Diablo Meets Vampire Survivors!! | Let's Try: Soulstone Survivors

[@gamesmithing]

Hey Retromation, I hope you had fun playing the game!! Loved the video, and yeah you guessed correctly, skill type buffs are not retroactive, and the crystals are the only healing source right now, in addition to the Smite skill! Just made a quick update that slows down leveling up in the first levels while making it faster at higher levels, to combat the sense of breaking the flow too often and it definitely feels better already! Also buffed the Arcane Weaver a little bit, it was a long time coming =P At any rate thanks once again, was great watching!

[@MrGatiepie]

I love that Devs actually listen to feedback

[@belalyoussef7141]

@@MrGatiepie amen to that

[@RuxUnderscore]

Yeah. I noticed the green crystals were the only heals. Good luck on the game! Looks like it needs more work, but fun!

[@DoPtRiGGa]

Followed and wishlisted, will be waiting for the release!

[@Xeroc524]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned it but I found a glitch with the auto-leveling system where if you die as the level up menu comes up you get softlocked and can only do anything by closing and reopening the game

[@thegreatersnake]

The fact that there isnt contact damage and rather enemies actually attack is such a game changer for the genre. I feel much more comfortable being in close and it is satisfying to bob and weave. I loved their other game, but I think I like this one more. They have nice ideas and I look forward to releases.

[@gamesmithing]

Hey Fat Cheese Man! Thanks for trying both games out =) Hopefully you will like whats coming!

[@acyned8079]

Yea!

[@joz534]

I would say that being given a choice when to level up solves the pacing issue of rapid level-ups.

[@GibbyNoHeroes]

Man this is another great game! The builds that are in the game are pretty sweet. This game has such great potential! The attacks rather than attack on contact from the mobs is top notch. Can’t wait for this one. Would love to see an infinity dungeon mode one day where it’s smaller maps that each have a mission, hold zone, collect special loot drop, etc.

[@gamesmithing]

that would be awesome for sure =) we have ideas for a few modes though in all honesty we probably will add most of them post release, we are so keen on getting the weapons and characters and skills and affixes that I don't know we will have time to balance those well, but ah be sure we have loads of ideas =)

[@AwitParaSaKanya82]

I've played Vampire Survivors, Spirit Hunters and Project Lazarus as I dig the "Reverse Bullet Hell" genre nowadays. Soulstone Survivors seems like the perfect candidate to implement a 2 to 4 Player co-op mode. Just..feels right. Thanks for scouting the game Retromation, would've slipped by my radar if this video wasn't recommended.

[@seanfarrand9167]

That would just not be possible. As one player the screen already gets crazy overfilled with your skills. A lot of people crashing bc of it.

[@AwitParaSaKanya82]

@@seanfarrand9167 Yeah,you're quite possibly right. My suggestion was pretty premature as I was only into the demo for an hour or so. After experiencing the cdr bug and the game went full blown stutter land, it wouldn't be impossible to imagine the same thing happening with multiple players on screen creating the same situation. Reaaaallly hoping otherwise though, 2 players at most perhaps?

[@nagoyakuroi6353]

This totally deserve a series !

[@ShiroyWolf]

Looks interesting. Downloaded the demo quickly. Got the legendary power up that double casts for AoE skills. I had Chaos Bomb, Lightning Strike, Meteors and Wall of Fire. I believe these are the correct names. Effects were all over my screen. Was on my way to the 5th boss when my PC suddenly shut off. 10/10 Might need new PC.

[@SkullsandSuits]

Lol same thing happened to me and I got a lot of cool down reduction. I couldn't see anything on the screen and died. Aoe everywhere

[@zilchnebula5367]

I feel like one of the only things the game needs is an option to turn down particle effects, cause shit can get kinda wild

[@gamesmithing]

@@zilchnebula5367 hahaha yeah, I apologise, but its coming =)

[@seanfarrand9167]

Probably CPU overheating. Might be time for a new heat sink, or just new thermal paste. DL a heat monitor program and see how bad its getting.

[@ShiroyWolf]

@@seanfarrand9167 My issue was fixed in patch v0.5.018b: "- Fixed an issue with Double Casts that could cause you to cast hundreds of the same skill simultaneously, causing major slowdowns and crashes;" Still probably not a good thing that my entire PC shut down due to that issue. Will consider the heat monitor!

[@burakbabal4014]

I got very lucky with my warrior build and killed all 5 bosses and finished the map in 15 minutes. Attacking with skills multiple times and nonstop was very funny and it was so satisfying to feel like the doom guy. Thanks for showing us these games

[@brianmenikheim6324]

Vampire Survivors was a very simple, but fun game. This seems like a straight upgrade in almost every regard. The only possible drawback I can think of is that with VS you knew your runs were going to be 30 minutes at most so you could sit down and play a quick game when you didn't have a lot of time. Not sure how long these runs might get. That being said, this game looks great and I'm looking forward to seeing more of it.

