“It sounds weird but we try to keep our innovation as low as possible,” the director explained. “We’ll say ‘it’s this game but with that.’ It takes so much time to innovate. Sometimes you find the hidden holy Grail of game design, but often indie developers sit for five years trying out stuff. We’re a studio of 50 people with bills to pay. So we can’t do that.”
while metroidvania is an apt comparison souls-like games and specifically dark souls games feel a lot like classic dungeon crawlers ( but with real time combat instead of grids. Which in the case of fromsoftwares earlier games kingsfield, makes a lot of sense.