A 2D Dark Souls 3 Metroidvania was Pitched to Bandai Namco

TinyBuild pixel artist Thomas Feichtmeir shared a screenshot of a 2D pixel art Dark Souls 3 Metroidvania game pitched to Bandai Namco six years ago. Obviously, the game never made it to the markets. Since the NDA has ended, Feichtmeir shared visuals of the game online.

Here’s the tweet.

A Dark Souls 3 – 2D pixelart metroidvania was pitched to Bandai Namco ~6 years ago.
This is now finally out of NDA, so enjoy the visuals created back then. pic.twitter.com/Dt5BDasWbU

— Thomas Feichtmeir (@cyangmou) November 8, 2022

The screenshot Feichtmeir shared shows the Ashen One dodging a strike from the Dancer of the Boreal Valley. There are some minor differences between the 2D version and the actual 3D version that launched in terms of the UI. The placement of the item menu, for example, is in the top right corner instead of the bottom left.

According to a follow-up tweet from Feichtmeir, the artist noted that FromSoftware was likely not part of this project. This is because the IP belongs to Bandai Namco. It is unknown as to why Bandai Namco never followed through with this project. Feichtmeir mentioned not knowing the reason. In an additional tweet, Feichtmeir said, “…I just created the art for the pitch.”

Dark Souls 3 came out in 2016 and it is the final game in the Dark Souls series. Thomas Feichtmeir is a pixel art consultant and artist who has previously worked on games such as Songs of Conquest and Blasphemous.

Dark Souls 3 is readily available on PS4, Xbox One, and Windows PC.