Bloodborne and Dark Souls messaging - in real life

Soapstone is a cool little app that mimics the messaging system found in Bloodborne, Dark Souls and Demon's Souls.

Bloodborne and Dark Souls fans will surely agree that the asynchronous multiplayer side of things, with players leaving anonymous tips, encouragement and jokes for each other, is one of the cooler aspects of the From Software formula.

Soapstone aims to duplicate that experience, but in the real world. Just fire up your phone's GPS and leave a message, or check and rate those left by others.

You can't just write whatever you like, but must use the same template and word list formula found in-game. The app has been in beta for a while, and although it's named for the Dark Souls system, it contains phrases and words from Demon's Souls and Bloodborne too.

Kotaku reports the cumbersomely communicative templates and vocabularly of the Souls games have been fleshed out with some modern words, allowing you to say "amazing beer in short try merchant", for example.

I guess in some ways it's similar to Yik Yak, in that you see what people around you are thinking, but the limited vocabulary and constrained syntax, along with the semi-permanence of messages tied to geolocation, give it a pretty different feel.

You can download the free app on both Android and iOS. I'm going out tonight and although I suppose there won't be many messages in my kind of out of the way city, I'll be taking Soapstone to scrawl a few of my own.

My only worry is: what if I fall for a troll message? "take a step forward." Nuh-uh, buddy; I've heard that before.