Soulmask Review

Soulmask was released June 18th 2024 and was Developed by Campfire Studio. This game was reviewed on my 3060RTX laptop and ran at a solid 60FPS on the preset quality of high. Below is the specs of my PC.

My background with crafting/survival games is little to none. Palworld is the closest thing I have to compare to this title. I am somewhat knowledgeable on ARK: Survival and Conan Exhile to know they are all within the same realm.

You are welcomed in to the game by a quick cutscene that will somewhat give you an understanding of what the soul mask is. At first all the information surrounding crafting, survival, combat, skill tree systems, and all the materials required to do said things can be very overwhelming. However let me put you at ease and say, this game does a great job at easing you in to things and showing you the ropes.

It gives you step by step instructions on what you should tackle first. This is however, not required. You can tackle the game any way that you see fit.

One of the biggest compliments I can give Soulmask is to say they nailed the levelling system. The progression system felt good. To start out naked and work your way up to better equipment through not just a skill tree but exploration and overcoming barbarian camp bosses was rewarding. I never at any point felt I wasted my time. No matter what I did, I was constantly levelling up a skill, a power level, scavenging a new material, or unlocking new things to craft.

The picture below is just one skill tree out of four. There is knowledge and technology (crafting), mask nodes, special skills, and a basic leveling tree. The basic leveling tree has 5 simple skills you upgrade as you level up across all the various experience you gain. Mask node repair tree offers all sorts of perks, such as weapon damage increase, scavenge rate increase and more. There is an extensive list of buildings you can craft and items to unlock as well.

Again, all of this information can be very overwhelming. Don’t let it, just explore, follow the game’s tips if you need direction, and have fun!

Like I said at the beginning of my review, Palworld is the biggest reference I have to compare to Soulmask. With that being said, they both have a unique trait that makes them both stick out amongst the rest. Collecting pals. But in this case, it is quite literally souls. At first the mask thing just seemed gimmicky to me. The more I played the less gimmicky it felt and the more fun I started having with it.

As you craft your home passerbys will ask to stay with you and become your companion. If you have trouble making friends, you can always just steal their soul. Attack them until their health is a low and then mind control them. You can treat them like you would a follower in Skyrim or you can have them get to work on crafting and building like in Palworld. Their aid will come in quite useful in combat, but more on that later.

As you adventure out past the camp you crafted for you and your buddies, you will stumble upon somewhat varied objective points. I ran across a lot of camps with two people chilling by the fire by most mystery icons. There is little reward in ransacking their little bonfire, but after traveling 300m to discover what the “mystery” is, you might as well get something out of it.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but it is cool when you discover some landmarks and tools to help you on your adventure through this massive world Campfire Studio has created.

The coolest thing I found so far in my journey is the barbarian camps. Its worth noting that I’ve been playing this game on a PvE server and not a PvP. I’ve also been playing solo, so running in to a group of enemies could prove challenging.

In the first barbarian camp I came across, I felt like it was my first test of strength in the game. I failed that test. I died and my items dropped along with my soulless body. I was given the option to “posess” another NPC companion I had captured from before or simply respawn. I respawned and went back to where I had fallen earlier to get my things. I took a moment to have my training montage moment and return with vengeance. I spent a little time learning more crafting things to better my armor and equip a companion with nothing but the best weaponry.

I took my NPC companion back to the camp, where it then got a little crazy.

One of my favorite things about Soulmask, is that fact that the combat system is well structured. You got a good selection of weapons to craft, different ways to use them, and roughly 6 different special attacks you can unlock for each weapon type. If you are looking for a mindless point and click you won’t find it here.

However my biggest complaint about Soulmask is the artificial difficulty behind the barbarian camp. I had an easier time going in with my AI companion because it somewhat took the aggro off me. The issue is that, when you run in to an elite character, they can stun you. Once they do a horde of enemies start attacking you until you have no health left. Levelling up and growing a resistance to stunning or poisoning is the only thing I’ve found so far to protect me. But this is not just an elite enemy problem. The problem is simply in the multitude of enemies that swarm you at once. I found myself trapped multiple times by so many enemies, that I couldn’t move.

Topics like this are hard to talk about. I’m sure you are sitting there reading this and thinking “I wonder if Nathan tried getting good?”. I like my souls games. But I like them because they challenge me to get better in combat, not stun me then swarm me with so many NPCs that I can’t move. An update to better disperse the amount of NPC’s in a single player PvE world would do wonders for this issue.

If I had any other complaints/wishes, its that I wish there was a better way to building. When building, its not like Fortnite, where you press a button and your building schematics are on hand. You have to manually go in to your inventory menu and pull out each individual item in to you shortcut menu. So my wish is that they would add a loadout system. A system where in one loadout I have my weapons and the other my building materials.

On the pro side to building, Soulmask does a good job at respecting your time. If you open the menu and craft 15 walls, you can exit menu and start doing other tasks as they build. I personally hate it when games make you sit there and watch a building loading bar go from 0%-100% really slowly.

To summarize, Campfire Studio set out to make a survival crafting game the didn’t compromise quality. They Succeeded. This games combat system, crafting, survival elements, NPC companion system, and in depth levelling system are all equally refined to create a well balanced and solid experience for the player. Yes, I believe that game could really benefit from some updates, but it didn’t hinder my over all experience with the game. I had a really good time with it and think I’d enjoy it even more with friends.

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