Soulstone Survivors

This game is good. It's really good actually. It would be perfect if it had online coop, alas the game is singleplayer only, so please do keep that in mind. I will hereby recommend this game to you, and apologize for the incoherent mess that is the rest of this review. I tried to explain some aspects of the game, and I probably failed pretty bad at relating why the game is good, so.… uhh.… make sure to get a second opinion or something. This game is roguelite which in this specific instance means for the first few hours of playing you keep unlocking entirely new skilltrees. There are several interlinked progression systems inside and outside runs. Runs can be completed or turned looped in several different ways. There are multiple gamemodes. This game is dense with roguelite mechanics like few other games. The game is fun without grinding however, and while the higher difficulties of the later gamemodes do get kinda difficult without having at least [i]some[/i] unlocks, the game still offers a lot without having to do that. All of the characters, as well as their weapons, are horizontal progression, and this is where this game's replay value comes from. The fun part isn't doing the same run with the same character over and over, although you can do that if you really want to, and you can still mess around with modifiers to make the setting different, and your rolls are going to be different too. The fun part is running the same map with the 4th weapon on your 13th character, and most of it feels fresh simply because the weapon and character determine how the entire run feels; plus you can still go for different builds, so there is a lot of replay value, but it's never just a "boring grind", but a new run every single time. Now let's talk about the gameplay to give you an idea of whether you'd like this game or not. The controls consist of walking, looking, and dodging. Walking around in isometric should be self explanatory, looking around basically just determines which direction you look at on the 2D plane, and dodging will dodge in that direction. Your skills will auto-cast based on their cooldown, and if the skill is targeted it will aim where you look at the time. All you do is run around while avoiding the enemy attacks, trying to hit them with your attacks until they die and drop some xp nuggets. As soon as you have enough xp nuggets you level up and get to choose one new skill or upgrade (skills are like every 3 levels or so, I don't remember). So you slowly fill your six (or so) skill slots with different skills which will automatically cast, and you buff those skills with the upgrades you get. Upgrades are sometimes skill-specific ("skill X deal +20% damage"), and sometimes tag-based ("skills of type Magical have 20% less cooldown"). This means you can make a build based on a wide variety of criteria. If you aim for upgrades which buff physical attacks you can choose between poison or slash attacks, summons or projectiles, etc. and they still count as physical. Thus you have a lot of variety and aren't locked into always choosing the same skills for synergies. Every character has a subset of all skills available, some of them unique to them, others shared with other characters. There are also several other gamemodes with minor twists to this general concept like having to choose new skills several times during the run and not being able to choose the same skill twice. Keep in mind that with all the progression mechanics there is a certain learning curve to the game, so your first 10 minutes of gameplay are probably not representative of the entire gameplay.