Wow, this Minecraft mod turns the game into a turn-based RPG in the style of Deltarune.

And this isn't one of those AI-generated mods that just mashes two games together and calls it a day.

Oh, this Minecraft mod turns the game into a Deltaron-style turn-based RPG

And this isn't one of those AI-generated mods that just mash up two games and call it a day.

Minecraft's combat has always been fairly repetitive and, frankly, a bit boring. While Mojang has introduced a few new weapons in recent years, war freaks have had to turn to mods to really spice things up. I've tried a lot of combat-focused mods, but I don't think I've ever found a Minecraft combat system as good as Soulbound's, which remakes the game into a turn-based RPG inspired by Undertale and Deltarune.

While modder Pixelcite released Soulbound about seven months ago, it really took off after releasing its massive 2.0 update this week. Soulbound has now been downloaded 140,000 times on the Minecraft modding platform Modrinth.

I played Soulbound for a few minutes, and it's pretty neat. This mod wears its Deltarune and Undertale influences on its sleeve and can also be tweaked to look like Earthbound, but it also doesn't throw these games into Minecraft for nothing. When creating my character, I had to assign stats, choose buffs, and choose between several different fighting styles. When I spawned in the world, it just looked like Minecraft but there were a few human enemies throughout. When I went into battle one, I ran into the basic bullet-hell attack patterns with Deltarune's combat system, and everything was great.

Soulbound also allows you to create Dark Worlds, which are basically alternate dimensions in Deltarune. They appear in Minecraft as procedural worlds with different themes that you can actually customize yourself. Here's a wool themed dark world I made by stabbing into the floor of my makeshift hut:

Judging by the messages posted by moderators on Soulbound's Discord server, it's easy to assume that a mod of this scale would be made with the help of generative AI, but Soulbound apparently wasn't. Modrinth, the uploading platform, also requires users to disclose their use of artificial intelligence. (I contacted the original developer to confirm but did not hear back.)

Soulbound's runaway success came hot on the heels of that terrible generative AI modding process, where everyone spent a week making coded mods that dropped Minecraft into Elden Ring and Skyrim. After reporting on that whole shebang (and having to play an incredibly boring crossover mod where Minecraft blocks barely worked), it's really refreshing to do a mod that combines the two games in such a thoughtful way.

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