Koch Media has been spoiling gamers around the world with all of its summer announcements. E3 season has brought the company out in a big way, from the reveal of the brand new Prime Matter publishing label to the announcement of about a dozen new IPs and projects to go along with it. Koch Media has really been building up its portfolio for the foreseeable future. Of the several new titles that were announced under Prime Matter, Dolmen is one game in particular that could prove to be very exciting for fans of the Dark Souls series.
The Dark Souls series, and FromSoftware's other Soulslike games, have inspired a whole wave of action games that push gamers to the limit. Combat is tough and requires split-second timing, boss fights are crushingly difficult, and there's very little room to breathe from one challenge to the next. Playing a game like this seems like a very daunting task on paper, but the Soulslike genre has built up a large fanbase of gamers that enjoy the struggle that can come with getting through them. Game Rant attended a Koch Media pre-show that showed off Dolmen and how its gameplay could appeal to Soulslike fans.
Dolmen And Its Dark Souls Influence
The Dark Souls vibes that Dolmen gives off are no mistake. From the footage that Game Rant was able to view, the mechanics of the game largely mimic the same mechanics that are seen in the Dark Souls series. Dolmen has third-person combat that combines both melee and ranged attacks, where players collect the equivalent of "Souls" in order to level up their character.
The bonfire system is also present with some slight tweaks, as the sci-fi setting has players resting up at a computer terminal of sorts. Game Rant was able to get a statement from Koch Media that further explained Dolmen's gameplay inspirations.
"Dolmen is a game that had many gameplay inspirations, and you can see those in different areas of the game. Our combat, the difficulty of the game and some of the exploration aspects had a lot of inspirations in several Soulslike genre games; we worked on its roots, bringing the best elements of it and giving it our own unique touch with the dynamic combat system, switching from melee to ranged weapons during combat"
Dolmen's Soulslike combat could prove to be very intriguing to fans of the genre, and the style of the game should mix things up for gamers that want a Soulslike with a little more flavor to it. The sci-fi nature of Dolmen is heavily inspired by Lovecraftian horror, a style that has been touched on in some capacity in the industry, but rarely to the extent that Dolmen seems to have incorporated it. Hopefully, this will help Dolmen stand out from the pack of Soulslike games that have been cropping up over the past few years, while still giving fans an experience that captures the charm of the genre.
Dolmen is currently in development for a projected 2022 release on PC and consoles.