Gameplay Journal Entry #3

The mod I played through is called Pocket Souls, a modification of Dark Souls 3 that recreates the mechanics of Pokemon into the world of Dark Souls. The Souls series is infamous for its harsh mechanics, having trouble and dying is part of the game and its progression. On the other hand, Pokemon is a child friendly, relaxed exploration and collection game, so combining these two opposite genres into one was interesting to see. The mod renders the player’s weapons and abilities useless, the only way to progress is through capturing and summoning the game’s enemy varieties, which each have their own move sets, strengths, and weaknesses, unchanged from the original game. The game has some scripted encounters with rival trainers, but most content is the same, only your summoned creatures can fight, and the player character heals and powers them up.

In this specific mod’s case, the host game engine of Dark Souls 3 was ill-prepared to implement mechanics that a Pokemon game would call for, most of the functions needed had to be added by the modder’s own abilities and could not be reverse engineered from the present game. Schleiner describes parasites with “The sophisticated game engine already has artificially intelligent programs, detailed 3-dimensional game world objects and mapped out spaces, which then become available for the amateur game-maker’s chewing.” (36) The mod utilizes the exact same enemy AI, world objects and maps, the only changes being made were to use these assets in a completely new game mode that the engine could not produce in its current state.

This mod was interesting to play, I feel it went above and beyond in trying to recreate Pokemon mechanics, not only just adding artistic and thematic references, but completely remaking the core gameplay of Dark Souls 3. A fun example is how when you throw an Abyssal Flask, the mods version of a Pokeball, the enemy being captured ticks three times with a particle effect to replicate how close you are to capturing it, just like how Pokeballs rock back and forth three times in a Pokemon game.

Reference: Schleiner, Anne-Marie. “Game Modding: Cross over Mutation and Unwelcome Gifts” in Ludic Mutation: The Player’s Power to Change the Game.