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[Game] Chapter 309: Dark Souls Combat Demo Program
🕑 Added 2025-07-22 04:04:29 +0000 UTCTonight’s dinner was eaten out with a group.
After returning home, Ichin told Utaha to go shower first, while he sat alone in front of his bedroom computer, working on polishing a small test program he’d been tinkering with during his spare time.
The content wasn’t much—just a video of a character wielding a sword and shield, wearing light armor, a short corridor, and a room at the end of it.
From the soldier’s point of view, you could see a ragged enemy standing inside the room, holding a wooden plank and a torch.
Naturally, this was a simple Dark Souls combat test scene Ichin had built himself, using mostly common free assets. The effort mainly went into the character models and action animations.
Using a controller, he played through the scene. After defeating the enemy, he reset the program, returning the character to the starting point.
“Hmm, the hit feedback still needs some tuning—feels too floaty. But the animation flow is decent.”
Rubbing his chin, a mischievous glint appeared in Ichin’s eyes.
“I should expand the scene over the next few days, add more enemies and traps… then let Ko and the others try it out.”
The current game the studio was working onPersona—was an RPG. Slay the Spire and Hollow Knight before that had their own forms of difficulty, but Ichin had never fully embraced the devious spirit of Miyazaki’s games.
But for Dark Souls, he fully intended for players to experience what "developer malice" really meant.
Back in the day, he had suffered through Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro—dying over and over again at the hands of Miyazaki’s infamous design. Naturally, he wanted to pass that wonderful experience on to his players.
Live, die, live again. Die several times in the same spot. What fun! How could he not recreate that?
As Ichin worked with a scheming grin on his face, the freshly showered Utaha entered the room with a hair dryer in hand, only to hear his suspicious laughter.
“Ichin, what are you working on?”
Pausing his work, Ichin turned his chair toward her with a smile and waved her over. “Done showering? Come here, I’ll dry your hair for you. I’ll explain as I do.”
Utaha sat beside him, handed over the dryer, and glanced at the screen.
“This doesn’t look like anything from Persona.”
“It’s not. Just a little side project I’ve been working on during downtime—basically a combat concept demo for a future plan.”
Plugging in the dryer, Ichin began to skillfully dry her hair.
Utaha always kept her long hair well-maintained, and it had remained waist-length for quite some time. Taking care of it was already a task, and if it grew any longer, it’d be even more troublesome.
As he gently dried her hair, Ichin continued, “You’ve seen the world-building I wrote for Dark Souls—it’s deep and dark. The enemies are varied too. This demo scene is simple because I didn’t have much time, so I just added some humanoid enemies to test animations and AI behaviors. I tested it myself earlier and it works pretty well. Want to give it a try?”
“An action game? Sure, I’ll give it a go.”
Utaha nodded. She didn’t refuse. While she didn’t play many action games, after working on Hollow Knight, she had played for a few hours—didn’t clear it, but at least had some basic sense of how action games worked.
After drying her hair for a few minutes, Ichin launched the test software, plugged in a controller, and handed it to her.
“Top left of the screen shows your character’s status—red bar is HP, green is stamina. Rolling and attacking consume stamina. There’s normally a blue bar for weapon arts and magic, but I haven’t implemented that yet. Controls: left stick moves, right stick adjusts camera, X uses items, Y switches between one-hand/two-hand modes, A rolls, B interacts, LB raises shield, LT parries, RB light attack, RT heavy attack. That’s it. The current scene is small and pretty simple.”
After listening to Ichin’s rundown, Utaha also opened the menu to confirm the control layout. Once she was sure he wasn’t trolling her, she began moving, rolling, and attacking a few times with the character.
“Feels pretty smooth to control… but isn’t this character kind of ugly?”
Looking at the soldier she was controlling, Utaha’s face clearly showed her disdain.
Ichin remained calm. “Totally normal. Starting characters aren’t supposed to look good. I only did a rough design anyway—the final version will be better. But there’s even a ‘Deprived’ class in the setting, who starts with just a wooden stick, a broken shield, and a tattered loincloth.”
“I don’t even know what you were thinking. Who’d want to play like that?”
Utaha muttered while maneuvering the character forward, spotting an enemy in the room at the end of the corridor waiting for her.
“And can’t you at least give the enemies better gear? A plank and a torch?”
“If I gave them good weapons and you couldn’t beat them, what then?”
“Do you not see the shield in my hand? You really think I can’t defend?”
Saying that, Utaha raised her character’s shield, proudly demonstrating her defensive prowess.
Ichin chuckled and nodded. “Fair point. In the game’s design, shields have both physical and elemental defense stats. The one you’re using is set to 100% physical block, so as long as your stamina doesn’t run out, you can perfectly block physical attacks.”
That generous, huh?
Utaha glanced at Ichin with surprise, then walked her character down the short corridor, stepping into the room.
At that very moment, she also stepped into the torch guy’s aggro range—and he began to move.
Utaha braced for the torch guy’s attack… when suddenly, from the right-rear corner, a longsword silently pierced her character. The surprise hit staggered her, and a chunk of her HP vanished.
“Ahhh!!”
Utaha yelped in shock, instinctively rolled away and rotated the camera—revealing another ragged enemy holding a longsword, not much different from her own character.
“There was another one ambushing here?! Ichin, you’re way too sneaky!”
Carefully raising her shield, she blocked the longsword enemy’s next attack, then quickly retaliated—three swift strikes and the enemy was down.
“Whew, at least it didn’t have much HP!”
Just as she said that, the torch guy came rushing in, swinging his seemingly harmless torch again and again.
Once, twice, three times, four, five—
Utaha’s character’s HP was drained instantly. With a scream, the character collapsed, and the screen faded to grayscale.
The legendary Torch Saint had claimed another victim.
Expressionless, Utaha stared at the black-and-white screen… and at another small enemy with a dagger that emerged from behind some boxes in the corner of the room.
Finally, she turned to glare at Ichin.
***
