# Genre & Legacy
Beyond FromSoftware: How Souls-like Became Its Own Genre
How a term coined by players rather than marketers spread from one…
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Journal
Essays on souls-like history, mechanics, and world design, updated as the genre keeps growing.
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# World Building
Worlds That Fold Back on Themselves: Interconnected Level Design and Environmental Storytelling
Why the genre's looping, shortcut-driven maps and its habit of hiding story…
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# Design & Mechanics
Punishing by Design: How Stamina, Death, and Recovery Runs Define the Genre
A plain-language breakdown of the core systems behind souls-like difficulty: the stamina…
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# Origins
From King’s Field to Demon’s Souls: The Quiet Origins of a Genre
How a low-budget first-person RPG series at FromSoftware, and a director who…
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