Considered by many to be a masterpiece of video game design, Dark Souls is an action-based fantasy role-playing game, and was developed by From Software and first published by Namco Bandai Games in 2011.

Dark Souls was so successful, in fact, that it created a succession of similar games, called ‘Souls-likes‘. Not many games can claim to have created a whole sub-genre on its own, but this game did.

The gameplay in Dark Souls revolves around bonfires, which are checkpoints, and also places where you can rest and do other stuff without having to be bothered by enemies. Outside of bonfires, though, all bets are off, as everything wants to kill you. Well, pretty much everything wants to kill you. And, by resting at a bonfire, you re-spawn all the world’s enemies, except defeated bosses and special characters.

Your combat style is linked to your character class, of which there are ten to choose from, but in general you can choose between sword or weapon-based combat, ranged magical combat, ranged bows and arrows type combat, and probably others, but the player characters you are offered are a weird mix of normal and bizarre.

Dark Souls does feature notoriously challenging gameplay, but has been designed to be beatable to those who are persistent. The opening few minutes, where you encounter the gigantic Asylum Demon, is a good illustration of that, but it’s a ruse, because you can just run around the thing and exit via a side door to dodge the fight. Well, postpone the fight. At least until you’ve had a fair chance to find better equipment than what you start with.

There’s no doubting that Dark Souls is a classic, and one of the best of its type. It’s also very atmospheric, with a brooding, threatening environment. One that can easily make you shit your pants if you’re playing alone late at night.

More: Dark Souls on Wikipedia