Just this year alone, we’ll be getting quite a few Soulslikes. Coming from both recognizable and new studios, the age-old formula continues kicking, perhaps more than it ever has. But, instead of getting excited, I’m as tired as I ever was of the same old regurgitated design.

The Soulslike fatigue

The Soulslike fatigue should become an official psychological term meant to describe the appearance of the “it’s all so tiresome” mentality in people who just can’t keep up with so many games in the genre. Just in 2025, we’ve received Elden Ring: Nightreign, a new major DLC for Lies of P, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, and will see Phantom Blade: Zero probably soon. On top of this, countless indie games following the Soulslike design philosophy will have arrived by this point, with more to come by the end of the year and onwards.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, the Soulslike genre is probably one of my favorites, and if it wasn’t good, we’d not have all these studios gunning for it. It sells well, usually plays well, and is overall a fun experience.

But having so many titles come out, costing so much and taking up so much gaming space, is alienating players from the genre. Just like MOBAs were cropping up left and right around the time League of Legends came out, we’re seeing Soulslikes drop all around us like there’s no tomorrow. It is reminiscent of the battle royale craze, or even the “Vampire Survivors-like” trend, where every single development studio believed they had to have these modes or else their game would be “left out” of the market.

Seeing Soulslikes at just about every corner is tiring. What made it special is now merely a fact of life, and since most of these new titles do not feature much in the ways of uniqueness, it’s just generating a lot of fatigue for the core formula.

We need a new trend, and we need it fast

Trends shape gaming in this day and age, unfortunately. Whatever’s popular with the kids these days is what will be developed and created the most, with a few studios making exceptions and considering games as art rather than as products.

In a highly corporatized environment, one where studios and developers don’t even need to be corporate per se, trends open up the floodgates for whatever new genre or design philosophy is popular.

Friendslop games, as they are jokingly called, completely overtook the indie gaming market, with every other game being a striking copy of Lethal Company or adjacent to it. It’s just what happens whenever anything hits the front pages of social media.

What we need is for someone to come in with some evolutionary formula that is neither friendslop nor Soulslike, but something new and unique that others will follow for a while. There is no escaping trend-chasing; it’s a fact of life like anything else.

And, if it must be so, I just want to see something other than Dark Souls #18674 popping up at every State of Play, Xbox Showcase, Game Awards, and other events.

Hideo Kojima famously said that his 2019 Death Stranding game would be the first of many “Strand-type games” and spawn their own genre. Fast-forward six years, and Death Stranding 2 is now out and is the only other such game to have launched in all that time. It begs the question: why?

Both games are addictive enough to warrant interest

Death Stranding 2 very closely follows the beaten path of the first game, containing more or less the exact same gameplay loop as its predecessor. You pick up orders, deliver them across treacherous terrain, rinse and repeat.

You also perhaps lay the groundwork for other players to do the same much more easily by repairing highways, extending the monorail, or leaving about all sorts of PCC-produced stuff like generators, timefall shelters, and so on.

Both games are spitting images of each other in this respect, with Death Stranding 2 being as direct a sequel as possible. And, being so, it is just as addictive. Many consider “Strand-type” gameplay to be merely a walking simulation, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, as I explained in another article on the matter.

This addictive loop has proven, twice now, to be quite successful at ensnaring players for dozens of hours, which further complicates the question of where are all the Strand-type games that Kojima envisioned would come.

It is also interesting to think of what such a game would even look like. In both Death Strandings, this would mean to have a title that revolves around picking up and delivering orders while participating in asynchronous multiplayer, where player activity can show up in any given world. And honestly, there are literally no games like this.

The Strand-type genre has two games only, both produced by Kojima and both immensely successful, both on the PlayStation and PC.

Why is it that developers never hopped onto this trend? Is it too difficult to pull off? After all, it’s a pretty simple gameplay loop. Add some story in there, perhaps some cutscenes, and you’ve got yourself a Strand-type game. If variety is your concern, change the setting, go from esoteric sci-fi to some other genre, make the game set in our own contemporary world but stricken by a plague (we did live through one already, so that shouldn’t be too difficult).

But even so, no developers even tried to pick up the genre, which is in stark contrast with what happened to FromSoftware’s Soulslikes.

It happened to Dark Souls, so why not Death Stranding?

That company, be it purposefully or not, spawned an entire cultural movement within video games that saw them as the basis of a new, neo-Metroidvania genre, aptly named “Soulslike.”

And how did others do it? Simply. Bonfires to mark objectives, death returns you to the last bonfire lit, and boss fights are the only true mark of progression. Everything in between is interchangeable, from combat to settings to story emphasis. There are, by now, countless games in the Soulslike genre, to the point it’s becoming actually quite tedious to open up Steam and be swarmed by them at every corner.

It’s not even that the Souls titles are some gameplay ideal that everyone should follow. Infamy could have played a role, but Kojima is perhaps the most infamous developer of them all. No game of his is conventional, and Metal Gear sure has its own set of copycats and inspirations across the genre.

If it is combat that’s lacking in Strand-type gameplay, or rather if it needs to be faster and more visceral in its execution, then that’s perfectly doable as well.

Though both the Death Stranding games have quite a good chunk of combat against a variety of enemies and bosses, it can be considered a bit too easy at times. Any given developer could improve on that by pumping up the action, making deliveries more difficult, and each run a challenge, while making sure the perceived tediousness of the originals never seeps through.

Walking simulation, though not really present in the Strand games either, could be reduced by different maps, terrain, moment-to-moment gameplay, dynamic events, and so on. It’s not like there’s not quite a lot to work with in this potential genre.

The foundations are there in the original games and can be reshaped like clay into something new and refreshing, just like what happened with Soulslikes, Roguelikes, and Skyrim-likes as of recently.

But unfortunately, no one seems to be giving it a shot, for whatever reason that may be. Kojima remains the only Strand-type developer, and I honestly hope he never stops reiterating and refining this genre if no one else will.

What do you think, Destructoid? Should there be more Strand-type games out there? Is the Death Stranding gameplay loop enough of a basis for a new genre to spawn from? Let us know below.