Gameplay: The action roguelite mechanics kept me engaged to a certain extent. Is more or less the same exact thing as brotato or vampire survivors except its 3D visuals, unlocking spells, crafting weapons and skills, and experimenting with multiple characters is the base level for these types of games. But here’s the catch: it’s a bit too straightforward, this game doesn't really do anything new in the genre so its not my favorite. The challenge lacks the fun of a real bullet hell, and doesn't stand out far enough to hang with the great

Graphics/Visuals: The minimalist aesthetic serves the game well enough, its not amazing and even seems a bit lazy in some models. Its a bit tougher to see what's going on compared to others in the genre, or bullet hells in general.

Story/Narrative: Gonna be honest, didn't care to pay attention here. Not sure if there even is any.

Audio/Sound: The audio serves its purpose, nothing stands out as bad. And I remember a few songs were nice to listen to as well.

Replayability: Basically the only reason to play Soulstone Survivors. There is gamebreaking synergies that are fun to be discovered, and there is a long skill tree to unlock along with tons of new characters and more to unlock. But the grind for power can feel monotonous at times. More variety in enemies and environments would help the replay value.

Difficulty: I played through the base game with no added curses and didn't really lose at all. I failed my first run because I didn't know I could dash, but every subsequent run was completed first try. Trying out some curse runs after I finished everything didn't really add much either. Enemies are far too easy to avoid leading to runs with 0 damage while also being overpowered. This game isn't difficult at all and any build can get you through the base game. Maybe it picks up in difficulty later but I didnt care enough to get there.

Innovation: Not groundbreaking, I've played a lot of games like this one. the fusion of roguelite elements and spellcasting is interesting, and the skill tree and weapon crafting system is new. Aside from that this is a bog standard Survivors game. I wanted more from the bosses or maybe even a bit more personal input aside from auto targeting.

Content/Extras: Beyond the basic gameplay, the game surprises with some unlockable characters (most of them dont change much) and a lot to grind for and new difficulty modes afterwards by adding curses. The roadmap promises more though at least.

Overall Enjoyment: I enjoyed this game for about 20 minutes til I realized the grind I'd have to do to unlock everything, but I felt like I at least needed to complete every level.

Similar Games: For other survivor games I enjoyed more than this, play Vampire Survivors, and Brotato.

Soulstone Survivors é o primeiro título da Game Smithing Limited, contando com um game design bem trabalhado, e parece promissor contando que o jogo se encontra em acesso antecipado.

A obra propõe um Bullet Rain Roguelike, tendo como qualquer Bullet Rain a ideia de run’s que o jogador realizará para atingir um objetivo específico, no caso deste o objetivo é derrotar 5 senhores do vazio e conseguir as suas Pedras da Almas(Soulstone). O elemento roguelike fica a cargo da morte representar o fim da run, mas há vários elementos que levam um jogo para um estilo mais roguelite até, pois cada uma das diferentes pedras das almas que o jogador consegue servem para desbloquear diferentes recursos que permanecerão após a morte.

O objetivo do jogo é conquistar todas as 5 fases disponíveis, e avançar em cada uma delas até o rank VII com todas as maldições possíveis ativas(cada uma dessas dificultando mais e mais a jornada). Para conquistar essas fases é preciso avançar no jogo nas diferentes propriedades que esse oferece, no early-mid game o objetivo é forjar as armas dos sobreviventes e upar as habilidades passivas disponíveis no menu, com essas habilidades as funções básicas são aprimoradas, como: maior área de coleta, aumento de xp, mais dano, tudo que é necessário em um bullet rain. Pensando no end game a progressão passa para a realização das conquistas a fim de desbloquear as runas e os espaços das runas, essas se apresentam como um novo elemento que influencia fortemente no desempenho em cada run, além disso é necessário também upar os personagens pelo menos até o nível 50 para desbloquear todas as habilidades características.

O jogo conta com 14 sobreviventes no total, cada um deles possuindo uma temática única e cada um contando com pelo menos 3 skills características que precisam ser desbloqueadas upando esses personagens. Essas skills só podem ser utilizadas com o sobrevivente em questão, elas não estão disponíveis na lista de skills comuns das runs. Isso acaba por gerar certo personalismo em cada personagem, fazendo o jogador experimentar cada um desses e se dedicar a evoluí-los, funciona muito bem como um elemento de engajamento.

