Dark Souls: Nightfall is a Fan Game set in FromSoftware Dark Souls universe. Announced in 2020, Nightfall is a direct Fan Sequel to the orignal Dark Souls, and an Interquel to Dark Souls II and Dark Souls III, taking place seconds after the first game's Darklord Ending. It requires a legally-bought copy of Dark Souls: Remastered to play.
Gwyn’s darkest nightmares have come true; the Age of Dark beckons at last. Spurred on by the ambition of Darkstalker Kaathe, the Chosen Undead, the Player Character of Dark Souls, has slain the feeble Lord of Cinder, and abandoned the dying flame to fade away. Ascending the hallowed chambers of Firelink, the Primordial Serpents have crowned them the fabled Dark Lord, Lord of Humanity, and bringer of darkness.
At the same time, a nameless Hollow awakens at the Undead Asylum, spurred by a great earthquake and upheavel, finding themselves suddenly just above the Great Kiln of the First Flame, witness to the Chosen Undead's duel with Lord Gywn. Watching the Lord fall to the Chosen Undead's blade (who wordlessly marches to his dark destiny), in his final seconds, Gywn hands the Player Character a mysterious amulet, before disapating into dust. The hollow then makes a shocking discovery: the cinders of the First Flame remain alit!
Taken it upon themselves the task of stopping nightfall, the Nameless Hollow must navigate the tortured depths of a drastically altered Lordran, fight ancient horrors awakened by the dawn of the Age of Dark, and stop the ambitions of the newly-crowned Dark Lord...before it's too late.
Despite being built with Dark Souls 1's engine, the game has a unique combat system (heavily inspired by Bloodborne) built from the ground up, a host of new features; such as a timer inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, a dynamic Day and Night Cycle that heavily alters the game world, new fully voiced NPC's, a vastly altered Lordran and a host of completely new enemies. Prominent modders developing the project include; Grimrukh (Lead Developer and author of Dark Souls: Daughters of Ash), Zullie the Witch (Lead Writer and one of the oldest Souls Series modders), Ain Tunez (Project Manager/Composer and Music Composer of Team Four Star), and Sirius Texra (Lead Modeler/Artist, and Modeler on Bluepoint Games Demon's Souls remake).
It was originally set for release on January 21, 2022, but was delayed, and a demo containing the first two areas was released instead (downloadable here
). There is currently no set date for the release of the full game.
Trailers: Teaser Trailer Preview
Fear not the dark troper, and let the feast begin.
- Animalistic Abomination: The Kin of the Black Dragon are a pack of abyss-tainted Wolves tinged with corruption and red eyes, with the ability to summon forth Abyss projectiles. Then they come back from the dead as red phantoms, and their pack leader finally appears; Calamity Wolf Guyra, who takes this trope up to eleven; being a black, giant, long-mawed, many-eyed wolf thing implied to have crawled out of the Abyss with the First Flame extinguished and inherited the soul of Kalmeet, being able to conjure his calamity spell and breathe forth waves of dark flame.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: The final sequence of the Chosen Undead being crowned the Dark Lord at the end of Dark Souls 1 is faithfully recreated, though it's seen in gameplay rather then a cutscene, and from another perspective.
- BFS:
- The Royal Regalia is an ultra greatsword with an intricate grip and blade, all adorned with silvery engravings. It does good damage all around, but is especially dangerous while in the Bloodlust stance, being capable of unleashing a wide variety of fast hitting blows and flips.
- Guyra and his pack wield large blades held in their jaws.
- Bling of War: Despite it's luster being worn and rusted, the Fluted Set is covered in beautiful rune engraved into the armor and splendid iconography.
- Call-Back: The Fluted Set returns from Demon's Souls. Its description mentions it originates from a land shrouded in fog and was consumed by an endless ocean.
- Call-Forward: The design of the Blistering Demon is very reminiscent of the Demons from Dark Souls III.
- Casting a Shadow: Bloathead Sorcerers throw pursuers, and the Kin of the Black Dragon can launch waves of Abyss magic. The Age of Dark has onset a change within the player, and they can draw from the darkness within to activate a powerful stance powered by shadows.
- Checkpoint: Due to the near-extinguishing of flame, Bonfires have been replaced with Wellsprings, dark shrines interwoven with shadows and the sword of the Sable Church.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Absorbing an Umbral Sprite allows your character to Flash Step, move more quickly, and deal more damage. On the other hand, this also comes at the cost of rendering you unable to heal yourself with Umbral Effigies and taking more damage.