[@Retromation]

The good news is levels finish after you kill 5 bosses, and the stronger you are, the faster they show up. Mixed with full release having an optional scaling difficulty, it seems run length will be something you have fairly decent control over.

[@gamesmithing]

@@Retromation that's the goal =) we are seeing some folks complete runs at the 10 minute mark now which is a bit nuts haha, but we wanted to be sure it was "speedrunnable", and with affixes give you control of the challenge

[@alexielouisl.8462]

So bouncing off from the Duelyst 2 video this is actually my jam! I love the game and I'll try it out soon! Also that boss has my name hello I'm the boss 😈

[@WaveyRico]

I hope this becomes a long standing series

[@mator4957]

An other great Game that you showed us here. This Looks so much fun. I'm going to Play the Demo immediately now :D

[@kos_]

Watched the whole video, now im gonna give it a try myself! Thanks for the coverage.

[@agr0nianTV]

Honestly the most fun survivors game I've seen so far

[@undergroundalienstudios56]

great slash animations at 8:00

[@iuridosanjos]

OMG it should work for co-op of maybe 3-4 people! It would be awesome! And for real, it needs some variation so after a while it doesn't get repetitive.

[@TheReuxvnoir]

I would love to see a series of this, even a small one

[@herrinboy13]

Really love this game hope it gets a full series

[@SirFailureOfKnights]

I'm all for this one trying it this weekend hopefully its not some timed demo

[@sindolorum]

looks sick! wishlisted

[@newhope33]

Tried it and like it will pick it up if it is reasonably priced, my only problem is the skills don't scale well by about the 20 minute or around the 3 boss mark you really start to stuggle as the damage scaling level ups don't keep up with the health scaling of the mobs.

[@gamesmithing]

It really depends on the build =) the folks are now at the 10 minute mark to finish the game (which blows my mind by the way haha)

[@hctaz]

Totally get what you mean about meta progression. Theres nothing I dislike more in a game genre known for being challenging than meta progression that makes it impossible to win runs without grinding a generic currency. Something like Isaac where you can unlock new characters, items, and levels is totally fine as that game is designed to be beaten without those things. When a game requires you to use meta progression in order to artificially extend its playtime without making the meta progression it’s own conscious action… that’s when I have problems. This game looks like it makes the meta progression a conscious effort, and it seems more like an actual RPG style of progression. Different areas look like they contain different resources, and it makes it feel less like, “do run, get generic item, and spend generic item on meta progress.”

[@gamesmithing]

Yeah thats the sort of thing we are after. We also understand that in roguelites there is this tendency that the game starts hard, gets artificially easy by upgrades, and then its just boring forever because you have every upgrade there is, but we are "borrowing" haha the "heat" mechanics from Hades as well in the full version, where once you are good and comfortable with the game, have the upgrades, the weapons... and think you are ready for a bigger challenge, you can turn on affixes to make everything harder and get new unique loot and soulstones to craft the top tier weapons and get the last remaining runes. In other words, the idea is once the game starts getting easy, you can make it hard again and get something for it!

[@hctaz]

@@gamesmithing That seems like a good direction. I think also just adding a bit of variety is a good thing as well like… it appears from Retro’s video that unlocking a stronger weapon for a character also gives them a new starting ability, is that right? In that case, it’s something even more than just a flat numbers upgrade which I think immediately makes it more interesting than other games. One thing I would potentially caution on is having the most efficient path to upgrading a character come from playing a different character. Say you’ve spent time upgrading one character’s weapon. It would kinda suck if you unlock a new character but feel like you should keep grinding materials on the previous character in order to get more materials for the new character. If each character has their own unique unlocks, I *think* it makes sense to have some kind of character specific resource that is required to progress them. And then you have the generic upgrade paths on top of that as well. Just food for thought! This game seems interesting and I’d love to give any feedback I can in order to prevent it from landing into the pitfalls that other games have.

[@gamesmithing]

@@hctaz Yeah thats correct, the weapons give you different starting skills and a couple unique power ups that will only appear if you have that weapon. I won't be naive and say that our balance will ever be 100% perfect haha, but the intention with the different weapons is more to offer you a different flavour of that character, than make it more powerful, so in theory, you should be able to be as successful with weapon 1 as with any other weapon. The Archer weapons for example, the first one has long range, high focused damage, the second one is sort of a "shotgun" like, big spread, high damage up close, unreliable damage from far... but you get some more health since you need to take more risks... so its a matter of what you really prefer playing as. So yeah, if you want different weapons for character B, and you already have all for character A, you should still be able to use B's first weapon to farm, as they should be relatively equal in power. But yeah we hadn't really thought about the character specific resource and that actually does sound pretty cool! I think you should be able to farm with other characters, but maybe for the last weapon of the character you kind of have to get something that only this character can get... I like the idea!

