The best King's Field-likes on PC

The best King’s Field-likes on PC | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these RPG ‘We lost things such as physics in games:’ The dev behind my most anticipated RPG thinks players are craving more interactive games, not just ‘moving around in a static 3D environment’ RPG The dev behind my top upcoming RPG is a Hungarian chef who thought ‘if not now, then when?’ and learned coding from scratch to make his dream ‘eurojank’ masterpiece Horror Reanimal review: Astonishingly bleak and oblique survival horror RPG Warhammer 40k: Dark Heresy might just have everything I want from a CRPG Roguelike Mewgenics review: The creator of The Binding of Isaac has transcended his own past work with this sprawling, ridiculous, and endlessly surprising roguelike Games The best PC games to play right now Action Nioh 3 review: This samurai soulslike epic is a serious contender to Elden Ring Survival & Crafting The best survival games on PC RPG I’ve already put 10 hours into this upcoming RPG’s demo because it has the best combat I’ve seen outside a FromSoft game Games The 20 best cozy games on PC that aren’t farm sims Games New games 2025: The year’s PC game releases RPG The best RPGs on PC Games PC Gamer’s Game of the Year Awards 2025 Action Inside PC gaming’s wildly creative Tomb Raider mapping scene: ‘Being able to create my own adventures for other people to play is such an addicting concept’ Games The best open world games PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!Arc RaidersBest PC gearFalloutGame Quizzes Games RPG Lunacid The best King’s Field-likes on PC Features By Kerry Brunskill published 16 February 2026 From software, with love. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Kira Games, lutik327 on Tumblr) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter PC Gamer Get the PC Gamer Newsletter Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? 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Signup + Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo’s new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play. Signup + Every Saturday The Watchlist Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter FromSoftware’s King’s Field was an astonishingly immersive RPG for 1994, a dark fantasy where every object was something that could be examined up close and from all angles. Every herb. Every skeleton. Every treasure chest and trap.These first-person visual wonders weren’t contained within some artificially restrictive turn-based RPG, tile-based dungeon crawl, or hemmed in by an intrusive framerate-saving UI. Players were free to explore the deadly domain however they pleased. Monsters could sneak up from behind, ledges could be cautiously peered over, painful surprises could swoop in from above, and coins could be collected off the floor.That turned heads at a time when Chrono Trigger was still months away from making its Super Nintendo debut, even if the latter proved to be more timeless. But what kept people playing King’s Field long after, through sequels and spiritually similar FromSoft RPGs and even into fan games created years later, was the series’ enthralling atmosphere and unforgiving difficulty. The chance to be left alone in the dark and made to wander an environment so hostile there was a real chance the ground underfoot could kill, or approaching the wrong thing from the wrong angle could prove fatal. Related articles I played more than 20 metroidvanias this year other than Silksong, and these are the ones doing the most creative/experimental things with the genre We’re hitting peak saturation for first person dungeon crawlers, but Queen’s Domain stands apart from the crowd 25 great Steam games you probably missed in 2025⁠—from freebies to $40 The awkward controls, with camera movement tied to the PlayStation’s shoulder buttons (a necessity in pre-analogue pad times, yet retained after) and sword swings imagined as slow, stamina-sapping motions, were features, not bugs. It should be difficult to hit something crawling along the floor. Spotting a monster hanging from the ceiling should take conscious thought and additional effort. Fighting should feel tense and deadly.Like the Souls games that came after it, the series challenges players to defy seemingly impossible odds. Every step forwards through these tantalisingly freeform and often unmapped places feels like a small victory. Half-revealed mysteries and well-hidden secrets give seemingly simplistic stone corridors and magic swords meaning, every small and often charmingly lo-poly detail one part of a larger tapestry.Something glinting in the distance is an invitation to push ahead, in spite of the dangers.Thankfully this ethos i