Welcome to the world of Soulblight, fight your way, room after room to become the most powerful tainted-one ever. Embrace your flaws to survive a journey through an unforgiving Sanctuary. Gluttony, Lust, Cannibalism – how far are you willing to go?
Soulblight is a dark, top-down rogue like luring you to cross the thin line between good and evil. Instead of XP grinding, it introduces a Tainting Mechanics. A way to really test your ethical views and moral standards. While travelling through the shattered reality of the Sanctuary, you will receive personality traits based on your choices. These will be the main source of your ‘strength’. Or should I say, demise? To harness them, you will have to act accordingly. Becoming an alcoholic means that you will be rewarded for getting drunk, but from that point being sober might prove to be unbearable.
Gameplay:
The gameplay concept of Soulblight is not that unique as they state. It follows a general approach, which won’t change for the rest of the game. Before entering each level of the Sanctuary you get to choose a Taint that represents a certain personality trait. That choice will shape your future experiences as each Taint unlocks a new way of gaining power (or make your run harder). It does add a certain amount of ‘choice’ to a run, since some traits demand special ways to tackle tasks. I’ll explain with some examples:
- Greed – The bigger fortune you acquire the stronger you are. Receive “Scrooge” penalty for overpaying.
- Hoarder – The more varied your belongings are the bigger your passive bonus is. Receive “Feeling of Lose” penalty after losing an item.
- Fierce – Receive “Rage” boost after being wounded. Receive permanent passive bonus for killing enemies during “Rage”.
- Craving – Receive “Sober” penalty if you don’t drink alcohol. Instead of “Inebriated” you receive more powerful “Drunk” boost.
As you go deeper into the Sanctuary you’ll be able to add more Taints to your character’s personality making the shifting levels of the dungeon itself a skill tree of a kind. I liked the idea of taints, deciding how to build up your character, since it’s one of the strong suits of Rogue Dungeon Runners. Isaac is a prime example of this. However with each new Taint you’re a step closer to the point of no return, since most taints don’t really welcome people trying the game for the first time.
The Idea Behind Soulblight
Of course I was interested in the story behind Soulblight, so I looked up MyNextGames and found a brief summary of why they developed Soulblight as it is:
We look back with nostalgia at our pen and paper RPG memories. Back then, gaining XP and levelling up was only part of the fun. The thing we were most excited about was actual role-playing. For a brief moment becoming a character with all their merits but also with all their flaws. Sometimes their shortcomings would stand in the way of solving a quest at hand making the game more difficult. But because of that the characters felt more alive and that’s why we wouldn’t have it any other way.
I agree with the vision, but I don’t agree with the way it turned out in Soulblight. If we take a look at Darkest Dungeon for example.. a game which also focusses on flaws, we can see that you can add ‘taints’ to a game and make it interesting, but not more.. random? I really missed a solid guideline in the game. Yes I know, it’s a randomly generated dungeon crawler – but at least give me some guidelines on how to approach the game. I can see why the game is popular, and why it works on a platform like Steam. The button mapping is very specific, and needs to be precise. The Nintendo Switch could work with this, but since we can’t change any of the button mapping, I really became annoyed with the fact I always was to late to block, or grapple etc.
Graphically the game looks good. There are some minor performance issues with the handheld mode of the Switch, but nothing too serious. The ‘cutscenes’ are nicely done with a cartoon-y artstyle I really digged. A shame they did not incorporate this into the whole game, would have given it a whole different level of awesome.
If you are looking for a nice dungeon crawling game, in which you make yourself feel bad? Soulblight is the game for you. Pour power out of the things you suck at, basically. But, don’t get it on Switch, try it on Steam or some other platform, since this port isn’t great.
