Dark Souls

Dark Souls is the 2011 action RPG from FromSoftware, published by Bandai Namco, that turned a cult PlayStation 3 follow-up to Demon's Souls into a template a whole genre now borrows from. It launched in Japan on 22 September 2011, in North America on 4 October and in Europe on 7 October, on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A PC version, Prepare to Die Edition, followed in August 2012.

The game drops the player into Lordran with little explanation: bonfires act as checkpoints, death costs your carried souls, and other players can leave messages, join as summons or invade. Its interconnected world and its refusal to explain itself are the parts most often cited by the games that followed it.

Dark Souls Remastered arrived in 2018 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with a Nintendo Switch version later that year, and it is the edition still sold on Steam today. FromSoftware put the Dark Souls series at more than 27 million copies in May 2020, before Elden Ring carried the same design to a far larger audience.

This hub collects AFK Journal's coverage of Dark Souls: data features, anniversaries and anything that changes on the remaster's online services, with every number dated and sourced.