Before recommending anything, Daniel (@dungeondive) defines what he is actually chasing: exploration and discovery, interesting lore, itemisation deep enough to support builds, combat that is more than rolling dice, and above all a mood. The ten picks are then measured against that list rather than against Dark Souls’ surface.
Two are hard to find — Dark Light: Memento Mori, a Dark Souls/Diablo hybrid with one of the only genuine dodge-roll mechanisms in a board game, and Forgotten Depths, chosen for exploration driven by the shapes of rooms and corridors, plus an expansion that is simply a deck of bonfire conversations. The rest are gettable: The Restless for its 500-odd hand-drawn cards, Corrupted Crypts print-on-demand from The Game Crafter, and Kernathalis from Black Oath as the mega-dungeon pick.
Vermis is the outlier and arguably the closest match — a guidebook for a video game that does not exist, recommended as esoteric fiction or a solo oracle. Loom pulls the same metatextual trick but ships an actual game, with a VHS and vinyl soundtrack for a film that never was. Mork Borg earns its place on humour as much as grime, and Rune (with Reap) models bonfires, respawns and world-state clocks directly. Dungeons of Doria closes on pure loot — gear with stat requirements you level up to meet.
Which matters more in a Souls-like tabletop game — mechanically modelling the bonfire and respawn loop, or just nailing the mood?