AAA Roguelikes
Joshua Bycer · 2021
Unlike roguelikes that make use of procedural generation for designing content, soulslikes take place in handmade worlds. One of the areas where the Dark Souls series is praised the most is with their challenging and uniquely designed worlds. The pacing and progression of a soulslike are not the same as those of the roguelike genre. Most roguelikes are designed around individual runs taking anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to complete. A soulslike is played over multiple hours until the player reaches the final challenge and wins. There is a sense of architecture and environmental design to a good soulslike. The design is not about building mazes but attempting to combine a plausible environment with challenging level design.