When Elden Ring first released at the beginning of 2022, many folks swore up and down that it was the hardest game ever, though others claimed that it was more approachable than prior From Software titles, since players could continue to explore the game and grow strong elsewhere if they ever hit a wall. In defense of the former, it does feature some of the tougher boss fights I’ve ever encountered. On the other hand, I’ve always felt like Elden Ring was a pretty malleable experience, and that it provided a lot of tools to allow you to power through the game and ultimately come out the other side. To that end, I’ve maintained that this game isn’t that selective about who can enjoy it, and the years since have often proven me right.
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You see, plenty of people who play FromSoftware’s famously difficult games love to make things even harder for themselves. Soulslike players froth at the mouth for a good challenge run, and that’s why you’ll often see blindfolded showcases or hitless boss gauntlets at events like Summer Games Done Quick. With Elden Ring’s immense popularity, that scene kind of exploded and moved beyond straightforward challenges like level-1 runs, where the player isn’t allowed to level up for the entirety of the game. Instead, these challenges got exponentially weirder.
I’m talking about completely alternative ways of playing Elden Ring. Instead of playing the game with a controller or mouse and keyboard, some have taken to modding the game to support input from musical instruments. Others have used dance pads, and some have even used their brain to just look at the game and communicate inputs via brain waves. The Elden Ring community has proven how consistently inventive it is, and has managed to rise to utterly ridiculous challenges in bizarre and even byzantine ways, so I thought it might be fun to rattle off some of the most impressive methods players have used to beat Elden Ring bosses over the years.
Dance pad
Arguably the most popular of the alternatives, dance pads have been a staple of Soulslike challenge runs for a long while, but they’ve never been bigger. That’s largely due to MissMikkaa, a streamer who’s taken it upon herself to try and beat Elden Ring via too many alternate methods. Her most famous runs have been ones where she’s aided (or hampered, depending on how you see it) by a dance pad. In the years since the release of Elden Ring, her runs have only grown increasingly more unhinged. At one point, she even took on Elden Ring’s hardest boss fight twice simultaneously, controlling one character with her dance pad and another with a standard PS5 controller. I could hardly beat Malenia once on a controller, and Kai Cenat spent more than 24 hours trying to defeat her without summons, but sure, show off.
Donkey Kong bongos
Little known fact: the Donkey Konga rhythm series are some of the finest games of our lifetimes. I hold this to be true, even though I’ve never played them. Why then, would I make such an assertive statement? Because they gave us the best controllers ever: the Donkey Kong bongos.
I love a good rhythm game, and playing them inspired me to pick up the guitar at an early age, but Rock Band’s plastic drums don’t have shit on the DK Bongos. These utterly ridiculous controllers have been around for damn near 20 years at this point, and in that time, they’ve become a beloved bit of memorabilia and another popular alternative for challenge runs. If you don’t believe me, check out the bongos’ Wikipedia page, or take a look at this video.
If you’re going to make a hard game even more difficult for yourself, you may as well have some fun and look ridiculous while you’re at it, and nothing captures that quite like wailing on a bongo to do a jumping heavy attack, y’know?
An actual musical instrument
Now if you’re a pretty well-rounded person, you may have picked up an actual instrument at some point in your life, rather than some plastic bongos. If that’s the case, congratulations, you’re skilled in ways that some people never get around to. Now, just imagine if you could harness that ability and channel it back into games. That’s what some people have managed over the years as they turned their favorite instruments into controllers and triumphed over Elden Ring’s numerous challenges.
That’s what Anna Ellsworth did a few years ago when she beat Margit the Fell Omen by plucking the strings of her harp. It’s also what CZR did when he beat the same boss with a modded drum set. Or what Omunchkin pulled off by beating the game with a piano. And it’s what Dr. Doot accomplished with an electric saxophone! Elden Ring has a long legacy of talented musicians who’ve managed to trounce the game, and you could be the next one.
“Mind control”
We’ve featured the streamer Perrikaryal on the site before, but she’s worth mentioning this many times because her setup is still astonishing. Another streamer who relishes unorthodox challenge runs, Perri most recently beat a number of Shadow of the Erdtree’s bosses with her mind. Utilizing an electroencephalogram that basically reads her brain activity, as well as some eye-tracking technology, she has been able to decimate Elden Ring’s gallery of godly rogues with little more than her thoughts and the blink of an eye. Talk about putting those bosses in their place.
Morse code
Though I’d heard of most of the other challenge runs featured here, this is the most surprising one I hadn’t heard about until I started doing research for this piece. The Spanish streamer Silithur managed to beat Elden Ring a few months ago with Morse code! That’s right, a single button and way too many dashes and dots to count, but the guy fucking did it. He even snuck in a dunk on Elon Musk in the process. How do you tap out, “Holy shit, you’re a legend” in Morse?
A fish
I’m not sure what I could write that properly captures what a feat this is. This goldfish is just built different. Better than most of us, even. We could all stand to learn a thing or two from them.
Full-body motion controller
Sometimes you play a game so good you just want to live in it, perils and all. Well that’s what the streamer Luality kind of accomplished by turning her whole body into her Elden Ring controller. With the help of some motion controls, the streamer turned Elden Ring into a full-body experience. If she wanted to dodge, she would bob in that direction and if she wanted to attack she would make a swiping motion with her hand, as if she was actually armed. She even bound the healing flask to her making a drinking motion with one of her hands. The results are as chaotic, frustrating, and funny as you might expect.
Ring Fit Wheel (and all the other wild ways this guy modded the game)
While doing some research for this list, I came across one YouTube channel that has, over the years, put a lot of effort into playing Elden Ring with increasingly bizarre controllers. Super Louis 64’s whole thing is actually that he seems to love gimmicky controls and makes a bunch of unique ones from scratch. Boy, has he found a lot of different ways in which to play Elden Ring, folks.
I am most familiar with his Ring Fit Adventure set up, where he uses that game’s unique wheel-like controller to exercise while also dodge-rolling and plugging away at bosses in Elden Ring. His contraptions don’t end there, though. Just a month ago, the guy figured out how to make a fully functional bow and arrow controller from a kids’ toy. Before that, he literally built a greatsword from Elden Ring and turned it into a controller. He’s also famously played the game with a controller fashioned from bananas. I don’t understand how or why he does these things, but the point is that there’s someone out there doing it, and that’s pretty neat.
A mouth controller
While most of these entries are cool optional challenge runs that folks have opted into, my favorite is this one from a disabled player who can’t use standard controllers. A tetraplegic player—meaning they’re paralyzed from the neck down— shared a video of themselves overcoming Shadow of the Erdtree’s motherfucker of a final boss with a mouth controller. I don’t know about you, but it’s maybe one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen.
I’ve yet to get to the end of the expansion, but I’m sure that fight’s going to take me hundreds of tries to beat unless I use a very busted build. Some of the most seasoned Elden Ring players are fully abled and struggle against it. It literally either takes grit, complete mastery of the game, or an intense exploitation to do this fight with both hands, but here’s someone who can clear it without the use of any. That’s a goddamn hero right there.
