experience points and currency, earned by defeating enemies or using specific items, and they serve as the source of life. When a character dies, every soul they carry is dropped at that location, forcing players to return and retrieve them. If the player dies again before recovering them, those souls are lost forever. The heavier the accumulated haul, the harsher the psychological blow — yet this system, inherited from Demon’s Souls, is credited with creating the series’ distinctive tension and with influencing later action games.
Dark Souls also introduced notable asynchronous online features. Bloodstains left where other players died let users witness exactly how they met their end, while players can write hint messages for one another. Invasions — entering another player’s world or being invaded — produce tense competitive encounters unique to the game. The covenant system lets players swear allegiance to NPCs and carry out role-specific duties, such as the Darkwraiths stealing Humanity items from other players or the Blade of the Darkmoon hunting down those who killed others through invasion. A remastered edition with fine-tuned adjustments arrived on May 24, 2018, and is playable on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows. For anyone curious about where this genre began, that version remains the easiest entry point today.
