Dark Souls on Mac: How to run it (and best alternatives)
The “Dark Souls is coming to Mac” rumor has been floating around for a while. After all, a Reddit user found actual proof that a Mac version was in the works.
That was years ago, yet gamers keep asking on forums, Reddit and Twitter, for a Dark Souls Mac version. And it’s understandable. Dark Souls is an excellent third-person action RPG that quickly became famous for being equal parts awesome and challenging.
It’s one of the most influential games of the last decade and it would be an excellent addition to Mac gaming, easily earning a spot among the finest Mac RPGs available.
Will Dark Souls ever support MacOS?
At the time, we learned that someone called “jetpackinteractive” was working on it. It turns out, that’s the name of a development studio that is directly connected to Dark Souls. They even mention Bandai Namco as a client:
DARK SOULS Bandai Namco Provided engineering support for Steam upgrade
But all previous evidence pointing to a Mac version has been scrapped, and years later, no new evidence has surfaced. They probably explored the idea but most likely abandoned it for some reason.
How to play Dark Souls on Mac
The official Mac version may have been scrapped, but you really want to, you can still play Dark Souls on your Mac. We prefer playing our games natively on Mac but if you really need to run a Windows app or play a Windows game, there are ways…
There are different options at your disposal when it comes to running Windows games on a Mac. This table summarizes the most popular ones, along with the main Pros and Cons you can expect:
Method
Cost
Requires Windows license?
Requires Reboot?
Pros and Cons
Bootcamp
Free
✔ Great performance ❌ Constant rebooting
Parallels
$79.99
✔ Easy to use ❌ Limited performance
NVIDIA GeForce Now
$25 for 20 hours
✔ Excellent performance ❌ Expensive
Wine
Free
✔ Absolutely free to use ❌Complicated to set up
Personally, I have always preferred Boot Camp. It’s free and offers the best performance your machine has to offer. But if a monthly fee is acceptable for you, streaming services have come a long way and are today an excellent choice.
Dark Souls “Mac” system requirements
Released in 2012, Dark Souls is somewhat old, but if you to try it for yourself, I suggest opting for the improved Dark Souls: Remastered.
If you do, pay attention to the new system requirements. The game won’t have specific Mac requirements but if you decide to use Boot Camp to run it, the game’s Windows requirements apply:
But what if you’re unwilling to deal with Windows? Are there worthy alternatives to Dark Souls on Mac?
Top Dark Souls Mac alternatives
If I had to recommend an RPG for Mac, it would be one of our top three favorites:
Game
★ Best Overall
Runner-up
Best Value
Genre
Action RPG
Party-based RPG
Sci-Fi RPG
Release date
2019
2018
2015
Metascore
Our rating
★★★★★ Full Review
★★★★☆ Full Review
★★★★★ Full Review
Requirements
But what if you’re looking for something particularly punishing and gritty, as Dark Souls? Worry not, there are a few excellent MacOS native options at your disposal:
Dead Cells
Dead Cells is definitely less dark and grimy alternative, still, it remains one of the best Metroidvania games from recent years. In fact, the developer itself describes Dead Cells a “Souls-lite” action-adventure game. In any case, if you’re looking for a more colorful take on the Dark Souls formula, Dead Cells is for you.
With an impressive 94% Very Positive reviews from over 27,000 Steam users, you know you can’t go wrong with Dead Cells.
Hyper Light Drifter
Another pixelated action-adventure game, Hyper Light Drifter features excellent combat that combines melee and long-range combat. It is nowhere as punishing as Dark Souls, but the story and the way you explore the world can make any Dark Souls fan feel right at home.
With 94% Very Positive reviews from close to 10,000 Steam users, Hyper Light Drifter is another safe bet, especially for fans of 16-bit games.
Salt and Sanctuary
Finally, Salt and Sanctuary is another indie with heavy Dark Souls-esque vibes.
Taking place in a cursed realm, the game features fast and brutal 2D combat. It certainly isn’t as punishing nor precise as Dark Souls, but its Metroidvania-style exploration, with its interconnected world, gives it a similar vibe.
The game has 91% Very Positive reviews on Steam from over 7,000 users.
Other games you can check out are:
Or you can even give Pascal’s Wager, a brand-new iOS and Android game, a try.
