How is this even considered a souls like?

[Zachshock]

This game is a 2D platformer ( I don't recall Dark Souls being a 2D platformer, comparing this game to Dark Souls is like game journalists comparing Cuphead to Dark Souls ) other than I heard there are no rpg mechanics ( no builds, just one weapon, no stats, etc ).

[corrupticc]

oh and it also has DODGE ROLL EYE FRAMES THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF THE DODGE ROLL

[Dwarven Runesmith]

corrupticc님이 먼저 게시:

well quite a lot of YOU people are wrong hollow knight is a souls-like because not only does steam SAY so but it has many secrets which can be handy for reruns hum-hum like dark-souls or blood borne it has many different ways one weapon can work hum hum like blood borne it has difficult skips that can be preformed with the basic like in blood bourn dark-souls and Elden ring and it has the equivalent of souls in the form of geo but rather then maybe you died to fall damage and can easily recover them in hollow knight you might die trying to recover your geo and it is never easy and it is not all every room that you go in when first playing is hard to get through but when you get good and learn how the game works then these early rooms are easy but later rooms are still challenging and rewarding to beat not to mention bosses and lore which is told in the vain of a souls-like the bosses e.g the watcher knights are the biggest reward and hardest challenge of the game even the first boss is optional like in blood borne so there fore hollow knight is a souls-like just in 2D and if you disagree then blood borne dark-souls and Elden ring aren't souls-likes ether

Since when any of these games became Metroidvania?
Souls-like and Metroidvania do share allot of similar or small parts of each other, but they are not the same.

Also, fix your text, it's hard to read and understand what you even talking about.

[Dunhill]

because everything is a souls like
souls invented checkpoints
souls invented melee combat

I even think they invented movement keys

[Dwarven Runesmith]

Smoke님이 먼저 게시:

because everything is a souls like
souls invented checkpoints
souls invented melee combat

I even think they invented movement keys

Don't forget that souls invented graphics.

[OTO]

I have not played the game yet, but maybe because of dark(ish) theme and because that tag sells. This has nothing to do with souls games.

[sekai]

OTO님이 먼저 게시:

I have not played the game yet, but maybe because of dark(ish) theme and because that tag sells. This has nothing to do with souls games.

People keep reviving this thread like it's an undead... Chosen Undead...

I think devs claimed they took no inspiration from Souls, but to me it feels sus. The games share too many similarities unless it's one hell of a coincidence. It's not even bad similarities so no idea they had to claim that they took no inspiration from Souls.

...............

Both games are high fantasy (one medieval fantasy the other gothic fantasy) metroidvania games that favour the more "fundamental" combat system (before later Souls editions that became flashier).

Both games are set in dying kingdoms once ruled by a now-disgraced God-King that tried remake the barren default world to a more vibrant project of their design. Both God-Kings feared deeply a specific primal force that had to do with light or dark; Pale King feared the Radiance, Gwyn feared the Dark Soul. Both God-Kings ruled with an iron fist. Both projects failed due to primal equilibrium and entropy forces gradually reversing their design back to natural default. Both God-Kings went to excessive lengths and pure insanity to attempt salvaging their project and regain control, doing or sanctioning countless atrocities in the process, and both failed miserably. Both God-Kings in their last ditch effort forced the kingdom into a magical stasis to try and preserve it as it slowly but surely decays. Both God-Kings ultimately withered away into a husk in some forgotten corner of the world filled with regret as their project crumbled to dust.

Both games employ the storytelling approach where narratives are told through non-explicit implications, often vague statements, and item descriptions.

Both game universe bases magic on soul energy. Study of magic is sanctioned by the kingdom in both universes, and said studies in the 2 universes both require human trafficking, experimentation and torture that get covered up. Both universes' magic also eventually drove the practitioner insane with obsession with achieving some higher form or being. You also had to battle the "mistakes" of magical experiments in both games. And in both universes a more powerful version of the same spell is coloured black.

A shared twist in both games is that it features "chosen" heroes that aren't chosen at all but simply the survivorship bias interpreted as destiny. And in both cases such twist are both engineered by the God-King faction (Hollow Knight is so into this idea it happened twice within the span of the same story).

In both games your player character has a connection to something called the "Abyss" and are both associated with darkness, though the actual narrative implications are different.

