You can now play ‘Dark Souls’ with a nostalgic pixelated “demaster”

If you’re a fan of older retro titles, then a new Dark Souls mod has got you covered.

Pixel Souls: Demastered, created for Dark Souls Remastered, is available on Nexus Mods, and replaces all textures with pixel art based on the original textures from the game. It also decreases the quality of in-game models and replaces the music and sound effects in the title.

As for how the mod was made, creator ‘thegreatgramcracker’ said:

“The pixel art textures were created using my own custom image processing algorithm written in C# and utilizing the Magick.NET library. They are built using the original game textures, with minor corrections and personal tweaks made on an area-by-area and enemy-by-enemy basis so that everything looks the way I hoped it would. No AI was used for any part of this mod.”

The trailer for the mod shows off all the work that has gone into it, with pans over familiar vistas rendered into PlayStation 1-style glory. It also shows off the new lower audio quality soundtrack, which adds a brilliant level of immersion to the demaster.

This isn’t the first FromSoftware game to receive a fan-made demake. Bloodborne, FromSoftware’s PS4-exclusive title, received a “demaster” last year with Bloodborne PSX, while its creator will follow up with Bloodborne Kart on January 31, 2024.

This fan-made racing title will include 12 separate racers, a single-player campaign set across 16 different maps, local split-screen multiplayer, and versus battle modes, with Boss battles remaining present in the crossover to add that extra level of challenge to the game.

In other gaming news, Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic was completely absent from the publisher’s latest report, fueling unconfirmed reports about the game’s troubled development.