10 Best Dark Souls Games That AREN'T Dark Souls

This game has a gorgeous vintage animation aesthetic reminiscent of early Disney. The heroes, Cuphead and Mugman, are rendered beautifully and imbued with tons of character.

Connections with Dark Souls might seem spurious at first.

However, both games share a steep difficulty curve; behind Cuphead’s cutesy appearance beats the heart of a fiendishly hard platformer. And there’s more linking the two games, as a nod to Dark Souls, Cuphead borrows FromSoftware’s infamous game over text, “You Died”, only now with an added cheery exclamation mark!

You’ll see this game over screen a lot.

While Cuphead has some traditional platformer levels, the bulk of the game is a boss rush, and like Dark Souls, the key to beating these multi-phase nightmare encounters is to study the bosses’ patterns, learning which subtle animations precede which attack so you can find the perfect opportunities to retaliate.

Cuphead also has its own version of a dodge roll and parry system for good measure.

Cuphead’s first and last DLC, The Delicious Last Course, is due to be released in 2021 after several delays.