[@hctaz]

@@gamesmithing Hey that works as well! I just know from past experiences there have been situations where character A is either: stronger than character B or character a’s progress doesn’t carry over to character b and so character a ends up being stronger because you played him first. And when you’ve got a game that relies on farming, you could end up in a situation where realistically you’ll gather more resources per hour by playing the stronger character. That’s fine when it comes to generic stuff (in my opinion), but part of me enjoys the way Slay the Spire does its upgrades where you’re required to play with the specific character whose stuff you want to unlock. I think it specifically makes that achievement feel a little bit more special. Like you can’t just farm Character A and progress through all of Character B’s stuff. This could be as simple as your idea where only the last weapon requires something specific. It could even be as easy as like.. the generic materials stay the same, but each weapon requires one specific material that can only be obtained by killing the corresponding boss tier? Like the first boss you encounter as the character drops the item you need combined with the normal generic resources to get the first bonus weapon. If you want to unlock the second weapon, you’d need to kill the second boss with that character. But that also all depends on your vision of the game so I’ll let you guys figure that out! BUT I will say I actually played a TON of the demo. Spent the last 3-4 hours playing it. Finished map 1, 2, and 3 with the archer character and tried out the second weapon so I totally see what you mean with them not necessarily being direct upgrades. I’d love to provide more focused feedback now that I’ve actually played the demo myself. Is that something I could do via the discord server?

[@dodang_9147]

you don't even meta progression to win. All you need is lightning skills that stack critical rate to 100%, cooldown reducation and bloodlust+might skill. you can do like 10 million damage with that. meta progression practically breaks the game so hard. Easiest character to win with is hunter because his base skill has fragility. The mage with meta progression staff scales hardest, but he's worst character at base-kit and even he can win without meta progression. Warrior is ok, you need get slash+uppercut+thunder cut skill.

[@marcuscoovert4147]

I'm in love with this please make more

[@JohnDoe-dr9ff]

Green crystals restore health. Meteor storm is excellent spell with wide AOE. Also, there’s no point going out of your way to bust crystals if you don’t pick them up.

[@shanarks]

wow! This looks really good

[@jeremypantalion7282]

Any idea on the planned release date? The store page just says 2022!

[@gamesmithing]

We are still figuring the right date! Its likely going to be Q4, maybe end of October, November... but don't quote me on that =P

[@jeremypantalion7282]

@@gamesmithing Awesome! I'm having a blast with the demo so far, the physics are a very fun part!!

[@ChaoticFear19]

Really neat looking game. I love the style.

[@Camakiriam]

god damn this looks AWESOME

[@saetto9753]

i played it with controller cause it said full controller support… it was a buggy mess i couldn‘t aim … every few things it would completely shot out the controller controls … you can‘t access the „active to pasiv“ button in the level up screen with controller at all

[@gamesmithing]

Yeah I apologise for the issues =( edit: both of those issues are now fixed, I hope that makes the game smoother for you!

[@saetto9753]

@@gamesmithing wow that was fast 👍🏻 impressed for the fast reaction

[@gamesmithing]

@@saetto9753 Hope that helped! =)

[@fkndonnie6476]

Love the game. Would love to see more

[@drae_gon1369]

Green crystals for heals. Been playing this and it's fun but the frame rate drops with certain combinations of abilities is horribad. Last run i did tanked me down to 15fps lol. Got 2 full map clears already. Some combos are good if you can get the skill levels up to around 7.

[@jay-danielsherrington-lowe311]

This looks so beautiful amazing and fun to play I want it now 😍 will it support controller play I hope so

[@jagojuice9133]

this game is so fun! wish it was out already

[@mikeyyo8729]

Would be awesome if they added some simple loot that could effect your character, like boots with move speed, gloves with attack speed, ect

[@balpreetsingh753]

Looks really cool

[@billyoneshot3337]

i dont know if yall have vr but if you do battle talent is a really cool rogue lite its free and its on quest and pc vr PS: love the content keep it up dude youre awesome

[@Blrdman]

Commenting for the algorithm love the vids

[@DinoDunoDonk]

i have been playing this game since 2 days ago, my fastest run right now is almost under 10min long. I will try my best to get a 9min run!

