DARK SOULS™: REMASTERED News

Dark Souls pixel art mod will have you picturing an alternate universe's 1990s

We might be decades on from pixel art being the dominant video game art style, but that won't stop some modders adding some of that flair into Dark Souls.

People love a demake. It's just incredibly fun to imagine a world where Bloodborne was a PS1 game (or another where it received a kart racer). While Dark Souls might not be getting a full on demake, modder thegreatgramcracker has recently shared their Pixel Souls Demastered mod, which certainly adds a good amount of crunch to the original Dark Souls' cold world (thanks, Eurogamer). "Experience Dark Souls like you never have before, with fresh visuals all throughout the game!" reads the mod's description.

"This mod changes all textures, icons, fonts, and visual effects into pixel art based on the original game textures. Additionally, the music and sound effects have been reduced in quality. Even the enemy and player equipment models have reduced fidelity! This should give the game a fun, somewhat cursed, 'retro' feel." You can check a trailer out for the mod above, and it honestly looks really great - Dark Souls just has the perfect environment for some low-resolution vibes, honestly.

I think a crucial test of a game's visual identity is how well it holds up to a demaster. Bloodborne, for instance, manages to remain recognisably and wonderfully itself when you turn it into some kind of PS1-style kart racer, and it's in no small part down to the talent of both the demaster's makers and FromSoft's art team. And hey, perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out that applies to other games in the studio's catalogue too...
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Dark Souls completely rebuilt as a pixel-art RPG, available now

There are Dark Souls mods, and there are Dark Souls mods. You can change your Estus flask into a can of Monster Energy. You can randomize enemies, so you wind up fighting the Capra Demon every time you go near Firelink Shrine. But in some cases, the epochal, FromSoftware RPG gets a visionary overhaul - a total aesthetic transformation that makes it feel like a new game entirely. Between Vampire Survivors, Undertale, and this year's Sea of Stars, if the combination of pixel art and role playing gets your blood pumping, Dark Souls has been completely rebuilt just for you, and you can play the beautiful new version right now.

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Prepare for the Elden Ring DLC with this Dark Souls sale, but act fast

The entire Dark Souls series is in a Steam sale ahead of the Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree release date, making now the perfect time to go back to FromSoftware's action RPG game trilogy and plug those gaps ahead of the DLC. As PCGamesN's resident Dark Souls enjoyer, I cannot recommend any of these games enough.

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Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon is FromSoftware's biggest Steam launch (that isn't Elden Ring)

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon represents something special for fans of FromSoftware, and anyone with even a passing interest in the rise of the popularity of the Japanese developer. Elden Ring was one of the biggest launches in 2022, so it stands to reason that anything the studio releases afterwards will have a much larger audience potential.

No one expects Armored Core 6 to do Elden Ring numbers, of course, but it's already beating every other game FromSoft released before Elden Ring - at least as far as Steam is concerned. The mech shooter, which launched yesterday, has been gradually climbing through Steam's list of most played games.

At the time of writing this, the game has peaked at 150,959 concurrent players on Steam, according to SteamDB. That's up from a peak of just above 127,000 shortly after launch.