The list goes on.

.........................................................................

Gameplay wise, the similarity can be summarised by a very curious feature Hollow Knight has, its game save system: The Bench.

The bench functions almost exactly the same as bonfire in Dark Souls. It's a respawn point for the player (but NOT a typical checkpoint, I'll explain in the next paragraph). Bench and bonfire are also both used as a limiting factor for the player characters' skill customisation: In Dark Souls the player has to sit at the bonfire to level up and change their magic spells; in Hollow knight the player has to sit on the bench to change their charms.

Beyond that the bench/bonfire mechanics is a very specific checkpoint system that is in actuality 2 concurrent save systems running in parallel, where the game in actuality saves all the time so you actually don't lose any progress and the bench/bonfire is just used for respawn point. It's a system made famous by and most associated with Souls.

Souls games used this system because of its online component of the game, such as invasion, where another player can presumably come into your game at any given point in time. And so 2 save systems running in parallel became necessary to secure player progress and to give them a repsawn location should they were to die. This same system would be used by Dying Light for instance, because the game also has the invasion system.

The fact Hollow Knight has the same save system despite being singleplayer shows Team Cherry likely did take inspiration from Souls, but probably just copied that system based on aesthetics instead of functionality.

[Dwarven Runesmith]

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

Snip

They did say they never even played the game, but systems are not inherently unique to Souls.

But your take would work if the topic was "Did Hallow Knight take inspiration from Dark Souls?" but the question is "How is Hallow Knight considered a Souls-Like?".
You answer a question that no one asked.

[sekai]

Dwarven Runesmith님이 먼저 게시:

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

Snip

They did say they never even played the game, but systems are not inherently unique to Souls.

But your take would work if the topic was "Did Hallow Knight take inspiration from Dark Souls?" but the question is "How is Hallow Knight considered a Souls-Like?".
You answer a question that no one asked.

I mean, taking inspiration from Souls means its Souls-like?

Sure you could argue that if "Souls-like" refers to a very rigid and specific marketable term nowadays that all but refers to "Souls clones" then Hollow Knight probably isn't as much a "Souls-like" than say, The Surge.

But since Hollow Knight very likely took a few core narrative and gameplay ideas from Souls, you could definitely still consider it at the very least, loosely a Souls-like game. Because you know, it's like and similar to a Souls game in more ways than one?

[Dwarven Runesmith]

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

Dwarven Runesmith님이 먼저 게시:

They did say they never even played the game, but systems are not inherently unique to Souls.

But your take would work if the topic was "Did Hallow Knight take inspiration from Dark Souls?" but the question is "How is Hallow Knight considered a Souls-Like?".
You answer a question that no one asked.

I mean, taking inspiration from Souls means its Souls-like?

Sure you could argue that if "Souls-like" refers to a very rigid and specific marketable term nowadays that all but refers to "Souls clones" then Hollow Knight probably isn't as much a "Souls-like" than say, The Surge.

But since Hollow Knight very likely took a few core narrative and gameplay ideas from Souls, you could definitely still consider it at the very least, loosely a Souls-like game. Because you know, it's like and similar to a Souls game in more ways than one?

Not really, most mechanics were in games before. But before arguing about what if they did take from them first you have to disprove their claim of never playing the game in the first place.

[sekai]

Dwarven Runesmith님이 먼저 게시:

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

I mean, taking inspiration from Souls means its Souls-like?

Sure you could argue that if "Souls-like" refers to a very rigid and specific marketable term nowadays that all but refers to "Souls clones" then Hollow Knight probably isn't as much a "Souls-like" than say, The Surge.

But since Hollow Knight very likely took a few core narrative and gameplay ideas from Souls, you could definitely still consider it at the very least, loosely a Souls-like game. Because you know, it's like and similar to a Souls game in more ways than one?

Not really, most mechanics were in games before. But before arguing about what if they did take from them first you have to disprove their claim of never playing the game in the first place.

This was the selected quote by Pellen:

“I hadn’t actually played much of Dark Souls when we were making the game,” ... “I played a fair bit of it after because people talked a lot about how Hollow Knight was like Dark Souls. I think we were referencing a lot of games that Dark Souls references so maybe there’s a lot of connections there."

