Soul Stalker, a game developed by Radhood, is a new title with gameplay like Vampire Survivors and graphics inspired by Paper Mario. For players who enjoy the survivor roguelike genre but aren’t fans of the retro-style graphics, Soul Stalker may be just what the doctor ordered.
The Soul Stalker Kickstarter campaign received 100% funding in less than 7 hours. It’s still active and currently sitting at 416 backers, so players who think it looks promising may want to check out the demo and back the project.
In this game, players pick one of the various starting characters, each with different base stats and attributes, à la Brotato. There’s a swift huntress that gets two extra pierces from projectiles, a mummy that has bad aim but gets two extra shots, and a one-handed monk who can only wield a single weapon but has doubled stat changes, to name a few.
The gameplay is similar to that of other games in this genre, combining Brotato with a level progression system from other roguelike games such as Slay the Spire. Players choose their path from a multi-pronged level tree, which is mixed with basic stages, campfires that provide opportunities to purchase trinkets and weapons, boss stages, and the final boss stage.
Of course, the whole point of these games is to try and make incredibly overpowered builds by mixing and matching weapons and trinkets. And you can do just that in Soul Stalker.
The camera angle is third-person but follows you around as you move. And finally, the graphics, clearly inspired by Paper Mario, are charming and bring something fresh to the table. It’s certainly worth checking out for anyone that has enjoyed Vampire Survivors and the countless games inspired by it.
Soul Stalker has a demo available on Steam right now, which features a total of nine playable characters and the complete first stage. The game is currently in Alpha 1.1.0, but I have to say, it’s feeling pretty nice already. The Steam page notes a planned release date for 2023, but no hard date has been announced at the time of writing. You can follow the developers on Twitter to stay up-to-date with the game’s progress.
