Despite some games within the so-called Soulslike bubble being very good, it does often feel like this relatively recent genre only serves to “little bro” certain games. It basically says they’re trying to be like the games of another developer, without reaching their heights.
That’s a comparison Lies of P’s director Choi Ji-won wants to get away from in the future. Speaking to Eurogamer at GDC recently, he said he wants fans to appreciate what Round 8 Studio has accomplished with Lies of P as an independent product.
“In the future, instead of pegging us into a certain genre, we want the fans to look at us and actually know what sort of unique components that we deliver that they look forward to. So they see our next work as a sort of projection of our trust and characters that we are building moving forward,” he said. “Instead of trying to predict how the Soulslike genre is going to be in the future, what we are focusing on is to really find our own colour and the points of attraction. And by crafting our own game to better meet and satisfy the customers’ demand, we believe that we will build trust and credibility with our fans.”
Lies of P is currently looking ahead to the release of its first expansion, Overture, which is releasing this summer. Perhaps that will allow it to break from the Soulslike mould a lot of gamers have shoved it in. In the past, we’ve seen other developers also shirk the Soulslike label, such as the minds behind Black Myth: Wukong, and Phantom Blade: Zero. It could be that we’ll soon no longer be using that buzzword to describe certain types of action games.