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Soulash

Soulash is a fantasy roguelike where you play as a forgotten god set on destroying the world. · By Artur Smiarowski

My feedback

A topic by Keinname7 created Apr 12, 2022 Views: 145 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 2

So i tried the game,  managed to get a Feline Poacher and Genie Warlock to decently high level, as well as getting said Warlock's four predecessors killed on the SAME_FRIGGIN_BEAR which decided to show up right next to spawn, and proceeded to chase me all over creation into groups of orcs, adventurers, guards, elves, amazons, villagers and whatnots - all in all a fun time (and by that i mean a bit frustrating, but in a good way. It was hillarous in hindsight!).  And, guess what, i like this one enough to actually bother making an itch.io account just to give you my feedback! Keep in mind it's been a little while since last time i played,  so some of these might've been patched already.
So, good things first:


  •  I love how slaying gods has a very tangible effect on the world.  But could we maybe get to inherit part of their power? Maybe a pop-up screen with epic god-slaying music giving us the choice between consuming their soul for more exp or learning an ability related to the god / gaining statpoints or resistances? Well, it's just a suggestion, not something i particullary care about/
  • There's some fun abilities (infinite undead! FIREBALL!) and races to play as!
  • The worldbuilding has a nice feel to it.  Although i kinda wish i could blend in more with the locals to do trading, quests, and get so fed up by annoying NPCs trying to scam me all the time that i resume my genocidal rampage - but i guess that's not the game's intention, and our character just subconsciously radiates an aura of "i'm the evil god, kill me!".

But sadly, there were some things that were just... jarring, and really brought down the fun in the whole thing:

  • Earlygame villagers were WAAAY too tanky - enemies in general are too tanky in this game (you just don't feel powerful if you can't oneshot a horde of low-level mobs with a fireball...), but it's especially bad early on with the 80-100 HP villagers. Like, seriously: i remember having to defend myself against a random, unremarkble, unarmed, unarmored villager, so i equipped that brand-new iron dagger i found, imagining a relatively short fight where the farmer blocks or dodges a few blows, maybe gives me a pink-eye with his fists, and goes down after i stab him a few times. Instead, it degenerated into an absurd slogfest, with both of us beating on each other until the sun set and night fell. Worst part of all? My brand-new dagger broke before i could even get him down to half HP! And then the brand-new metal knife! And two-and-a-half other weapons as well - for a single villager! And there's loads more of them where they came from!
    Look, i kinda get that you wanted to acellerate the game, and thus made equipment break much faster, but breaking half my inventory to kill one lowly meatbag is just ridiculous! One knife should be enough to slay 10 such mobs, 5 at the very least!
    I read that you increased the durability of earlygame weapons in a recent patch, but personally i don't believe it will be enough unless all weapons (except maybe particullary fragile ones) had their durability increased tenfold. I even wanted to make a mod that does just that (because i didn't want to completely remove the durability system with the infini-durability mod),  but the mod maker kept crashing on me. I read that it's been fixed in recent patches, though.

TL;DR: If i had the time, i'd try modding the game in the following ways (and i kinda hope you make them actual features, maybe an optional "more durability" mode):

  1. Cut the HP of villagers by half. They're unreasonably resilient for the lowly peasants they're supposed to be.
  2.  Overhaul the game's HP scaling, making the avatar start with less than 100 HP and gain more HP per level up. Also, make increasing VIT affect starting HP as well. And make sure a random villager can't have almost half as much HP as a dragon.
  3. TRIPLE ALL DAMAGE (after factoring in resistances, so 1 resistance = -3 damage). Straight-up, the mooks are too durable. It's fine for stuff like knights and dwarves, which are supposed to be tough, but i can't stand the fact that my souped-up fireball on my INT-only build still can't oneshot random trashmobs. The amount of damage deals is unrealistically low anyways, with me needing to stab things dozens of times for them to actually die. Maybe triple is too much, but i'd at least double it.
  4. Multiply the durability of most items by 10. Shirts, straw hats, primitive weapons can be more fragile, and armor seems to take less damage than weapons, but still, weapons have no right to break this frequently, it's just jarring. Maybe add a hidden 75-80% chance for weapons to not consume durability, so they break at the same rate as armor which seems to only degrade if it's body slot is hit.
  5. Make max stamina increase with level and VIT, because it's just uncool for the dark lord to have this much cardio issues.

That's it from me, wish you best of luck with this game!

(2 edits) (+1)

Hey Keinname7, thanks for the feedback. Regarding some of your points:

- Some gods give powers (new abilities), and others can affect the game positively or negatively, for example allowing to craft indestructible items, or removing fatigue from the game completely.
- The dagger/knife breaking, I assume you're not a dex-based character, which might be the reason for such a slow fight with low damage. Daggers and Spears scale with dexterity for damage if they do physical damage (int in case of magic damage). You can see details about your weapon damage and scaling in the equipment screen under the "Combat" tab.
- Stamina regen is increased with willpower, so if you invest some it only takes one rest to refill to full. Endurance reduces fatigue gain as well when resting.

Hey, thanks for taking the time to reply, i really appreciate it!
In hindsight, i should've replayed the game more thoroughly before posting this, i kinda wanna facepalm for forgetting about willpower affecting stamina.
Also, it's awesome to know that some gods do give powers - guess i didn't get to slay the right ones ...yet. Some of those sound really awesome!
The dagger/knife breakage was actually on my first ever character, which was DEX-based, but i dumped all my points into VIT the first two levels to gain just a little more max HP. I guess 12 or so DEX didn't quite cut it.  I also think the game bugged and removed the bonus stats from my race, so that might've been a factior. It also affected my menagerie of failed (and the one succesfull) mages, but they at least could help themselves with spells.
By the way, is there any way to add a mod with your mod-making tools that adds a "90% chance to not consume durability, UNLESS Armor-Breaker or similar skills are used"? I guess i'll just ask this question on a mod-related forum. Maybe they'll even help me make it myself!

(1 edit) (+1)

The dex build with dumping points into endurance - that's one of the reasons to keep durability where it is. Endurance gives a nice bonus to health as soon as you add it and on every level above that, but the cost is low damage and the experience that you described. That tradeoff is by design, you choose if you want to make it harder early for a bonus later on.

The bonus stats still apply but are not shown on the leveling screen (just like bonuses from items, or abilities).

It's not possible to change the way durability works, but it's possible to remove it completely or change its value on every item. There are quite a number of people on our Discord that have fun with the editors and there's basic documentation in Soulash/data/docs/index.html in the game folder if you need help with modding.