The co-creator of Dark Souls' most ambitious mod resurfaces to inform me that Blighttown, source of my nightmares, was cobbled together with '10 bits of wood'

If you've played Dark Souls, chances are you remember Blighttown—and none too fondly. Rickety, thin platforms occupied by scab-coated poison dart shooters. Precarious walks above a fatal drop into the accursed toxic swamp below. And, lest we forget, the deadliest enemy of all: The framerate absolutely tanking on the Xbox 360. You remake-players on those fancy modern rigs don't know how good you've got it.

I had previously tucked this nightmare back into the recesses of my mind, where it belongs, starving in the shadows. However, Grimrukh—co-creator of WIP mega-mod Dark Souls: Nightfall—has emerged from his silence on X to inform everyone that Miyazaki and co. architected this terror with "from scaled copy/pastes of these 10 bits of wood" (via GamesRadar+).

I am staring, dear reader, at these 10 scraps of unassuming timber, and I am wrought with a sort of existential dread, much in the same way that one might look at the vial containing a supervirus in an apocalypse movie—possessed of a creeping, unrelenting realisation that something so fundamentally terrifying can come from such humble origins. In isolation, these 10 solitary assets are nothing more than slabs of low-poly lumber, but combined in the right configuration set teenage Harvey's controller a-flying.

It does remind me of just how savvy and efficient FromSoftware can truly be. While Elden Ring did catch a bit of flak for its asset reuse, it's hard to overly complain when the end result left its mark on a generation of players—it being one of the biggest games of its decade and all. That the game's developers were able to cobble together its most infamous zone from a mere handful of planks is nothing short of inspiring. Also, terrifying.

Anyway, Grimrukh's fun fact also came as a bit of a relief to those waiting for Nightfall, since his last tweet was made in October of 2024, wherein he said "I've been hit with pneumonia immediately after getting back from an overseas trip and it's not a fun time." Instead, as he now reveals, he's merely been locked in "Grim's cave, where he is working on Nightfall almost every day and isn't allowed to leave until it's done."

I'm personally glad to hear he's feeling better, even if I whole-heartedly resent him for informing me that I can have my blood pressure raised by 10 bits of muddily-textured digital scrap arranged just-so. It's also good to hear that Nightfall is still in progress, since the ultra-ambitious add-on was announced way back in 2020 and is yet to see the light of day.

Elden Ring Ranni quest: Follow the witch
Elden Ring Blaidd quest: Wolf man watch
Elden Ring Nepheli quest: Warrior woman
Elden Ring Fia quest: Cold comfort
Elden Ring volcano manor quest: Get Mt. Gelmir