Your turn
Having Dark Souls would be great, especially now that a Remastered version exists. Alas, that will probably never happen, but at least now you know how to run it on your Mac if you really want to.
With games like Fornite and CS: GO, not having PUBG on Mac is not as bad as it used to be. Still, if you absolutely need to play it, you now know how.
What’s your Battle Royale game on Mac?
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16 Comments
I have a couple of friends (PC users) who got Dark Souls a couple of days ago; and I’ve been so frustrated that I can’t play it 🙁 If this is true then it would be more than AWESOME! 😀
Join us crossing our fingers here 😉
This is another example of a late game since they already have a sequel and a spiritual-sequel out (Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne respectively). But more games is always good. This might help pave the way to at least the sequel Dark Souls & other Japanese games coming to Mac.
I see what you mean. It’s like the Call of Duty franchise where we are several games late. It was also the case for Total War too and look where we are now! Windows and Mac parity 😉 Hopefully this will be the beginning of something good!
It would be awesome if we could get a port of this game to Mac =D!
SteamDB is rarely wrong so the big question is “when”!
I hope this comes to pass. That would be awesome. I need some serious punishment. Sorry, too much info! lol
Try to keep PG13 please… lol kidding, you can share all your weird gaming habits here, we all have some so go ahead 😉
I generally am well behaved depending on the context of where I am when I post something. That’s about as far as I’d go and I figured it was vague enough only an adult would pick up on it. Don’t worry, I’ll be a good boy. 😀
I deleted my bootcamp partition recently. I decided if it doesn’t run natively, in Wineskin or Boxer or lastly in Parallels, I’m not playing it on my iMac. This may eventually lead to a PS4 purchase to fill in the gaps but for now I have a ton to play anyway. I doubt this would run well in parallels and even if it did, native sure would be nice. Eventually, I plan to ditch Parallels too. I’d really rather have nothing to do with Windows so bring on the ports!
I would ditch parallels too 😉 If I had more time to play games, I would probably get a Xbox One for all the games I really really want to play but aren’t available on Mac. But there are already too many on Mac that I should play but can’t find the time so….
No Parallels/no Windows at all is the plan in time. I only have it now along with the Windows 7 license I bought 3 years ago to work through a backlog of games purchased on Steam and GOG that require Windows to play. However, I reached a point where I decided if it also requires a reboot, forget it.
Like you said, there is so much goodness on Mac now I am behind in a big way, particularly where I have focused on trying to clear the Windows backlog which is big too. It’s too much really and I feel like I am missing out on being anywhere near current with what is cool in native Mac gaming. I own a bunch of great games ported by Feral and Aspyr for example and yet I am spending time playing KRATER in Windows because the Mac version is broken in Yosemite and Medal of Honor Airborne from 2007 presently. I should be playing the Feral ported Brothers in Arms games, Aspyr ported Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2, Half-Life 2 (hangs head in shame) and so on, all for Mac. Yes, I am that far behind despite having kept up with buying all the new Mac stuff on various sales. I haven’t even played the Bioshock games and I own them all. I haven’t played Civ IV or V but I own them both, expansions and all. The list goes on. I need therapy I think.
Maybe you could run a story on therapy for gamers with ridiculous backlogs to help them learn to be normal, as in buy a game, play it, buy the next one, play it, etc. I think that is what normal must be like but I am not sure not being normal. 😉
So yeah, I really should cut the cord and just abandon the Windows ship but I’d still like to play Kingdoms of Amalur, The Mass Effect Trilogy, the Risen games and I forget what else now. I probably could cut the Windows list way, way down though and then be done with it. I don’t buy Windows games anymore and haven’t in quite some time now.
Man I have had this in my Steam Library for I don’t even know how long…This need to come to OS X!
Источник
Play It On A Mac: Dark Souls — Prepare To Die Edition
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In this weekly series I’ll show you how to get your favorite Windows-exclusive PC games running on OS X. For more information on the programs used, check out the Play It On A Mac explainer. For suggestions and/or questions about any game, feel free to contact me on Twitter.
Even though the game is the harsh, evil, despicable spawn of Satan himself, I love Dark Souls. The game, and it’s newly-released sequel, are big hits on home consoles, but the Windows-exclusive version of Dark Souls, called Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition is a giant pain in demon ass even for those with Windows gaming PCs, so how are we going to get it running on a Mac? Let’s see.