Cada personagem pode ter somente 6 skills ativas em cada run, mas não há um temor de não poder criar uma build perfeita, pois mesmo que o jogador já tenha 6 skills, cada vez que ele upar de nível faz com que seja possível ele escolher novas skills e substituir as antigas caso ele deseje. As skills não tem limite de nível, e apesar das ativas terem limite em relação a quantidade isso não acontece com as passivas, é possível ter tantas passivas quanto for possível ter níveis, isso traz benefícios quanto malefícios, o benefício é que o senso de progressão no jogo fica incrível, mesmo com as 6 skills o jogador continua pegando modificadores para melhorá-las e pegando também cada vez mais passivas para aumentar os efeitos globais: quantidade de xp adquirida, velocidade de movimento, dano crítico, etc, isso vai se tornando um bola de neve e caso o jogador tente continuar na sua run para ver o quão longe ele pode chegar a sensação de poder criada é avassaladora, porém, como lado negativo ocorrem alguns problemas de desempenhos, pois com uma run de 40 minutos o jogador provavelmente estará no nível 250, com isso será tantas passivas de alcance das skills, lançamento múltiplos e tempo de recarga e terá tanto efeito na tela simultaneamente que fica impossível enxergar os ataques inimigos, claro que pode-se desativar os efeitos especiais, mas ainda assim o jogo continua bem travado, o personagem overpower causa um grande problema de desempenho na obra.

A história do jogo é inexistente o máximo que pode-se entender é pelo próprio nome do jogo junto com os itens disponíveis, tem-se a ideia de sobreviventes que lutam contra os senhores do vazio para adquirir as pedras da alma. Nada de relevante. A obra se expressa apenas através de sua jogabilidade.

Esteticamente a obra conta um cartoon bonito e leve, que não tenta detalhar o cenário a níveis exagerados, apenas com o ideal para passar uma ideia geral. Os personagens são um pouco destoantes com seus modelos geométricos e sempre encapuzados, não possuindo rosto à mostra.

Concluindo, Soulstone Survivors conta com diversos elementos de progressão, tanto para as primeiras horas de jogo quanto para jogadores que já jogaram suas 30 horas. O game design pensado pela Game Smithing Limited consegue engajar o jogador de forma impressionante. Considerando que a obra está somente no acesso antecipado, fico empolgado com o que o Game Smithing Limited entregará no final.

This is a very solid Vampire Survivors type game!.

For me I primarily love 2 things about this game.

- Instead of trying to survive for as long as you can or hit the 30 min mark in Soulstone Survivors you are actually trying to beat levels as fast as you possible can which I really like.

- The movement is very fun and can become very fast by last game with extra dashes you can gain and more movement speed you can get.

While very fun I did start to feel worn out by the gameplay loop after about 10 hours or so for some odd reason. I might go back and play more but I think the issue is that the weapon variety and combos isn't as much and crazy as it is in Vampire Survivors which is something I love about that game. Still past that this game is getting updated so who knows what the future holds for the game as more weapons and skills get added !

I think it might be interesting to compare and contrast this game, with both 20 Minutes Til Dawn and Vampire Survivors but I don't want to get too deep in the weeds so I'll generally talk about the ways this game is distinct then highlight some similarities. I also want to note though that I find this game far less egregious than VSurv on the whole, and that when I talk about all three I'm strictly talking about them as games and not secretly saying 'one is actually a slot casino' (in fact not needing to do so was the whole point of my write up there as marred as that thesis statement might have been) or w/ever so relax.

In contrast to those games. This one goes for a more 3D fixed arena combat approach swapping out the top down angle for instead a diagonal aerial view, such that you might be familiar with from Diablo or Torchlight. At first this may seem indistinguishable and unimportant, but its actually enormously so in terms of keeping a dynamic visual busyness. What I mean by this is that all three of these games bring catharsis to the player by melting all the enemies on the screen into collectable gems as much as possible, with 20 minutes electing more towards the feeling of being cramped and Soulstone here being as many unique enemy attack patterns and 6 auto attacks from the player character, meaning the screen is absolutely melted over with visual eye candy, my 3rd and final run I had built bomb skills and the result was that there were so many explosion effects on the screen I was going crosseyed. However it felt very coherent and dynamic due to this camera adjustment and 3D effect. To help make things intelligible the enemy attacks show the hit box which you can avoid with a dash. The results are an effective display of visual noise that you can easily sift through while still feeling fun and chaotic. The top down angle by design limits to a degree the chaos of the eye candy because with the character centered on the screen it makes clear how homogenous the movement and evasion is. One of the issues I have with VSurv, is honestly just how boring and static the movement of the character in particular is, I feel like hot molasses just trudging along and melting everything in my path, and the centering only makes the evasion in 20 Minutes feel about as well as it can. This is by far the nicest thing I have to say about Soulstone Survivors and why I would say it's probably an amusing enough toy for a few runs. Reminds me of when I was a kid an fantasized all my toys violently crowding and attacking each other in huge duels to the death, this is just a slightly automated adult satisfaction of that same pleasure.

