Soulstone Survivors is a part of a new genre of games that has popped up in the past couple of years, a sort of reverse bullet hell game, where you are the source of the bullet hell and try to stay alive versus an ever increasing waves of enemies. You move around to stay away from the enemies and their abilities, picking up experience from slain foes to level up and improving your skills. This is the essence of this genre and has proved extremely addictive and fun.
There have been a few games in this genre and I do not know which is the first but Vampire Survivors is undoubtedly the most well known and one I've lost dozens of hours in.
When I started Soulstone Survivors the low poly aesthetic caught my eye first, instead of the pixel 2D graphics of Vampire Survivors, its 3D and I am loving it. The graphics are charming in their simplicity and fit very well.
With 14 Heroes to choose from and each Hero looking distinct, it is impressive work. Outside of the transition to 3D, Soulstone Survivors improves upon the formula by adding a skill tree, different weapons for the Heroes and a rune system to give you even more build options. The more you play the more you unlock, for example new biomes, Heroes and even new skills.
Each Hero has different stats, weapons and starting skill. Skills are divided into different skill pools, for example Blood, Fire, Slam, Arcane and so on. Each pool has a wide variety of different skills for either offense or defense. With up to 30 skill pools to choose from, over 150 skills and 14 Heroes, each Hero only having access to a handful of pools, it creates endless experimentation and testing that makes these type of games so engaging.
Another thing Soulstone Survivors has added to the gameplay formula is the simple addition of a dash move. It completely changes the gameplay from just avoiding enemies to actively dashing around enemies to avoid attacks and stabbing them in the back. Depending on your skill pool of course.
The only downside I've found so far is when you are around level 40+ it starts to get difficult to see the hazard zones from enemy attacks due to the size and quantity of attacks you've accrued at that level. Outside that, the game is extremely fun to play.
The game is not very demanding on the hardware side and seems very optimized. I did not notice any frame drops on my aged system, even when the action got heavy and the screen crowded the game was smooth.
I tried the game on the Steam Deck and it runs beautifully on the Deck but seems to run into somekind of memory leak after an hour or so of playing crashing the game to desktop.
I only experienced this on the Deck and not on the PC. Could be a Linux issue or something. I did not look into it too much as I was too busy playing
In conclusion this review sounds like an endorsement for Soulstone Survivors and really to hell with it. It is really good and fun to play. Soulstone keeps to the genre and improves upon it for the better. I highly recommend Soulstone Survivors to anyone that likes these types of games. I am going back to play it. Just 1 more run....
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