[@Valcorian]

Looks really good I don't mind the grind for the action it has

[@Erbon]

Viscous Strikes is flat out the best skill. Followed by Void.

[@technofrankdk3195]

so far my best time to beat all boss`s is 26:28 and i like to play as The Sentinel the most :)

[@121hearc]

looked into this and they have another game called rogue soulstone that looks very similar

[@121hearc]

@@stoneycooper9758 i down loaded both demos never could get rogue to run

[@belalyoussef7141]

this looks amazing anyone know if it'll be free to play?

[@gamesmithing]

Hey belal! It's not going to be free to play, but will be on the cheap end for sure!

[@DoPtRiGGa]

There is a free demo out now pretty damn fun

[@belalyoussef7141]

@@gamesmithing thanks for the feed back, love when devs get involved with the community. I got another quick question for you, I've been playing the demo and its a blast, by any chance will my progress from the demo transfer over to the full game when it eventually comes out?

[@gamesmithing]

@@belalyoussef7141 Hey, yes, it will transfer =)

[@48ninjapenguin]

Do they plan on making this a multiplayer game?

[@Typhaaris]

Still only at 34 minutes, so I don't know if you'll eventually figure it out, but the giant green gems that you were destroying were healing you.

[@TEKKENRAISED]

What the crap is this?!?!!! This is a video game right here son. Like sink hours a day make my mouth gape how theHEdoubleL did this come out so well type video game genuinely impressed. Devs have peeled my interest

[@gamesmithing]

hahah glad it caught your interest man! Let us know what you think if you try it out!

[@KelvinLKY]

Haha reminded me of that cow level in D2.

[@Cloudy-76]

The archer hero is absolutely busted

[@youafan259]

this just on pc?

[@gameman876]

The game looks fun for maybe a few hours but with the visual chaos going on I wouldn’t play it after my first time booting it up.

[@jshtng78]

"A more honest version of Diablo." Brevik and co didn't set out to make an endless loot treadmill like modern ARPG gamers expect. That was just a hastily shoehorned post-game and most ARPGs since then have tried to copy what oldschool diablo did by accident. This dev on the other hand knows exactly what kind of game it needs to be.

[@ThiemoGotIT]

lol this is almost literally rogue soulstone, are they making the game twice? same publisher too, i think rogue soulstone is the more interesting version currently though, recommend for everyone who likes this to check that one too

[@mikel5909]

Its more like Torchlight, yes i know it stemmed from Diablo but its way more torchlight than diablo to me

[@simset5875]

What tf happened to this game? Wasn't it third person? Remember playing this some time ago and was completely different, loved aiming abilities in the older version, slowing down time and yeeting fireballs at people

[@Retromation]

different game by the same dev

[@simset5875]

@@Retromation ahhh i see

[@skytripa]

Looks like the play is try to get skills with all the same elemental dmg. Fire, frost specs etc

[@MascrisSensei]

good game, I want try this but our goverment blocked steam and it is illegal now

[@CluntPeetus]

Oh shit, that's rough. I bet there are lots of less than happy people with thousands sunk into steam. Is it accessible through a VPN?

[@RainX0573]

MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE 🙂🤠☺️❤️

[@nedjeljkadabo3933]

nice

[@lexolus1308]

im gonna be honest, this games are so easy to make that not even a week since vampire survivors came out 20+ copycats were already out

[@saninpain]

Yet Vampire Survivors is pretty much the only one with controller support, so that's my main rn 20 Minutes to Dawn *looks* cool but I can't play it on controller so whatever I guess.

[@ZlZSniP3DZlZ]

Algorithm!

[@KazekanAgiel]

Cool game and all, but uh..."A more honest version of Diablo"? Are you talking about Diablo *Immoral*? I sure hope you are, otherwise I'll have to question your sanity.

[@Retromation]

what do you think

[@Hoowwwww]

it's more like Path of Exile than "Diablo", this game has skill tags like "Fire", "Slash", "Doom", just like tags in PoE's gem system, giving the game more depth im tired of people evangelizing diablo, it literally is the most boring casual game with 0 depth

[@Retromation]

I enjoy Path of Exile, but the gatekeeping nature of your comment aside, this game _is_ a casual game so by your logic you are either telling me Path of Exile is a casual game... or I am right to say it is like Diablo.

[@DaneLawton]

its not that deep

[@arifhossain9751]

so like... we're just gonna ignore how Diablo pioneered the systems games like Path of Exile and even Borderlands uses?

[@Hoowwwww]

@@arifhossain9751 the only thing diablo introduced is the top down action rpg genre that's it

[@Hoowwwww]

@@Retromation i went a little bit crazy with my comment i agree, i apologies