However this is unfortunately not enough to overcome some of the game design issues, the enemies having a large variation in their attacks along with you having to aim your auto attack and dodge I think leads it above the mere base point of it being a simple skinnerbox. But the problem is that the way level ups choices happen (which are constant, I felt like I was leveling up every 30 seconds) make the decisions obvious. So similar to VSurv you choose between three options, with the attack variations of what skills you pick feeling really unique and enjoyable. With a row of 6 actives and then a bunch of passives, the issue is that the way they dole these to you is through random chance rarity modifiers, but each 'option' you pick from is induvidually randomized and there's a clear indication that epic options are almost always better than rares, which are almost always better than commons, etc. So outside of the occasional health buff, the decisions pretty much choose themselves, you almost always pick up the highest rarity one, you can typically do this without even worrying or considering it much, which means those constant level ups become a quick visual nuisance you scroll past. There are other choices that are similarly automatic, for example the experience upgrade is an auto pick in this game and VSurv early on in a run because of the scaling. It by design means that you are basically trading (and barely) 1 early game level up for 3 late game ones, which with the damage modifiers not making the game difficult until then makes the choice a no brainer. Basically this issue would be solved if they got rid of the XP Modifier and either locked an entire option pool to 1 rarity or switched out the rarity system entirely. I would prefer the later because 20 Minutes and VSurv already recognized that building towards synergies is generally more satisfying than the variance of random basic power up pools. Now when you kill bosses in either of those games you do get a high varience quality reward, and I take issue with this as well, especially in VSurvivors case where the chest animation makes me downright impatient but at least within that matrix its a design decision that already makes sense.

The Experience scaling as a level up in particular is a particularly stupid design decision across all 3 of these games though. I understand on the surface this may seem anal retentive, but the issue is that whenever there's a degree of genuine difficulty in these games, the degree to which you win or lose a run is decided that much more by the level of variance of getting the XP upgrade. You naturally have an option that is far and away stronger than every other earlier in the game than later on. Whereas most of the rest of the pool settles in a place of equal strength and depends generally on how you build synergies. In theory the lack of explicit synergies in Soulstone would actually mean that there is even more nuance in your upgrade decisions as it would make playstyle and builds infinite, but this is once again simply squandered by not locking the rarity pools.

I think there's one point in particular though that really just confounds me and to a degree gets on my nerves, and thats the statistical advantage out of game upgrade skill tree. This is something I noticed in the Mirror in Hades to, heres my functional problem with it: Doesn't a 3% damage boost upgrade just make all your future runs 3% easier? Doesn't that mean, until Ascensions come into play, that the hardest run of the game is your first run? To illustrate why this confuses me so much lets genre hop ever so slightly to how most roguelites do it. In Isaac or Slay the Spire what you unlock from completing a run is new items added to the pool, this does not nessecarily make the game easier or harder. It might make the game ever so slightly easier in isaac if you get brimstone added to the pool, but you still have to actually find it. If Isaac had an upgrade tree that made your tears do 30% more damage, it would be indistinguishable from an easy mode. But once you level up these skill trees in Soulstone or Hades its not exactly you can undo that unless you play the game with a wiped save, whereas having an extra item in a pool in a rouguelite game just feels natural and fun. I think what's so confusing about this progression system to me at least is typically when I want to play a game I want more challenging or interesting things to happen over the course of runs. I don't want to make the game easier for myself.

Now you could argue that the prestiege mode in Soulstone Survivors balances this out, and you would be right, but think about that for a moment: I'm making the game slightly easier to make the game 'harder' to make it easier again. It would only be after getting to the highest prestiege and all the max out on the progression tree that I would stabalize to the 'real' difficulty, but then if I went back and decided to play a no presteige run to relax, that run would not just be easier than the presteige difficulty it would be naturally easier than your initial run of the game. Here, you would instead have to guesstimate the initial game difficulty, is it prestiege level 3, 5? This is confusing and why I think fixed easy and hard modes from the outsdet is completely ok! The Progression system becomes a sort of Negative Prestiege, which seems to nullify the whole point of having one.

If I was to speculate why these games in this genre seem to do this anyway is that, it just leads better for a ratrace and feeling of growth and attainment over the system, but unlike in just adding more skills to the pool, the addition is completely artificial. Progression systems make sense when you're playing Diablo or other dungeoneering RPGs as your character is supposed to get stronger in order to keep up with the strength of the enemies but thats 1 continuous run. In a game like this, its the equivalent of taking anabolic steroids over adding a new workout routine that focuses on your cores. Yes you are theoretically getting stronger and in a mercurial sense its earned to the degree that you used the steroids and its your life to do so, but in the long run its the illusion of satisfaction, decision making, and personal growth rather than actually doing so (tho I realize this is a very strained analogy when considering gender euphoria of doing so like with transmascs, I would attribute that to more of a continuous upgrade system of self growth like in the dungeeoneering example. Anyway hopefully you get what I mean.). Not to mention this isn't like the progression system to make certain sections of dark souls easier by going out of your way to finding humanities and using them sparingly. You get bonuses to these progressions by simply playing the game for long enough, that's it.

