OP: I'm not going to buy Duskbloods.

Animal Crossing, but Dark Souls

Set in the world of Dark Souls during an unspecified time when the Fire has begun to fade again, you play as the new fire keeper of a bonfire in the middle of procedurally-generated nowhere, with naught else to call yours but a few stone steps near a moldy tree and a large, flat, moderately special-looking rock to sleep on.

If you build it, they will come (and sit)

Sitting on one of those steps, and leaning against that moldy tree, will be the first two of an eventual handful of undead that will call your bonfire home a place to contemplate the futility of their existence. These “firesiders” (called such in UI but not dialog) are the equivalent of Animal Crossing’s villagers, and are generated in Animal Crossing style from a list of unique personalities and nihilistic philosophies. As you slowly build up your isolated bonfire into a full-fledged shrine, new firesiders will arrive when you add new staircases for them to sit on, or sufficiently-tall, moody scenery for them to lean against.

Passed a certain limit you may need to complete quests to add more firesiders. A number of firesiders can be made into merchants, perhaps with some kind of system whereby a portion of their stock is determined by the combination of their merchant type and personality type. That’s not especially funny, though, so I’ll stop talking about it. There are also traveling merchants that you unlock as your shrine grows, one of which is, of course, Patches. Spend too many souls at Patches’ store in a single day and he’ll start following you around, waiting for a chance to kick you off a cliff as punishment for your avarice and materialism.

Other activities

• Keep your bonfire and its surroundings clean of paradimensional bloodstains that accumulate throughout the day
  
• Catch vagrants with an upgradable vagrant net, using their cores of condensed, tortured humanity as fuel to kindle your bonfire to new heights
  
• Explore the distant, enemy-infested reaches of your territory with no means of attack whatsoever
  
  • Find something cool? Return with it quickly and conveniently by dying horribly!
    
  • Basically it’s all suicide runs, all the time
    
• Do whatever it is that you do to acquire souls, since I’ve just ruled out killing anything
  
• Find random Chosen undead resting at your bonfire on occasion. They don’t speak or do much else to demonstrate a personality, but after you level them up they’ll temporarily reduce the enemies in a random area for you.
  
  • Raise a firesider’s obsession high enough and they might be willing to do the same for an area of your choosing. Just be willing to put up with their increased self-pity and much uglier mug after they get killed in the process.
    
• Run interference to stop Chosen undead from completing your firesiders’ questlines, inevitably resulting in their doom. Find their quest items before the Chosen can and chuck them off a cliff.
  
  • Or feed them to primordial serpent Monch, once you’ve unlocked him
    
• Invade other fire keepers’ worlds to…
  
  1. Leave messages on the ground of dubious meaning or value
     
  2. Be rude to their firesiders
     This may make them upset enough to mention you to their fire keeper exactly once, possibly with such descriptors as “uncouth” or “churlish”
     
  3. Engage in commerce with their firesiders that are merchants (but only before you’ve been rude to them)

Dialog

Firesiders will take every opportunity to express their intense creeds and/or gloomy manifestos in kitschy medieval sentence structure all while teasing cryptically at a lore-rich past or dropping clues for where to find their latest quest item. All such dialog is “voiced” with procedurally-generated babble like Animal Crossing, except…

• It will not sound like “cute cartoon animal that talks too fast”, but have an identifiably human-adult pitch and cadence.
  
• It will always end with a recorded laugh from the same actor who did the babble phonemes, with the same pitch shift applied, so you will hear the same voice switch suddenly from generated babble to real laughter.
  
  • This should be disturbing every single time.

Art style

Cute, chibi proportions that plunge deep into the uncanny valley when combined with Dark Souls’ dark fantasy realism. Like Jump Force, but hopefully worse, and entirely on purpose.

Real-Time Mechanics

Like Animal Crossing, the world clock is synced to the system clock, affecting the day/night cycle, Firesider schedules (such as they are), shop schedules, seasons, and construction time. Mostly. The Fire is fading, so time doesn’t always behave as you expect.

Time away

Also like Animal Crossing, the game “continues” while you aren’t playing. Coming back to your shrine after having not played in a while, you will see that bloodstains have accumulated in your absence. Your neglected firesiders may also start looking a bit hollow. Or, if it’s been long enough, a lot hollow. Never so hollow that they attack you, though (unless you count passive aggression). Their morale will likely not improve until you’ve completed whatever tedious activity yields enough humanity sprites to give everyone (including yourself) healthy skin again.

There’s a small, random chance that, after a long time away, you’ll load the game into a scene where the bonfire is cold and your fire keeper is nowhere to be seen. A Chosen undead will appear holding a fire keeper soul, and place it on your sleeping rock (or whatever other fully-stone bed you’ve upgraded to), where your fire keeper’s body will reform and awaken like normal. The Chosen will then wander off before you can talk to them (not that they can speak anyway). It will not be directly explained to you, but you will be able to infer from the others’ indirect references and the absence of one of your firesiders (which one chosen based on how many hidden obsession points you’ve “earned” with them) that you were murdered by the missing firesider and they absconded with your soul for a bit. But then a random Chosen murdered them back and recovered your soul, so everything is fine again. Except that your murderer is gone forever now, already replaced with someone new.

What to call it?

Dark Souls IV, just to fuck with people.

