4 King's Field Mechanics that Modern Soulslike Games Should Copy

It's fair to say that the Soulslike genre is healthier than ever. Developers like FromSoftware and Team Ninja have utilized the life-or-death simulations that this genre has forged for years to produce some of the greatest action RPGs of all time, but it would all be for nothing if it wasn't for King's Field.

The earliest vanguard of the Soulslike genre, King's Field is a series of dark, complex action RPGs released during the 1990s that broke a lot of new ground. After spending a long time in the shadows of the Souls franchise, the concept of a King's Field-like genre is starting to become a reality. And while Soulslikes owe quite a bit to King's Field, there are a few systems and mechanics that still haven't been revisited.

Many of the core concepts, like lore hidden in item descriptions and complex level design, make up a lot of what Soulslikes are still doing. If you look a bit deeper, however, you'll find even more fascinating mechanics from King's Field that Soulslike games could borrow from.

4 A Pitch Black World

Turn off the Lights

A lot of modern Soulslike games use dark, dreary worlds to tell their stories. King's Field does the same thing, but the world isn't just dark. It's often times pitch black, which is certainly a result of the limited draw distance of the PS1, but the vibe it creates is out of this world.

The deep, rich blackness adds so much tension and unreality to the whole thing. Modern games don't like to leave a lot of empty, black space on screen, but back then, this hardware limitation became something of a defining feature.

Modern hardware is certainly capable of doing something like this, but with much more complex shaders. Art and video games seem quite afraid of the color black these days, but the weight and mystery it gives environments cannot be overstated.

3 The Rhombus Keys

Embrace the Weirdness of the Rhombus Keys

In King's Field II, the Rhombus Keys become one of the game's most charming, mischievous little items. A rhombus is described in geometry as a shape with four sides that are all the same length, a fact that ties into its unique use throughout King's Field II.

The Rhombus Keys act as a shifting, evolving key item that you get fairly early on in King's Field II. They function essentially as a re-usable key, and doing so creates some fascinating bits of game design. It's such an odd concept that it even has the rare chance to soft lock the game.

That sort of unconventional design would be right at home in a modern Soulslike game. It's such an unusual concept, and if any modern Soulslike game decided to resurrect it, it would bring back one of the most infamous mechanics of the King's Field games and traumatize an entirely new generation of gamers.

2 First-Person View

Change Your Perspective

The default mode of most modern Soulslike games is a behind-the-back third-person perspective. This is fine for the most part, but I can't help but wonder how it would work in a modern experience.

Indie gems like Lunacid have proven the concept still has legs, but it's rare to see this perspective in a big-budget FromSoftware or Team Ninja game today. That's an unfortunate development, as I think there's still a lot you can squeeze out of this.

Third-person works fine, I suppose, but the intimacy of the first-person perspective within a modern big-budget Soulslike sounds like a dream. One look at King's Field in action, and you can see the vision for a modern Soulslike game with a first-person viewpoint.

1 A Town Next To A Dungeon

The Dark Descent

The structure of many of the King's Field games is rather fascinating, as it relies heavily on the duality of a sort of hub world that exists next to a dungeon. These dungeons are traditionally labyrinthian, underground caves that descend for miles and miles.

This is such a unique, compelling set-up for a game. It's honestly shocking that this style of world design isn't used as much as it could be. The prospect of hub worlds is still fairly common, but mostly in 3D platformers. Its function within a Soulslike is entirely dependent on its proximity to the dungeon itself.

The hub world in these older games is often thematically related to the dungeon itself, with its downtrodden citizens acting as dark mirrors to the fantasy world the game takes place in. It creates a sense of tangible connection between the dark world below and the surreal nature of the environment above. The Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls is roughly as close to the original concept as we've gotten, but that game relies on a world that is more of an interconnected city of sorts.

What King's Field did so well was create a dichotomy between each area, as the hub world acts as a sort of transition point from the surface to the dangerous depths below. Any Soulslike game looking for a unique world structure would do well to study the old King's Field games, as they offer up some fascinating design concepts that could be mined today.