Dark Souls meets Ocarina of Time in Mouseward, a back-to-basics “soulslike collectathon” with sweet N64 visuals

If you miss the original Dark Souls as much as you do the mottled grass textures of Hyrule Field, you will perhaps enjoy Mouseward, which is available now in pre-alpha form. It’s a “soulslike collectathon” from the people behind Void Sols, which Katharine (RPS in peace) found to be “an atmospheric and highly customisable Soulslike for people who are rubbish at Soulslikes”. Mouseward seems similarly forgiving, for all its grim talk of death being “a lesson, not an end”.

Yes, enemies respawn when you perish, but you get to keep all your accumulated progression points and spend them right away at the most recent campfire, care of a Skyrim-style astral level-up menu. Yes, the world looks a bit like New Anor Londo, nested at the bottom of a well of Erdtrees, but it also looks like one of those N64 games you played, decades before you were exposed to the hellish clockwork of “deliberate, stamina-based combat”. The visuals are at once chubby and cadaverous, like a mix of Ocarina of Time and Medieval. Here’s a trailer.

The premise is that a “calamitous starfall” has brought a kingdom to ruin. You are a rodent Chosen Undead, rising from your grave to mend the world by tracking down every last scattered piece of star. Along the way, there will be blocking, backstabbing, archers, ambushes, secret entrances, plunging attacks, and melancholy, murderous badgers. In precisely that order, in fact.

I’ve just finished the opening bonfire loop in the pre-alpha, and I soulslike this a lot. Simple, tight controls, good atmosphere, and the enticing sense of a developer taking a genre back to formula – and possibly taking it somewhere new, once the tutorial segments are past. I’m interested to discover how the Fromsoft template might have to shapeshift to accommodate the collectathon focus and nods to fifth generation console action-platformers. Anyway, you can find that Mouseward pre-alpha on Itch.io. The game also has a Steam page.