PLATFORM: PC | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (EARLY ACCESS)
Escaping certain death in an ancient ritual when the encampment comes under attack from unseen assailants, your chosen character – who you quickly customise during the opening cutscene – finds themself at the foot of a pyramid where a mysterious mask attaches itself to their face, bestowing untold abilities upon them. Stepping through a nearby portal, you’re transported to the sunny shores of a rainforest-like area where the quest for survival begins…
Playable either solo or online with a group of friends (or strangers), Soulmask starts off like many other survival games – by asking you to craft a few tools and build a rudimentary home – before revealing the ace up its sleeve. Not content with giving you a single character to play with, here you’re expected to form a tribe and recruit enemy barbarians and outcasts to your noble cause. These NPCs can be put to work in your base, farming items and crafting products and weapons, with each tribesperson gaining experience and growing stronger as they perform various tasks. Their skills can then be bolstered by unlocking buffs in their proficiency menu, making them even more effective. But that’s not all – the character you created at the very beginning – in any other game, the one you would expect to spend the next 500 or so hours with – isn’t really the main character at all. Instead, all of the Soulmask‘s major upgrades and abilities are stored within the mask, which can be transferred to any other recruited tribesperson, all of whom can also be controlled by any real-life player in your current game, allowing you to create a vast army of followers who can fulfil any role that you might need them to undertake.
Currently in early access, Soulmask already contains a huge amount of content and in the couple of weeks since its initial release has seen multiple updates to refine the experience. All of the usual survival elements are present and correct, with players needing to craft tools and workstations and gathering the appropriate materials to create whatever supplies they might need. A lot of your time will be spent mining for stone and ore, harvesting thatch, chopping down trees and hunting for animals, as you (or, more accurately, the mask) slowly gain knowledge that will allow you to make increasingly sturdy and complex products. The game’s 64-square kilometre map is divided into 7 biomes which all contain increasingly difficult challenges, pushing players forwards to recruit followers who in turn are able to level up further than those found in the early hours, giving you better chances to take on the trials ahead. It’s not all gathering materials and making things, of course. Barbarian camps can be raided to gain high-level loot and acquire new recruits for your tribe, while stronger challenges await in dungeons where mechanical foes guard particularly enticing rewards. A handful of boss enemies can be summoned as well, with their deaths giving access to new masks and some of the game’s most essential and hard to find items.
Soulmask does seem to be intended to be played by group of at least 3-4 people, with enemies often being far too strong for a solo player to take down on their own, but there are plenty of settings that can be tweaked to make things more approachable for those who prefer a less hectic adventure. Choosing your own way to play is one of Soulmask‘s biggest strengths, not just from the dizzying amounts of traits that your tribesmen can possess, skills and abilities they can learn and weapons they can wield, but also in allowing players to decide whether they want to engage in PvP or go for a more laid-back PvE scenario, playing on official or dedicated server in solo or co-op. Whichever you prefer, Soulmask has hit on a very addictive formula that encourages exploration and rewards your efforts in pleasing ways. Where things might go in the future is anyone’s guess, but for now, even in its early access state, there’s more than enough to keep survival fans occupied.
