Soul Scathe

Initial review after playing for over an hour straight. The core of this game is here, functioning, and quite fun. Obviously as a solo developer it is a large task to create a game with excellent polish right out of the gate, so given that, I'd say this is a great start to this game. I'm a big fan of the dungeon / rogue like style game, and it is certainly something we've wanted in the VR community for a while now. A randomly generating dungeon with dangerous foes and cool bosses is the perfect game for VR. The introduction to the game is there, so far the spells are clean and work fairly well, the weapon collision system is very satisfying. Do I think the current state / polish of the game is worth 20 dollars? That may be a little bit high. 15 dollars would be more appropriate, but that is just an opinion and not meant to insult the worth this game has, as I am very very excited to see this game get bigger and more polished. All that being said, here are some things I hope the devel...

[h1]Experienced on the Oculus Quest 2[/h1] You can view my review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/NfyfoRpiE9E Soul Scathe takes obvious inspiration from Dark Souls. Especially starting on the second area of levels, you can see the level design & enemy design inspirations taken from Dark Souls and translated to VR. I am a big Dark Souls fan and would love to have told you that this is like VR Dark Souls. Unfortunately, there is no comparison. This game isn't anywhere near that quality. Combat ends up being very repetitive. The level design is bland. The combat systems are simply too simple. You can basically go either melee or magic based. You do runs to get gold, experience points, & dragon souls. With those currencies you can level up your attributes and get new weapons or spells. You can increase your strength, vitality, intelligence, & spirit. There is a nice variety of spells ranging from fire, ice, & electric, along with very powerful limited use spells that use dragon souls...

The development team seems quite small, but the game is very fun albeit with numerous bugs. The slow release cycle has lead to reviews from other players such as "Game is dead, and the dev won't work on it anymore, don't bother." The release of Chapter 2 a few days ago obviously negates that. However, go into this expecting bugs to not be fixed in a timely manner, or perhaps even never. I am looking forward to experiencing Ch 2 and will update my review once I have done so.

The combat feels great and the enemies are responsive and dynamic. It feels like being inside a game of Dungeons and Dragons. It’s easily a go-to game for a quick session of hack and slash with standard RPG elements that reward prolonged playing. I’m hoping the final version will have a large variety of enemies, which may be the case already but I’ve only come across knights, gollums, skeletons and a couple others so far. It might benefit from some cannon fodder types like in Serious Sam that can be dispatched with a single swipe but are a challenge in swarms. Overall it seems very promising and I look forward to the future additions.

The game is great on paper, however, in practice: The sense of scale is wildly off, hands are too small for my body, and my body is too small for the environment. Weapons have no heft or weight. "wiggle" combat reigns supreme here, making blocking/lowering enemy poise (and finishing blows) obsolete. Humanoid enemies get way too close to be able to block blows effectively. That was the bad. Now for the good. The atmosphere is on point, I felt genuine adrenaline at times. Sound design is excellent. Mimics are completely terrifying, its terrific. If you listen closely enough you can hear them breathe. With a bit of tweaking this could be an amazing title, but for now it will gather dust.

Totally recommended. This was my first VR purchase after getting a headset, and I'm loving it. Of course, being new to VR and being new to VR on Steam - there were a few things I hadn't quite sorted out - and the dev of this game helped me out a ton. Explained a few things about how VR runs on Steam, in addition to questions about gameplay and controllers in game. While I can hardly claim to have mastered this gamae/vr, I'm now having a lot of fun with it. Believe me when I say I will be watching for more!

I actually did not enjoy this game. The graphics are just OK and not that impressive in my opinion. The maps are randomly generated empty stone hallways with flickering textures and some strange checkered pattern dithering in certain areas on the floor. Doors do not actually open. They just trigger a loading screen. Your character has little baby monkey hands. Teleportation only works when you aim at just the right spot and also tends to cause you to turn side to side. When trying to grab items out of a chest, those items move away from you. Throwing fireballs is extremely inaccurate, awkward, and difficult to conjure. I was also constantly dropping my sword in this game and getting overwhelmed in certain places where more than one enemy was attacking me. The inventory system in front of you also constantly gets in the way and has a tendency to spin when you are trying to add something to it. There is no way to adjust the difficulty and there is also no way to save the game. When you a...

First impression after an hour in. I died. Often. Getting a feel for the combat takes a moment. I have most of the dungeon crawler VR games (and a number of zombie ones) and this one feels more like a classic dungeon crawl in all the good ways. Voice acting and graphics are sound enough. Some game stuttering, but not much. Sometimes a sword strike will not connect when it seemed obvious that it should. Blocking was a bit hit or miss. Good overall play and functioning. You will feel weak at the start and are a bit squishy, as befits your level 1 status. Lots to like in the game. EXCEPT THE GRIP FOR THE SWORD. So many games have you hold grip to keep things in your hand. This causes a habitual grip action when fighting. Guess what happens. Sword dropped. Dev, please give an option here. Swinging an empty hand is not an effective combat move. I can't count the number of times this happened within the first dungeon. It did contribute significantly to the number of death...

[h1]Watch my video here https://youtu.be/RUC5nAzck0g[/h1] [b]Played on the Rift S[/b] [b]Graphics[/b] is not as good as the early trailers lead us to believe, however, it's nothing new in the gaming industry to downgrade graphics later on. It still looks great. The monster looks good and so does the animations of them. [b]Audio[/b] is decent indeed. Spatial awareness is awesome. I found it just lacks ambient sound to add more immersion to the huge open hallways. The [b]Gameplay[/b] is great. You make your way roguelike through floors of a dungeon and gain XP, gold and souls. You can block with your sword. Buy spells and weapons etc. Creatures can very. A skeleton with or without a helmet, a noisy knight and then randomly a deadly mushroom. Overall this is fun and it has a decent price tag. It isn't without bugs. One that drove me made was the touch controller was drifting. It is early access so you're going in to support the development and if that isn't your thing then I would rec...

Pretty fun game if you like dungeon crawlers, magic, and sword fighting.