This game once popped up through a daily deal on Steam’s front page, maybe you saw it too. Seeing as the game didn’t have many reviews, it seemed pretty obscure… and maybe underrated? Let’s find out.
The gameplay is pretty straightforward – you run for a while, and various obstacles and enemies pop up as you’re running, you can swing your scythe to destroy obstacles or hurt enemies, and use a gun to one-shot enemies, though ammo is limited. It does regenerate after a while and also refills when you kill an enemy with a scythe. The goal is to get 100% progression in any given level to proceed to a boss fight. You passively get progress, but you get more of it by breaking obstacles and killing enemies. The gameplay also speeds up a bit the further you progress, making it slightly harder.
Occasionally, you can find pies, which give a buff depending on flavor, like how a strawberry pie gives health regeneration, acting as temporary power-ups. There are also buffs that are more permanent, lasting for the duration of the story mode or endless mode. These are various blessings that give you boosts, like making bullets pierce obstacles, or healing when killing an enemy with a scythe attack. After beating a boss/endless section, one such blessing can be picked up, or missed out on. In story mode, after beating a boss, you’re given an option to go one of the two paths. It’s typically between a shrine or a cursed shrine. There are curses, which give you a boost and a detriment at the same time and you have to sacrifice a little bit of health to get one. Lastly, there are shops, you can use currency to restore ammo, health, get a pie or buy a blessing. Or you can ignore these and proceed to the next level.
[b]Soulslinger[/b] does not explicitly advertise itself as a “rougelike”, itch.io page for this game does say it has “rougelike” elements, and the developer doesn’t consider it a rougelike either, in his own words, it’s a “rougelike-like”. If I were to criticize it as rougelike however, I would bring up a couple of points:
1) The variety and replay value are lacking. If you were expecting a rougelike with lots of things, something like [b]Enter the Gungeon[/b], you’ll be disappointed. There are only a handful of blessings, 6 curses, 5 levels, all the bosses are the same each run. If you have beaten the game once, you’ve seen pretty much everything there is, which is a shame.
2) Not much in terms of tracking progress and improving upon on subsequent playthroughs. As an example, I have [b]Roboquest[/b]. You gain wrenches after each run to unlock new perks, and you can find many secrets and keys to new areas, and unlock new classes and so on. Every run should be a contributing factor, which I think is the point of any good rougelike. The problem is that there’s not much to contribute TO. A few soulblasters, which alter shooting mechanics, a blessing card from a witch and hats, because why not. That’s pretty much it. After you get all that, it’s playing for the sake of playing.
About that “challenge” part. It’s very easy to trivialize the game by stacking blessings, which means choosing between a curse and a blessing is a choice without a choice. The intent behind curses that the developer gives is that they are supposed to be more powerful than blessings, but have a tradeoff. In my opinion, this doesn’t work – there are only two curses that I think are DECENT, but blessings are so much better in comparison – almost no downsides and they are free. The only reason you would want to pick a curse is for a self-imposed challenge or for an achievement. For the record, I mostly played on normal difficulty with permadeath, but I did play hard difficulty four times, one for an achievement and the rest for hat money and fun. Enemies take more hits to down, and that’s all I noticed in terms of changes, blessing stacking still applies. Maybe have the player donate for blessings? That way it would be similar to curses, offering a trade, and it would be slightly more balanced that way. Or you know, make curses more appealing. This idea is free of charge.
The bosses are also pretty basic, they don’t have much in terms of interesting and challenging patterns to learn, and die pretty easily if you shoot them a bunch of times. The final boss is especially underwhelming in that regard.
Obviously, I can’t speak for everyone. I found the game to be moderately difficult, not too hard but not a piewalk either, but someone with lower skill may find it challenging, as advertised. The game even has a checkpoint setting instead of permadeath and easy difficulty, ensuring that anyone can play it. I think this game is a perfect pick and play sort. If you want to play something quick, [b]Soulslinger[/b] is a good choice, and the endless mode is there if you want to brag about how long you can endure it and how high you can get your score. There’s also achievements to get, boosting play value and challenge. For how cheap the game is, I definitely got my money’s worth (I got it on sale…).
The visuals are pleasing, but the music is unremarkable. I straight up disabled it after a couple of rounds and started blaring music from other games. There’s also no story or lore, none that are in the game. Steam’s description is basically all there is. Sorry for the five of you who care about lore. Wouldn’t it have been cool if there were log entries, fleshing out the world, enemies and characters and you had to spend money to unlock them/found them randomly? More replay value, and people who are into that sorta thing would be satisfied. This idea is free of charge.
To make a more definitive review, I went an extra mile and played an older version of the game, available under betas, version 1.1. More developers should give you an option to play older builds for historic purposes. I can definitely see why the game wasn’t initially very well received. The game played at the same speed, making the game feel monotonous, increasing the speed slightly as you progress is a good change. There were also a handful of bugs, likes bosses not freezing when pausing the game (which could result in unfair damage) and endless mode was broken. Less content, no new guns, no witch card shop. Which is to say, the original was very mid, so the latest update is a bit of a redemption. On the other hand, ammo didn’t recharge passively in the original. This meant that it was a more valuable resource that you had to work for and shooting was a risk vs. reward opportunity. Regenerating ammo also devalues ammo purchase in the shop. Why spend a few coins restocking ammo when you can just regenerate it in the level for free?
I also watched the behind the scenes. It was insightful, and also revealed a some neat details. [b]Soulslinger[/b] is a successor to [b]Soulful[/b], essentially a prototype of sorts, made for game jam on itch dot io. I played it too! I do like the idea of soulless enemies damaging you, discouraging reckless scything. Damaging on breaking obstacles, not so much. I think taking good ideas from these old versions (soulless, no ammo regeneration) could make the game even more interesting. Maybe even implement a hardcore difficulty with no ammo regeneration and no blessings for the ultimate test. This idea is free of charge.
I know this is not the most inspiring review of the game, but I am leaning towards recommending it than not. I had a decent time with it. It kind of fails at being a good rougelike, but it does succeed at being a unique autorunner, I mean have you seen an autorunner that has roguelike elements in this manner? It may not be “challenging” as advertised, but if you look at it the other way, it’s chill enough, and that’s not to say it doesn’t have challenge at all, and there is a little bit of replay value. So, yeah, [b]Soulslinger[/b] is a fine game. It’s also really cheap, especially on sale, so you aren’t losing much by checking it out.