So yes, they did play the game. Plain assertion like "their claim of never playing the game" is therefore false. They just backpedalled in a way and said they only supposedly played Souls after they already made Hollow Knight. Imagine if a game I made was constantly compared to Skyrim and my response is "Well I only played Skyrim after I already released my game." Sure mate.

You can ask yourself the odds of this statement. To me sounds like some stretched half-truth made on the spot during the interview in a twist to try and avoid perceived allegations of uninspired clones even when there wasn't actually any. I'd wager the chance is pretty high. After all, who hasn't heard of the Souls franchise since 2014 with the release of Bloodborne and 2016 with the release of Dark Souls 3? Even if they didn't personally play the game, they would've at least been aware of some of the information of the game given its popularity so playing the game isn't even necessarily to get some idea about the franchise.

Hollow Knight started development in late 2014 and finished in early 2017 almost a full year after the release of Dark Souls 3. And initially the game wasn't even about any of the things Hollow Knight is now known as, as it started as "Hungry Knight", a glorified Snake.io so they changed the direction of the game completely into a dark fantasy action game shortly after project starts. Gee, I wonder why.

That said, the assertion that Hollow Knight and Dark Souls may have simply shared an indirect link by both referencing a 3rd game does actually have merit. Since both games referenced Zelda, particularly the Majora’s Mask.

However when Hollow Knight and Dark Souls share about 70% or so of narrative beats and the latter's very specific and iconic bonfire system (that did not appear in Zelda to my knowledge) also made it into Hollow Knight especially there's no actual design reasons why it should be the case (the game has no online invasion component. Bonfire system was there to facilitate a singleplayer game with random multiplayer events). It demonstrates that TC was most definitely aware of Souls series during the development of Hollow Knight despite what they're saying.

..........

Even if the statement made during interview is totally true, that he only played Souls after Hollow Knight launched, ultimately he made that statement speaking only for himself. There are other 2 core devs on the team, and they could've got inspiration. I mean it's not like they specifically blacklisted all Souls references so it's going to slip into the product if it was present.

So who can really say?

[Dwarven Runesmith]

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

Dwarven Runesmith님이 먼저 게시:

Not really, most mechanics were in games before. But before arguing about what if they did take from them first you have to disprove their claim of never playing the game in the first place.

This was the selected quote by Pellen:

“I hadn’t actually played much of Dark Souls when we were making the game,” ... “I played a fair bit of it after because people talked a lot about how Hollow Knight was like Dark Souls. I think we were referencing a lot of games that Dark Souls references so maybe there’s a lot of connections there."

So yes, they did play the game. Plain assertion like "their claim of never playing the game" is therefore false. They just backpedalled in a way and said they only supposedly played Souls after they already made Hollow Knight. Sure mate.

You can ask yourself the odds of this statement. To me sounds like some stretched half-truth made on the spot during the interview in a twist to try and avoid perceived allegations of uninspired clones even when there wasn't actually any. I'd wager the chance is pretty high. After all, who hasn't heard of the Souls franchise since 2014 with the release of Bloodborne and 2016 with the release of Dark Souls 3?

Hollow Knight started development in late 2014 and finished in early 2017 almost a full year after the release of Dark Souls 3. And initially the game wasn't even about any of the things Hollow Knight is now known as, as it started as "Hungry Knight", a glorified Snake.io so they changed the direction of the game completely into a dark fantasy action game shortly after project starts. Gee, I wonder why.

That said, the assertion that Hollow Knight and Dark Souls may have simply shared an indirect link by both referencing a 3rd game does actually have merit. Since both games referenced Zelda, particularly the Majora’s Mask.

However when Hollow Knight and Dark Souls share about 70% or so of narrative beats and the latter's very specific and iconic bonfire system (that did not appear in Zelda to my knowledge) also made it into Hollow Knight especially there's no actual design reasons why it should be the case (the game has no online invasion component. Bonfire system was there to facilitate a singleplayer game with random multiplayer events). It demonstrates that TC was most definitely aware of Souls series during the development of Hollow Knight despite what they're saying.

..........

Even if the statement is totally true, he only speaks for himself. There are other 2 core devs on the team. So who can really say?

Most of the assertion is more akin to theory crafting with no basis of evidence but of the guy admitting to playing it a little bit.
During development anything can happen, there has been many games that changed course mid development to a different game all together. We weren't there when they made it.

