Soulmask | PC Early Access Review
I love open world crafting games. My love comes from The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, which is crazy since it is an open-world RPG. But years ago it came with an editor program, The Elder Scrolls: Construction Set. This program allowed you to go into game files and create just about anything from new races to entirely new buildings. It took time and effort to make new things, time and effort a young Jacob did NOT want to give, but it started something. Well, two things actually. Morrowind started my love for the freedom of open-world games and what you could do with them. The Elder Scrolls: Construction Set started my love for what games could be. If you thought it, it could be done. Jump ahead a few years, and games started allowing you to make your own structures in-game, and my excitement grew. But enough about me, you aren’t here for me; you are here for Soulmask!
The Actual Review
Developed by CampFire Studio and published by Qooland Games, Soulmask brings a unique experience to gaming with the idea of not having a main character. You have a starting character, and they have “plot armor” to save them from death so you can respawn and continue your adventure. Along the way, you come across other tribesmen and can knock them out, drag them home, and make them your friend in almost a Conan: Exiles way. From here you can give them tasks to do around the base such as farming, mining, and crafting. You can also outfit members of your tribe with weapons and armor to aid in battles if you bring them along.
Where it gets interesting is that all these tribesmen come with random skills and abilities that change how they function and what jobs they would be best fit to do. Your starting character is rather bland, and the collected tribesmen are usually better due to higher skill ceilings and abilities that help or hinder different aspects of play. Soulmask allows you to jump from member to member almost at will and change who you are playing as, making it seem as if you are playing the mask more than the person wearing it. This leads to advantages like I had mentioned earlier, but these extra members have permanent deaths, forcing you to choose a new member or retaking your starting character.
There are three levels of leveling; knowledge, personal, and skill. Personal and skill levels are pretty straightforward; you gain experience by using skills and doing things as a tribesman. Each tribesman has their own individual levels, skill levels, and skill level maxes. Dying as a tribesman ends up in the loss of the entire tribesman, but you can still go back and collect the items they had. The knowledge level is tribe-wide and not lost on death. It is the main level that determines the tribe’s strength. It also dictates what you and your tribe are capable of crafting. As you level your knowledge, you get points to unlock technologies like different building materials, crafting stations, and more from a tech tree.
The Story So Far
Soulmask starts by having you escape from your original tribe that is trying to sacrifice you in a ritual. You find a spooky mask, and the game begins. Not much of a plot, I know, but the game is more about building a tribe and exploring the vast landscape.
The world of Soulmask is broken up into different biomes. The weather, creatures, and items found differ from biome to biome. Some areas of the world are harder than others and require better equipment to go into. Your tribesmen can help in these areas as some of them are better suited to different areas, or you can use stronger tribesmen to fight off tougher enemies. The wildlife of these areas can be useful too, being used as farm animals or transportation if captured.
The world reminds me of ARK: Survival Evolved in the sense that there is a large technological mystery that looms over the land. As you explore new areas and delve into caves, you discover more about the area and how this lost technology can help you. Growing in strength will allow you to overcome greater challenges and unlock previously unknown crafting recipes. One such piece is a chamber that allows you to store the DNA of a tribesman, just in case something were to happen to them, letting you make a clone of them.
Alone But Not Alone
Like many games like this, it has online PVE and PVP aspects. Personally, I have never liked playing these types of games with randoms. If I put time and effort into something, I would really like to see whatever it was I did still standing when I get back on the game. I keep going back to the tribesmen, but the way the game uses them as not only upgrades for yourself, but also as helpers in and around the base makes the game feel like it’s not just you. Maybe not as impressive as walking through the woods with a T-rex and watching it murder just about everything that stands between you and your goal, but being allowed to bring up to three tribesmen with you while you explore does make me feel more secure. Yes, this means less work is being done at home, but finding new resources or beating that boss might be more important at the moment. This does mean that you will have to make four sets of everything to outfit them for success, but at this point you really shouldn’t be working that hard anyway.
Here, the feature to set them up to auto-craft things for you really shines. Once you have a need for something regularly, having a member of the tribe do it is a great boon to you, giving you time to oversee or actually do other work. Matching the tribesmen’s skills to the job you assign them to do is important, too. A higher skill level means less time to make better items. In addition to the crafting, you can set up simple tasks, such as moving items from one chest to another. Might not seem like a huge thing, but I find it useful to have a dump chest and then let my tribe come and sort the items I dropped off for me. Although, setting it up can be a headache, as you can only program them to move one type of item from one chest at a time. And if you decide to move, you have to redo the whole thing at the new base.
Unmasked
I’m not a huge fan of Early Access games. I’ve seen a lot of games that stay in Early Access and use it as an excuse to put out bad updates, constant buffs or nerfs, or just to release an unfinished product. Soulmask does seem to be one of the good ones, though. The people at CampFire Studio have released a roadmap showing the goals for the next 6 months or so, and with regularly scheduled updates and fixes, I believe they are headed in the right direction.
As of right now I have around 165 hours in the game. Some of that is watching other people work or testing out things with the tribesmen, but I am also far from being done. With two areas left to explore and four bosses left to beat, I did hit a point of stagnation when it comes to leveling up the knowledge side of it. There are in-game options that let you tweak how much experience you get from actions, so you can make it easier or harder on yourself. If these kinds of games are in your wheelhouse, I highly recommend you try it out.
To hear me talk more about Soulmask, be sure to listen to the June 25th, 2024 episode of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 2:05:21 time stamp.
This review is based on a PC Early Access copy of Soulmask provided by Renaissance PR for coverage purposes. As of this writing, the game is exclusive to that platform.
