Dark Souls Meets Assassin's Creed Black Flag In New Pirate RPG

Published Nov 1, 2026, 8:00 PM EST A gremlin in human form, Ashley Shankle has been writing within the gaming industry for nearly 15 years. Her love of roguelites knows no bounds, and she owns almost every English-language Chinese game on Steam. Ashley worked for GameSkinny as Associate and later Senior editor for over a decade.. Sign in to your ScreenRant account The soulslike genre continues to be a staple among the RPG gaming community, but genre-defining FromSoftware hasn't been dropping any hints about its next big project. Instead, the industry at large has been picking up the slack and applying the Dark Souls formula elsewhere. This time, to the high seas in an upcoming pirate soulslike. Earlier this year, the Assassin's Creed: Black Flag remake reignited the demand for a substantial pirate game other than the already operating Skull and Bones or Sea of Thieves. While it's no FromSoftware title, the upcoming Keelblade may be just what fans of the soulslike genre need to tide them over until the next release from the legendary developer. Taking some notes from both aforementioned pirate titles, Keelblade promises to be a one through six player RPG where players can build and maintain their own pirate ship and travel the seas. Where this Steam game veers away from the games it takes inspiration from is in its melee combat system, which promises dodging and parrying as a required means of survival in battle. Plundering the high seas will be a tasking effort. A difficult melee combat system and customizable pirate ship isn't all Keelblade will have to offer. Developer Digital Confectioners has crafted a world worth exploring and plenty to craft and research, provided you and your crewmates can stay alive when you disembark. Akin to other peer-to-peer hosted games such as Palworld or Conan Exiles, server hosts will be able to scale difficulty, spawn rates, and a myriad of other settings to fine-tune the game to their tastes. While this isn't the most traditional soulslike out there, the combat is exactly as it sounds. In Keelblade, though, players will have control over just how difficult the game is, or even how much of an emphasis on non-combat activities the server has. Another notable aspect of this swashbuckling action title is that multiplayer will not have any sort of tethering or summoning, meaning each individual player on a crew can explore as they see fit without having to be summoned by the server host or teleported to their location at random. Progression will be tied to the entire group rather than the server host as well, so no one will be left behind if they aren't able to play for as long as the rest of the group. Group progression and server settings both sound very un-soulslike, but plenty of titles within the genre try to add a few new things to an old formula. Additionally, FromSoftware's idea of multiplayer isn't exactly the most popular. The seamless co-op mod for Elden Ring has continued to be the most popular for the game since its release, because it adds a more modern style of multiplayer and doesn't include tethering. The Keelblade demo was recently featured in Steam Next Fest, and just today the developer announced that a new demo will be added to the Steam Store in the near future for players who missed out during the Next Fest window. Those interested will have to keep their eye on the game's Steam page for this upcoming RPG's next demo. Systems Released September 22, 2011 ESRB M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Violence Developer(s) From Software Publisher(s) Namco Bandai Engine Havok