The story similarities does happen a lot when you break it down to some very specific things.
It doesn't help that they pretty much do similar stories from their Lost Kingdoms/ King's Field. The story can also have same general concepts as Zeliard.

The only thing unique to the bonfire is the ascetic. Bonfires only respawn you at the location you rested, the save usually is the quite button.
Like every metroidvenia had some checkpoint (Later games) and this is not an exception. Or would you like to argue that Dead space stole the idea of checkpoints (Save sations).

[Nibbie]

Dwarven Runesmith님이 먼저 게시:

Like every metroidvenia had some checkpoint (Later games) and this is not an exception. Or would you like to argue that Dead space stole the idea of checkpoints (Save sations).

Not that this thread needed to be revived in the first place, but your issue seems to be that "this thing existed before Dark Souls, and therefore it doesn't make it a souls-like", yet by that logic, isn't Dark Souls not a souls-like, since most all of its mechanics have existed before? Obviously that is nonsense.

A souls-like is not defined by any single mechanic or story piece, it is a combination of mechanics, gameplay feel, and story design that produce a feel similar to Dark Souls. I would easily consider this is a soulslike, as it has many similarities to Souls games. The story is presented in a similar way of sparse and/or vague lore snippets and dialogue, NPC interactions and quests are nearly identical to how Souls does them, benches = bonfires, most enemies only respawn when you rest rather than naturally, action combat focused on looking for openings between dodging enemy attacks rather than anything combo based, limited and slow heals, tough bosses, needing to defeat a specific group of bosses (the order of which is up to you) to unlock the ending, I could go on.

I would also argue it is silly to restrict any game to only one genre or definition when they could fit multiple. There is such a variety of mechanics and graphics and other facets of a game that can and have been combined to create unique experiences that don't fit in rigid definitions of genres. There is absolutely no reason this can't be a "soulslike metroidvania", since it blends many aspects of both genres.

[sekai]

Dwarven Runesmith님이 먼저 게시:

Most of the assertion is more akin to theory crafting with no basis of evidence but of the guy admitting to playing it a little bit.
During development anything can happen, there has been many games that changed course mid development to a different game all together. We weren't there when they made it.

The story similarities does happen a lot when you break it down to some very specific things.
It doesn't help that they pretty much do similar stories from their Lost Kingdoms/ King's Field. The story can also have same general concepts as Zeliard.

The only thing unique to the bonfire is the ascetic. Bonfires only respawn you at the location you rested, the save usually is the quite button.
Like every metroidvenia had some checkpoint (Later games) and this is not an exception. Or would you like to argue that Dead space stole the idea of checkpoints (Save sations).

Traditional checkpoints is save points. If you die, you not only respawn at the check point but you LOSE PROGRESS. Since all it did was loading the last save, which was saved the last time you passed through it. That cool sword you picked up before you choked at the boss fight? GONE. Defeated the boss but got killed by the last projectile they hurled out? DO IT AGAIN.

Checkpoints eventually evolved into timer-based saving system and manual saves but it still doesn't solve the problem of losing at least certain amount of things when you die. Then constant save system where you don't lose progress and just respawn in the last city/town/hospital you were at comes in but Dark Souls added another addition to that - by making spawn points abundant and giving players some power in choosing where they need to be, as players respawns at not the nearest bonfire but the last one used.

This improved system made it into Hollow Knight perhaps as a mere coincidence but then....

An innovation Dark Souls had in regards to the save mechanics is the inclusion of BLOODSTAINS (forgot to mention earlier posts. failing mind) which Hollow Knight also has in the form of Shade. Bloodstain in Souls was taxes used to limit on how much a save system with abundant spawn points that also doesn't lose progress can be abused. It makes death while doesn't lose any actual progress, but still steals your money and shames you into being more cautious next time. Hollow Knight just tuned it to 11 and also made the Bloodstain fight you for some reason which is unnecessary and pushing it tbh.

Bloodstain also served another purpose in Souls, to facilitate online play, similar to how the bonfire was chosen because otherwise the drop-in-drop-out pvp system would be absolutely miserable. Bloodstains' role besides putting some tax on an otherwise free respawn, is to mark the point of your death not only as a reminder of caution for yourself but for all other players playing the same game as they all have a chance to load your bloodstain into their game, and it will also include the manner of which you died so players can try to guess what danger is lying ahead.

