Lords of the Fallen devs want to "improve the death cycle" of soulslike games

gamedeveloper.com:

After the monumental success of From Software's Dark Souls in 2010, many games sought to follow along with the growing popularity of challenging and stoically designed action RPGs—they came to be known as "soulslikes." One of the earliest soulslikes was 2014's Lords of the Fallen from developer Deck 13. Following a successful launch, publisher CI Games announced a sequel—though that game would take some time to see the light of day.

Coming nine years after the original, the follow-up from the newly established Barcelona-based developer Hexworks is a fresh start that aims to re-envision Lords of the Fallen, while adding its own twist on a soulslike that re-examines the familiar cycle of death. During a recent hands-on with the opening hours, we spoke with Hexworks studio head and executive producer Saul Gascon, along with creative director Cezar Virtosu about the importance of ensuring that this revisit to an early soulslike had an identity all its own.

Much like the original 2014 game with a near-identical name, Lords of the Fallen (2023) is a dark-fantasy action RPG set in a world where the lines between life and death have blurred, placing a lone adventurer through a death-defying descent into macabre environments filled with demonic foes led by a resurrected demonic king. The protagonist—picked from various classes and backgrounds—gains the ability to use powers from the living realm of Axiom and the realm of the dead known as Umbral to purify lands and set things right.

Lords of the Fallen has had an interesting development period. Much like the sub-genre it adheres to, the reboot has seen its own cycle of rebirth since it was first announced. It began as a direct sequel to the original game in 2015, developed by a new