⚔️ Preview: Soulblight "Time To Don My +5 Armour of Sandcastle-Building" ⚔️ #IndieGame #GameDev

An intriguing game with distinctive visuals and depth but the clunky, simplistic combat and finicky menus could be an issue.

The story that drives Soulblight tells of a tree of life guarded by man, but increasingly buried away behind concrete and towers as time passes by, resulting in its wilting. 

Soon, a darkness ravages the land, leaving your character as the last hope to bring light to the waning lands .

Played from a top-down perspective, Soulblight is an action / adventure game that has a lot of things going on, perhaps to its detriment.  The game is a randomly generated affair which sees your character getting further and further into the game with each successive trip from a hub which contains merchants, trainers and an area to store your belongings. Whilst the items in the game, different armours, weapons etc. are quite varied and are numerous enough to be an RPG lovers’ catnip, the slightly cumbersome inventory system makes navigating said items a bit of a chore. 

I actually quite enjoy games where some time is spent looking at the numerical values of items, working out the best equipment for the scenario and immersing myself in the lore in general but the small print and fact that you have to hold triggers down to get through a scrolling menu takes the enjoyment out of it somewhat. 

Combat in the game initially appears to be multi-layered and complicated but quickly boils down to hitting an enemy and moving away, a quite one-dimensional affair. It’s also worth pointing out that aside from a basic tutorial, the game leaves you to your own devices and a few playthroughs are needed before the game clicks into place and becomes more flowing and naturalistic.

Summary

It’s a solid concept that has some very interesting ideas and impressive segments in-game but it feels torn between being a hack-n-slash game and an hips-deep RPG that, at the moment doesn’t quite get the balance 100% but it does appeal to the RPG lover in me. I’ll be keeping my peepers out for the full release.

Right, I’m off to don my +5 Armour of Sandcastle-building.