GAMING | ENTERTAINMENT | REVIEW
Colorful Action in This New Danmaku Rogue-lite “Soulstone Survivors”
Promising bullet hell rogue-lite from the indie game sector in Early Access.
Thanks to developer Game Smithing Limited for letting me test this game!
The original version of the review in German was first published on Gamecontrast:
Bullet hell — but YOU are the bullet hell!
This is more or less how the avid gamer can imagine the action rogue-lite Soulstone Survivors by Game Smithing Limited.
I became aware of the title after I played Vampire Survivors a few weeks ago, which was made by poncle. The title in today’s review plays very similarly.
Gameplay — Short and Spicy
The gameplay is very simple. We choose our class, we choose a map, and the party can begin. We start with our standard skill — with the appropriate rune allocation there are 2 skills — and the enemies slowly crawl out of their corners of the map and move toward the center.
The attacks happen automatically depending on the cooldown time. The pool of skills includes a wide range of different attacks.
- 🗡️ Melee attacks, which are mostly frontal with a swing.
- 🏹 Projectiles, to which we specify the direction with the help of the mouse pointer.
- ⭕ Area attacks, with a target, without a target, or simply head-on.
- ⚡ Chain attacks, which pass from one enemy to the next.
- 👾 Units that we summon and that do the work for us.
In addition to pure damage, we can design our build accordingly.
So we have both critical damage and Damage over Time (DoT) at our disposal. And DoT can also crit.
Furthermore, we have some status effects to choose from, which makes the gameplay even more interesting. And with appropriate talents, which you can acquire during a level-up, you can even trigger certain status effects and DoTs by using others.
The task now is to kill the approaching enemies, gain experience, and wait for the boss or bosses to get rid of them as well. Once the work of a map is done, victory awaits. ➡️ And if we were fast enough, the game even offers us the option for endless mode. 🔄
The gameplay is fun for a few hours, thanks to the action and the spicy RNG.
A Blacksmith Almost Out of Work
Soulstone Survivors is still in Early Access and although the rogue-lite plays very smoothly, the unfinished state is noticeable. It doesn’t take long before the skill tree is maxed out and there are no more weapons to craft.
👉 Both passive, permanent skills and weapons offer a way to spend earned currency and materials.
- In the skill tree, we can boost our damage as well as decrease incoming damage. Furthermore, it can be used to increase the EXP received, unlock rune slots, or acquire other QoL features.
And then there is the blacksmith.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much to offer at the moment.
In fact, the selection is very poor with only 6 forgeable weapons, because at this point there are already 14 of 21 planned characters to choose from. So we can’t even craft an alternative weapon for half of them.
However, the developers promise an arsenal of 105 weapons in total until the final release. If they stick to the plan, we can expect a lot more in the coming months.
When the Party Gets Started
The comic-style graphics in Soulstone Survivors strongly remind me of the ARPG Torchlight. However, what is nice to look at during the first few minutes in-game can soon turn into a colorful firework show when the action starts. 🎆✨
👉 Many players understandably criticize this, as they completely lose focus.
But before despair and frustration set in, it’s worth taking a look at the game settings. The developers have solved the problem extremely elegantly!
- On the one hand, it is worth considering deactivating the damage numbers. If the player is not testing or calculating anything at the moment, these will only be visually overwhelming.
- But the best part is the function that makes the effects transparent. And that smoothly! We don’t need to deactivate anything completely, but we can improve our vision considerably.
👉 I personally liked to play with 50% transparency and was able to recognize all danger zones.
(Un)Planned RNG
Before the end, I would like to take another look at the gameplay. Because the developers have managed to do one crucial thing really well: The compatibility between various active skills and passive skills.
We can pick up a total of 6 active skills.
These are mostly attacks, but there are also a few buffs and summoning spells waiting in the repertoire. And these active skills come with properties such as:
- ✨ magical
- 👊 physical
- 👥 shadow
- 📛 chaos
- ⭕ area
- 🏹 projectile
- ⏩ etc.
And then we encounter passive traits, which we are allowed to pick up indefinitely.
These can boost a specific skill, or they can boost → a whole set of skills.
For example, one of these passives might increase the damage to attacks that fire projectile. Now, if 4 of our 6 active skills are projectiles, such a passive will obviously be extremely effective.
To help us choose between the compatibility of different skills, a new active skill will show us how many traits it has in common with the ones we already have. 👉 And by the way, active skills can be exchanged if the bar is occupied, and we are not yet quite satisfied with the choice.
Early Access Risk?
As mentioned, Soulstone Survivors is still in Early Access. Currently, the action rogue-lite can be purchased for about 10 Euros. That is just about okay for the current state. In fact, I feel the content is still a bit sparse for this price.
However, the roadmap for this game is transparent and promises a lot for the future. Also, during the review period, I could see that the developers were very willing to talk to the community and were actively working on Soulstone Survivors.
What actually worried me a bit was the fact that another game has been announced by the same developer studio for 2023: Rogue Soulstone.
Something like that quickly makes me suspect that the current project might be shelved early on as the devs turn their attention to the “newer baby.” But when a player expressed the same concern on the discussion platform in Steam, one of the developers replied that the new game is not currently being worked on, but exclusively Soulstone Survivors.
We can only trust that this is hopefully true.
But so far, the devs seem very engaged with the current project. If in doubt, I can recommend waiting for a sale, then the game should definitely be worth it.
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