For some inexplicable reason, this mechanics ALSO made it into Hollow Knight despite the game is completely singleplayer and it also more or less breaks the lore that TC spent so much time making sure the gameplay and lore would match. Because now instead of the designated implication that the Knight simply also having the ability of foresight like the Pale King and their "death" was simply a precognition they woke up from while sleeping on the bench; they now have to try and explain the Knight dying, split themselves into 2, 1 half teleports back to the bench while the other remained at the location of death, and the 2 meet and mortal kombat their way into merge. It looked like they're stuck between the intended lore explanation of respawning in Hollow Knight and the one in Dark Souls, where characters do actually physically reform at bonfire after death. Sure Dark Souls' lore also crumbles a bit around respawning, but it at least doesn't feel like it get stuck between its own thing and Dark Souls like Hollow Knight is.

It is curious they still went with this specific respawn mechanics completely cut whole cloth with bloodstain included. Remember, they even outdid Souls on this by having the Bloodstain fight you too so it's definitely not accidental matching. They really wanted this.

But Hollow Knight devs now tries to explain how they made their save system just like Dark Souls but also trying to convince you they've never played the game before releasing Hollow Knight?

Why would they """""just so happen"""""" to have these 2 signature mechanics of Souls in Hollow Knight and ALSO just had to keep them in even if some bits of it clearly don't work really well, if not for at least someone on their team being a Souls fan?

....................................

Let's not forget the part where Hollow Knight was initially a simple flash game about the player character eating things get bigger, then into a VERY grim, bleak dark fantasy, before settling on the 'gothically depressed' but still whimsical final product?

The said final product that has most of the story beat by beat matching to Dark Souls 1 specifically and maybe even a bit of Bloodborne where you enter the mind of the "final boss" to battle the eldritch horror "true" boss?

In Dark Souls 1, it is about this engineered larger-than-life fake prophecy and gods using their authority appeal to groom as many wannabe undeads to throw themselves into the grinder until the last standing will be convinced to replace the last failing host the put the nation in stasis to extend the hubris vanity project of a disgraced God-King. Sounds familiar? Hollow Knight even did this plot TWICE as both Pale King and White Lady did this to for slightly different ends and to varying levels of success.

Then you have other minor things like Pale King also had 5 great knights matching that of Gwyn's 4 knights in Dark Souls who in turn got his knights because he's conceived by a Japanese dev and they were referencing the Four Heavenly Kings (despite their name, they were guardsmen of the heaven and not actual kings so get translated into the 4 great knights in Dark Souls). I guess TC went 1 more because they wanted to be extra like they did with the bloodstain that fights you.

You have magic in Hollow Knight also based on souls and drives people insane on trying to ascend like Dark Souls.

And you also had NPC quests that just progress on its own in the background where characters change locations on their own and can even die off screen like Dark Souls. This makes it so the player is not a quest taker but a witness or participants to the NPC's own quest. Most games of the same genre either deals in traditional quest logs, static worlds or dooms-day events than the Souls approach.

The Knight in Hollow Knight also consumes the souls of their opponent given their nature and gets stronger, similar to the undeads in Dark Souls.

The same story telling technique and devices on top of the already similar setting, preferring nonlinear and obscured trip-feed story approach that relies on implications, vague texts, and subtexts.

TC also spent just as much time and effort to try and make the game completely match the lore like FromSoft does in Souls games.

etc,

....................................

Sure, one like you can simply wave your hand and go "all it's all coincidences" because dismissing any and everything it's oh-so easy to do.

But just look at the totalities of these so-called "coincidences". All in all, someone on TC has played Souls and was definitely thinking about it every now and then during the development of the game. You can't convince me otherwise.

[Dwarven Runesmith]

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

Traditional checkpoints is save points. If you die, you not only respawn at the check point but you LOSE PROGRESS. Since all it did was loading the last save, which was saved the last time you passed through it. That cool sword you picked up before you choked at the boss fight? GONE. Defeated the boss but got killed by the last projectile they hurled out? DO IT AGAIN.

