A Twitch streamer is trying to beat Elden Ring with just their drawing tablet

In typically British, self-deprecating fashion, I’m happy to admit I’m not very good at Soulslike games, the massively successful Elden Ring included. That’s why I raised an intrigued eyebrow while sipping my seventeenth cup of tea today, after I saw Twitch streamer Luality playing FromSoftware’s latest with just a drawing tablet. Taking on the challenge with admirable confidence, Luality used a virtual keyboard on the tablet’s left side for movement, and bound strokes of the stylus to attack its enormous monsters.

Spotted by Twitter user Jake Lucky, Luality has configured her tablet in such a way that drawing a line straight up lets her slice her sword, while a line down morphs into a backward dodge roll. Writing C, meanwhile, calls magic horse Torrent, and a triangle lets her jump. Luality initially thought it wasn’t possible to double-jump, because drawing triangles takes too long, but managed it with a few quick strokes of the stylus. You can see Luality taking on the Red Wolf of Radagon with the tablet controller here – I won’t spoil whether or not the streamer felled it.

Twitch streamer @luality is building something I've never seen a streamer do before. Trying to master Elden Ring with a drawing pad... keybinding her drawings to certain moves in game pic.twitter.com/Xp9VcjpOd9

— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) October 20, 2022

This isn’t the first time Luality’s taken on the fantasy action RPGs of FromSoft with an unusual choice of controller. Head over to Luality’s Twitch channel and you’ll see plenty of videos of the streamer hopping up and down on a dance mat or strumming a Guitar Hero controller to play Bloodborne, Demon’s Souls, and Dark Souls. Luality’s also branched out beyond Soulslikes, hopping into Guild Wars 2 for another dance mat run. You can watch Luality’s entire drawing tablet run of Elden Ring on Twitch here, or watch the embedded video above.

FromSoftware’s open-world soulslike is renowned for being a tricky beast to master, with creator Hidetaka Miyazaki even admitting he’s not that skilled and sort-of-apologising to players who have a hard time with his games. Others are stone-cold professionals, managing to beat Elden Ring in under 30 minutes within weeks of the game’s release earlier this year. I’ve, erm, not finished it yet.

Elden Ring is available from Steam and Bandai Namco for £50/$60/€60. If you’re struggling to finish the game then check out Ollie’s guide to Elden Ring boss locations.