On that note, it's pretty much exactly for this reason I take issue with Hades game design as well. It's honestly one of the go to design decisions that can immediately turn me off to a game. Just leaving aside the issue of whether these systems are intended to needlessly compel you to play more, the appreciation for it by other players and yearning for it has always confused me. My assumption is they just don't really notice it, which is why I spent so much time putting precision on it here.

I don't think any of this stuff makes the game egregious or awful to the degree VSurv is, I can understand what people are saying when they like this game even though I think improving or erasing these issues would really add a lot to the play experience. But all these factors do take what could be a great and entertaining game and sort of squander it a bit. This is also what I was trying to get across with VSurv itself being particularly a game design issue, theres game design issues here to for sure and for me at least that's a far bigger point of contention than simple moral remarks on the game itself. You can say basically the same in terms of hating monetization models etc by scaling out the problems like this I think.

Still I agree with Detchibe in hoping other designers take note more of the strengths of this iteration on the automated twin stick shooter genre. A great version of this game is very much possible!!

Desde que perdi meu emprego e algumas coisas nao deram certo, venho jogando mais e me dedicando um pouco mais em zerar jogos, nao diria que esse seja um jogo de zerar, se levar em consideração 1º niveis de dificuldades 100% nas 5 fases, diria que é bem rapido ate, 26/04 e ainda estou jogando para tentar um 100% em todas as fases nos niveis maximos, nao é facíl, e tbm liberar os personagens, joguinho survivor simples porem bacana para passar um pouco do tempo, ou como no meu caso, sentar jogar e esquecer algumas coisas vida, esse é um feedback e tbm desabafo, para que futuramente possa reler e lembrar da situação qual passei que serviu de XP

Updated October 2023: Picked this game back up, and my criticisms from below are largely being addressed through patches. A lot of depth is being added by the way of "skill trees" for each survivor, and its been great.

Really good basis for a game in it's current state.

Dash mechanic keeps the combat/survival interactive and hands on. Decent bit of build/playstyle variety.

Feels a bit incomplete, and the number of different resources is a bit bloated and over the top.

Feels like this will be a great game as they add more and refine it further.

Given my stance on Vampire Survivors it might surprise folks to find out I actually rather enjoy Soulstone Survivors in its current iteration. I don't feel it necessary to go super deep into it so here are some jumbled thoughts as a comparison to VS:

The addition of attacks outside of bullets and contact damage is fantastic, especially with telegraphed AOEs. Coupled with your dodge there is an actual skill floor here, even if it can be reduced to 'don't stand in red'.

Skills are incredibly diverse and allow for a wide array of builds. That you can swap out your six active skills as desired lessens the possibility of thinking you made a poor choice. Having theoretically infinite passive skills also makes builds more flexible if needed.

Breaking those skills into sub-categories makes it easy to understand how they might interact cohesively. If I get a passive skill that increases the area or damage of my Slam skills, I'm more compelled to get more Slam skills which themselves might synthesise well through their Physical typing or Hemorrhage debuffs.

The focus on getting run times down, rather than just surviving for thirty minutes encourages more offensive-oriented play which is more engaging and wastes less time. With less focus on defence and more attention given to offence and dodging, skilful play is more important than turtling.

Curses (at least below 25) lead to a more dynamic game session that also lets you power up faster in a way that's very fun. Having multiple elites spawn at once makes them delicious XP sources. I've read that curses get out of control at the high end but I haven't yet encountered that.

Getting your run time down lets you continue the run in another level with far greater difficulty and rewards, but also a lowered enemy kill requirement for bosses. I can't say how much this is offset by the increased stats of enemies but it seems to get faster and faster.

The rune system, though laborious to fully unlock, allows you to mix and match different characters' skill sets and generally mix up your playstyle much more than VS ever did or does.

On the whole, Soulstone Survivors is pretty damn good (for a Survivors-like) thus far. I find it kind of similar to doing Nephalem Rifts in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, particularly as your build snowballs into absurdity. That it circumvents my two biggest gripes with Survivors-likes (time investment and lack of player agency) has me hopeful other developers chasing this trend follow in Soulstone Survivors' steps rather than Vampire Survivors'.