Checkpoints eventually evolved into timer-based saving system and manual saves but it still doesn't solve the problem of losing at least certain amount of things when you die. Then constant save system where you don't lose progress and just respawn in the last city/town/hospital you were at comes in but Dark Souls added another addition to that - by making spawn points abundant and giving players some power in choosing where they need to be, as players respawns at not the nearest bonfire but the last one used.

So Dark Souls stole the idea from Minecraft. The only difference if you do not lose stuff. But you could also argue Terraria had the idea of softcore of not losing your stuff on death.

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

An innovation Dark Souls had in regards to the save mechanics is the inclusion of BLOODSTAINS (forgot to mention earlier posts. failing mind) which Hollow Knight also has in the form of Shade. Bloodstain in Souls was taxes used to limit on how much a save system with abundant spawn points that also doesn't lose progress can be abused. It makes death while doesn't lose any actual progress, but still steals your money and shames you into being more cautious next time. Hollow Knight just tuned it to 11 and also made the Bloodstain fight you for some reason which is unnecessary and pushing it tbh.

I mean in Legend of Zelda 2 on death you lose XP, but the difference is you can get it back in Souls. Some love and others hate the system but it is mostly used as a saving grace on not being to punishing. But they do give you items like rings or warp items to get back without losing souls.
But Hallow Knight (Mostly considered bad) is different in a way, but from reading it seems to be more akin not being to punishing like Zelda 2 but trying a different twist. Mostly it is not cannon to die in that game, so I do not know.

Second portion was pretty much the first one.

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

It is curious they still went with this specific respawn mechanics completely cut whole cloth with bloodstain included. Remember, they even outdid Souls on this by having the Bloodstain fight you too so it's definitely not accidental matching. They really wanted this.

But Hollow Knight devs now tries to explain how they made their save system just like Dark Souls but also trying to convince you they've never played the game before releasing Hollow Knight?

Why would they """""just so happen"""""" to have these 2 signature mechanics of Souls in Hollow Knight and ALSO just had to keep them in even if some bits of it clearly don't work really well, if not for at least someone on their team being a Souls fan?

2 "signature" mechanics is pushing it, I'll give you only 1 on the shade.

....................................

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

Story

Sharing similar stories is common, dark souls is not original with it's own story, but even bloodborn takes many inspiration from Lovecraft.

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

And you also had NPC quests that just progress on its own in the background where characters change locations on their own and can even die off screen like Dark Souls. This makes it so the player is not a quest taker but a witness or participants to the NPC's own quest. Most games of the same genre either deals in traditional quest logs, static worlds or dooms-day events than the Souls approach.

Depends on games, but the idea of missing out on quests because of something does happen in other games.

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

The Knight in Hollow Knight also consumes the souls of their opponent given their nature and gets stronger, similar to the undeads in Dark Souls.

Like many games where you progress further the stronger you get. Same idea but different executions.

....................................

sekai님이 먼저 게시:

Sure, one like you can simply wave your hand and go "all it's all coincidences" because dismissing any and everything it's oh-so easy to do.

But just look at the totalities of these so-called "coincidences". All in all, someone on TC has played Souls and was definitely thinking about it every now and then during the development of the game. You can't convince me otherwise.

Not dismissing any of it but claiming it's Souls-Like because of that is not accurate.
There are more people arguing that Dark Souls is more Metroidvenia then anything.

[Hotel Security]

Soulslike is not a genre. It is a list of gameplay traits (lose something on death, cryptic storytelling, etc) that mostly originated from the Souls games.

A game having a few of these traits does not change its genre. This game is a Metroid clone with a few Soulslike elements. People do the same thing with the RPG label where they pretend that everything that has leveling and equipment can be called an RPG. An element of a genre does not change the genre. Soulslike is not a genre...we've seen Souls elements used in side-scrollers, 3D action, puzzle games, FPSs, and other such. Those are genres.

>There are more people arguing that Dark Souls is more Metroidvenia then anything.

Yes, I'm really getting tired of people pretending that "Metroidvania" applies to 3D games. It never has and never will. It's a side-scrolling sub-genre...it doesn't apply to any game that has hub-sized areas with hidden stuff, sorry. They can't just call these "3D Zelda clones" like they obviously are?

Seriously, game genres are so f***ed, especially since they're used for marketing anyway. The more tags your game gets, the more eyeballs on it.