CrossOver
I kind of had a feeling that Dark Souls was going to be a problem with CrossOver, and I was right. Despite the game holding a seemingly incorrect Silver ranking on the official CrossOver compatibility list, you won’t be able to get the game running on your Mac using this method.
The problem here isn’t so much with the game itself or CrossOver, but with the game’s requirement of Games For Windows LIVE connectivity. Games For Windows LIVE has huge issues connecting to the internet through CrossOver and the game outright crashes before you even get started. On to the next option!
Parallels
After a trying install and several Games For Windows LIVE sign-ins and sign-outs, the game boots up and runs. On my decidedly modest test machine, the game is what I would consider to be unplayable, which is a huge bummer. No matter what settings I tweaked in Parallels, the game tops out at around 15 frames per second, which just isn’t workable for a game that requires quick reflexes to avoid untimely deaths.
This isn’t necessarily the fault of Parallels, however, as Dark Souls on PC is notorious for being one of the most poorly optimized games in recent memory. If you have a more powerful Mac on your hands, Parallels may very well work for your Dark Souls excursion, but it didn’t work out that way for me.
At this point I considered it a bit of a personal challenge to get this game running on my lowly Mac mini, so we moved on to our last and final option.
Boot Camp
As in Parallels, the obnoxious install and update process eventually gave way to actual gameplay. As in Parallels, the game was running below my playability standards, but unlike in Parallels, I would occasionally see a glimpse of the coveted 30fps mark that I was searching for.
You see, the way Dark Souls was coded forces the game to commit to a certain framerate depending on the resources available. If your PC has ample power to display what is needed, you are locked in at 30fps by default. If not, the game attempts to halve that speed and locks you at 15fps. During my Boot Camp play time I was constantly jumping back and forth between 15fps and 30fps, which made combat and exploration difficult.
There is a tool used by Dark Souls PC diehards that is made to allow super powerful rigs the chance to run the game at 60fps with maxed out graphics and texture swaps. It’s called DSfix (Dark Souls fix), and while there was zero chance I was going to be running the game at 60fps, I was able to use it to help me out a bit in my Boot Camp Dark Souls adventure. Here’s how:
First, download DSfix 22 and unzip it.
Now, find the folder containing your Dark Souls executable file and copy the contents of your DSfix folder into it.
Once this is done, open the DSfix configuration settings file using a text editing program. Here you’ll be able to tweak the individual settings for DSfix.
Find the Unlock Framerate option and change it from a «0» to a «1» and change the Frame Rate Limiter from «60» to «30.»
Make sure both antialiasing and motion blur are disabled.
Now save and exit.
Upon restarting Dark Souls, I found that rather than pushing me all the way down to 15fps when the game sensed it couldn’t maintain a steady 30fps, the framerate only dipped down to 25fps occasionally before jumping back up to 30fps, which was the new limit I had set. The dip from 30fps to 25fps isn’t nearly as noticeable as a plummet all the way to 15fps, and I found the game to be absolutely playable with these new settings in effect.
Keep in mind, this is fast-paced action RPG in 1080p, and I’m running it on a Mac mini with Intel integrated graphics. That’s a hell of an achievement if I do say so myself.
Verdict
After an unusually intense install and testing process, I found a way to make it work, and I’m extremely happy with the results. Some diehard PC gamers (which I consider myself to be, as well) might roll their eyes at the middle-of-the-road framerate mark, but for those dedicated to the Mac, and who have never had a chance to play this fantastic game, it’s a perfectly adequate way to experience it.
Dead Cells is definitely less dark and grimy alternative, still, it remains one of the best Metroidvania games from recent years. In fact, the developer itself describes Dead Cells a “Souls-lite” action-adventure game. In any case, if you’re looking for a more colorful take on the Dark Souls formula, Dead Cells is for you.
Another pixelated action-adventure game, Hyper Light Drifter features excellent combat that combines melee and long-range combat. It is nowhere as punishing as Dark Souls, but the story and the way you explore the world can make any Dark Souls fan feel right at home.
Finally, Salt and Sanctuary is another indie with heavy Dark Souls-esque vibes.