- Dark Is Evil: The game runs with the idea that the Age of Dark is a very nightmarish prospect, natural or not, with shadowy sprites arising from the Abyss now that that flame is all but dead, and ancient horrors awakening from their slumber now that the sun is fading away. Guyra in particular exemplifies this.
- Discard and Draw: The main balance to the Stance System; prioritizing defense or aggression at the expense of the other.
- The Dreaded: The new description for the Crest of Artorias mentions a nameless horror has awoken due to the end of the First Flame, and taken up residence in the center of Darkroot Garden, indiscriminately killing and dragging off hunters and beasts alike as prey. It turns out to be Guyra and his pack.
- Early Game Hell: In the first 18-minute showcase of the mod, the words of the first NPC you meet are not unwarranted. The Player Character barely deals significant damage to the enemies, with or without the Umbral Sprite, their armor and weapons barely do anything, and almost all the enemies in the area can kill them in a few hits. Fortunately, the demo is a little different and much more forgiving. You deal much more damage and have access to better weapons and armor, but the areas themselves have become a lot more difficult. High-level mobs are fought in the starting zones, with particularly devious placements with enhanced AI and movesets for the enemies compared to the base games, the new bosses are much more deadly, with multiple phases and far more intricate movesets. The areas, in general, are far more dangerous, and the reshuffling of the zones themselves are extremely confusing for long-time Dark Souls players. All the while the Estus equivalent, Umbrus Effigies, have a flat limit of five charges per rest. Even with all the new abilities the player gets, the early game is far more challenging then the base games. Fittingly, an NPC you run into early on seems to be aware of your predicament and advises you to move along elsewhere.NPC: No offense, friend, but I sense you're out of your league down here. Even the spiders are scampering. Perhaps you should follow their lead.
- Evil Counterpart: Calamity Wolf Guyra is this to Great Wolf Sif. While Sif, a white wolf, was willing to do anything to contain the Abyss and even attempted to stop the Chosen Undead so they wouldn't fall prey to the Abyss' corruption, Guyra is the exact opposite, being entirely black in color and inherited Kalameet's calamity. He even has the same moveset as Sif, as does his Kin of the Black Wolf.
- Mythology Gag: The Calamity Wolf Guyra shares his name with Black Dragon Guyra from King's Field, the spiritual predecessor of the Souls series. Kalameet himself was heavily inspired by the Black Dragon, and Guyra in Nightfall is the inheritor of Kalameet's calamity.
- Our Demons Are Different: The Blistering Demon is the first boss of the game, and is very reminiscent of the Fire Demons from Dark Souls III, being a towering, wood covered monster, wielding a massive broken censer forged from the ruins of Izalith, and wielding the fires of Chaos as a Battle Aura that grows with each phase that goes by, with the Demon wielding increasingly powerful magma blasts. Flavor Text mentions the underground flames of Chaos are growing more and more powerful from the darkening sky of fading Lordran.
- Playing with Fire: The Blistering Demon is coated in layers of flame and can summon AoE explosions of lava with it's blows once it gets to it's second phase.
- Stance System: Two-handing has been replaced by this. By pressing Y, you switch between a defensive stance and a darkness empowered aggressive one called "bloodlust", which has the player slam a humanity sprite inside of them. The defensive status gives an inherent boost to poise and defense, the ability to block, and a Bloodborne styled dash. The "bloodlust" stance gives a much more powerful moveset to your weapon, greatly increased damage, and a very far reaching shadow-empowered dash, but prevents the player from using their umbrus effigy, and blocking.
- Time Crash: One of these appears to be happening in the Darkroot Garden, as it's now full of enemies from Oolacile (i.e. Darkroot in the distant past), which are actually hostile to the normal Darkroot enemies and usually make short work of them, with the notable exception of the Mushroom Parents.
- Wham Episode: The sequence in the preview where the player leaves the Asylum only to find themselves on top the Kiln of the First Flame and watching the Chosen Undead's fight with Lord Gywn from another person's perspective, it only gets crazier when you witness the Primeval Serpents crowning the Chosen Undead.
- Wolfpack Boss: The Kin of the Black Dragon are a trio of wolves inhabiting Sif's boss arena and are fought as a group; they circle the player and prod their weakness, though, like the Four Kings, only one of them really targets the player at a time, with the others staying back to circle around and summon barrages of Abyss Magic. Even killing one doesn't make things any easier, since they infinitely respawn as black phantoms, so you'll always be fighting three of them. Once all three are dead, Guyra emerges and you have to fight him and the three phantoms at the same time.