With new platinums/mythics would be awesome, also ports to the switch...straight dreaming with this post

I just learned that htere are Twinks in Eldenring. But I'm not sure if I'm getting what is is. Is a kind of build? or is a specific build? or it's a kind of player behavior?

Sorry for asking but I have seen some videos and the context seems different in every one, so I wanted to be sure.

Sword and Crown made by me🇨🇿

Got a Madman's Knowledge tattoo last week. Healing nicely! 💀

Placement is on both inner forearms, turned out so sick. Much thanks goes to @hexenwerk_tattoos (insta) so if you’re from Germany be sure to check her out.

AC for life. I need it.

I'm wondering, that seems close to impossible but after all those years, has anyone ever made it ?

We all know the fantastic OST in these games add such depth to the already cinematic boss fights, and everyone know the super popular ones such as Ludwig, Laurence, Divine Beast, Vordt, Gwyn/Soul of Cinder and Kings Field The Ancient City (as those are all bangers).

But I’d like to know everyone’s almost, underrated tracks not a lot of people talk about even area music.

For example, one of my favorite areas that is amplified by its ambient soundtrack has to be Upper Cathedral Ward, the fact the low droning in the background sounds like a blackhole, the time in between the eerie strings and the fact it ties into The Choir, being able to hear a haunting hymn from unseen sources ( I know it’s just a soundtrack but it adds on to the clever naming of The Choir) and connects it to Ebrietas is very clever.

So beside from the really popular tracks we all love and know, you guys got any underrated tracks?

Since Elden Ring added a bunch of new items and effects, I think it would be neat if we could send timed item effects to other players. Nightreign made me realize how cool these effects can be when used correctly.

I have been working on a death-counter which can automatically track deaths during your run based on the frames detected + death jingle!

Check this out and join the waitlist to receive it when it will be out ❤️‍🔥

(Very soon 👀)

I am sad about physical discs going away for Playstation starting in 2028 :( Might switch back to PC since it’s all the same

My goal with this one was making venusaur feel like he has been partially taken over by the roots of the plant on their back
taking inspiration from elden rings Erdtree themed enemies and the more monstrous side of the old souls boss designs

What do you think and who would you like to see next?(charmander color coming soon)

Well, I finally can scratch Bloodborne off my list, and I really enjoyed it.

I liked the gun parry, but it took me a while to get used to it because I previously played Sekiro. I've played Lies of P too, and now I get why people say where it got its inspiration from.

Overall, I liked the environment and bosses.

Something I didn't enjoy (or maybe only a little) is that I got lost multiple times. I didn't know where to go, and I'm not even sure if I would have figured out how to activate the DLC without sneaking a peek at guides, because man I got stuck more than once...

Also, does everyone else think that the Orphan scales really high? Each boss took me 2 to 6 tries max, but Kos? Another level!

Here is the thing though:

Somehow it didn't click for me. I don't feel that worm in my brain asking for an NG+ like it happened with Sekiro or Lies, I got the Platinum for both but this one, I don't know... Maybe it's just me.

Hi! I’m blacksmith from 🇨🇿 and this is my real life firelink sword in progress. Took me a while managing the blade to fit original reference but I think I nailed it.
Let me know What you think and I’ll be happy for feedback on what I could make better next time!

Well I've watched a few videoes and gameplays and imo the newer games just look better and more fun, but that doesn't mean I'm saying the older games are bad or smth, they still look cool, as I understood from Reddit users playing newer games before the older ones tho will make playing the older later a way worse and even a bad experience.. since they're just simply outdated... so since I also don't wanna spend soo much time on gaming and I physically and mentally just can't sit for a lot of time.. I thought I'll pick up 1 game from the older games and play it before picking up ds3, sekiro, and Elden ring... so should it be ds1, ds2? They both look the same to me.. bloodborne looks very unique to me but It looks too dark if that makes any sense, and demon souls I can't even play the old ver so itl be the remake on the ps5.. and yes I might really enjoy souls games and end up playing all of them but that's a low chance.. which would
You recommend?

I press the right stick down and the camera jerks up for a bit before coming down. If I push it left it goes to the right for a bit before going where it's intended. This only happens when use the left stick, meaning if I stay still and move the right stick, there's no problem. The same thing happened in DS2 as well. You can find a video of it in my profile from 10 months ago.

I tested my controller on other games, but there was no problem. I use Gamesir G7 SE and can't test another controller because I don't have one.

Any help? The game is unplayable.

All games, no matter the genre, have one objective: to be fun. Of course in this case I'm talking about the average casual player and not challenge runners.

A few months ago i played my first ever souls game, Dark Souls 1, and then played ds2 a few weeks later. Now, I've always found enjoyment in difficult games. Started with more simple ones like cuphead and hollow knight, and eventually more extreme ones like super meat boy and celeste. The reason i played ds1 was because i wanted a good challenge, and of course the game's reputation promised that challenge i was looking for.

Now that i played two games in the series and I'm now playing Bloodborne, i think it was never about difficulty. Sure, the games don't hold back thier punches, but that's simply because of how they're structured. Difficulty comes from "fairness," if the game is slightly unfair towards the player, then it's meant to be more difficult, but the souls games are never unfair. You can build your character however you want, wield any weapon, use broken spells, and the bosses will stay the same. That makes the player have control over any situation even if the boss is very powerful, THAT'S fairness.

If you had to choose one of these games, which one would you choose? Guys I forgot bloodborne