Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Dec 25, 2021

  First impression after an hour in. I died. Often. Getting a feel for the combat takes a moment. I have most of the dungeon crawler VR games (and a number of zombie ones) and this one feels more like a classic dungeon crawl in all the good ways. Voice acting and graphics are sound enough. Some game stuttering, but not much. Sometimes a sword strike will not connect when it seemed obvious that it should. Blocking was a bit hit or miss. Good overall play and functioning. You will feel weak at the start and are a bit squishy, as befits your level 1 status. Lots to like in the game. EXCEPT THE GRIP FOR THE SWORD. So many games have you hold grip to keep things in your hand. This causes a habitual grip action when fighting. Guess what happens. Sword dropped. Dev, please give an option here. Swinging an empty hand is not an effective combat move. I can't count the number of times this happened within the first dungeon. It did contribute significantly to the number of deaths. Would love an option to move the mana/health meter and some adjustments to the belt location, but that would be more quality of like. The weapon grip function is beyond QOL. It is more avoidance of death. Maybe with time, I can train myself to not grip the weapon. While frustrating, this is still not a deal breaker. It is a good game and worth adding to your library. Excited to see where it goes in the future.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 8, 2022

  I actually did not enjoy this game. The graphics are just OK and not that impressive in my opinion. The maps are randomly generated empty stone hallways with flickering textures and some strange checkered pattern dithering in certain areas on the floor. Doors do not actually open. They just trigger a loading screen. Your character has little baby monkey hands. Teleportation only works when you aim at just the right spot and also tends to cause you to turn side to side. When trying to grab items out of a chest, those items move away from you. Throwing fireballs is extremely inaccurate, awkward, and difficult to conjure. I was also constantly dropping my sword in this game and getting overwhelmed in certain places where more than one enemy was attacking me. The inventory system in front of you also constantly gets in the way and has a tendency to spin when you are trying to add something to it. There is no way to adjust the difficulty and there is also no way to save the game. When you are killed, you are placed back in the main training area often with finding no gold or gaining any skill points. I cannot recommend this game at all.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 19, 2022

  This is probably, imo, the best dungeon crawling available on vr right now, as far as variety of enemies, scenery and bosses go. And the combats pretty damn fun to boot
• gamedeal user

  Feb 19, 2022

  Very cool game that I just picked up. Probably going to be one of my favourite VR dungeon crawlers for a while. Though it lacks some of the polish that VR dungeon knight and similar games, the RPG system is what I'm really here for. There are some small issues that pop up here and there, but I wouldn't call them game-breaking. Losing your one weapon sucks, because you have to attempt the rest of the crawl with only the spells you have on you. Also the "lie" for the sword is awkward, for the Vive controller, at least.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 21, 2022

  [h1]Experienced on the Oculus Quest 2[/h1] You can view my review & gameplay here: https://youtu.be/NfyfoRpiE9E Soul Scathe takes obvious inspiration from Dark Souls. Especially starting on the second area of levels, you can see the level design & enemy design inspirations taken from Dark Souls and translated to VR. I am a big Dark Souls fan and would love to have told you that this is like VR Dark Souls. Unfortunately, there is no comparison. This game isn't anywhere near that quality. Combat ends up being very repetitive. The level design is bland. The combat systems are simply too simple. You can basically go either melee or magic based. You do runs to get gold, experience points, & dragon souls. With those currencies you can level up your attributes and get new weapons or spells. You can increase your strength, vitality, intelligence, & spirit. There is a nice variety of spells ranging from fire, ice, & electric, along with very powerful limited use spells that use dragon souls. Melee combat is based on a parry system. This is intriguing at first, but soon devolves into simple rote actions. You can basically duel wield weapons and hold out one weapon with your off-hand to parry most attacks and just constantly swing with your main hand. I often couldn't tell whether I had been hit or not, but this simple tactic would parry most attacks although occasionally you may need to move your weapon to parry a low blow. The stronger you get, the easier it'll be to take on mobs of enemies at the same time. There really isn't much enemy variety. Also, because of the procedurally generated level design, it didn't take long to see levels that were almost identical to what you had already seen before.Also, the first area is very bland looking and soon the other areas start looking bland as well. There are 3 boss fights and they are like the rest of the game: there's some very interesting parts and also some questionable enemy design parts that make the fights feel less than what they could have. Game is running on the Unity Engine. On my RTX 3080, I was getting dropped frame rates from 90 to 70 fps, on medium graphics. You have full locomotion and smooth and snap turning. You can choose your dominant hand. I did experience various bugs during my playtime. The most serious one was when I fell through the gameworld, when I found a dead-end (the exit door wouldn't open and I had defeated all enemies), and teleporting back to the floor level when climbing over a ledge area (I had to quit the level). Overall, while there are some epic moments. I just can't recommend this game. So consider this a neutral recommendation. If you're okay with bland level design, lack of enemy variety, & possibly dealing with several bugs, then there is something to this experience. I think this solo developer had some great ideas and has talent, but the overall execution just didn't hit the mark. [b]Rate 5.5/10. I kind of regret buying this because I felt more frustration than anything else when playing this game, but at the same time, I can see the ambition the developer had when making this game.[/b] [quote]If you enjoyed my review, please consider joining my Steam Curator Group. You can join here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Oculus_WMR [/quote]
• gamedeal user

  Mar 3, 2022

  Its a game thats fun thats all I can say also its very creative with the spells I love it
• gamedeal user

  Jul 19, 2022

  The game is great on paper, however, in practice: The sense of scale is wildly off, hands are too small for my body, and my body is too small for the environment. Weapons have no heft or weight. "wiggle" combat reigns supreme here, making blocking/lowering enemy poise (and finishing blows) obsolete. Humanoid enemies get way too close to be able to block blows effectively. That was the bad. Now for the good. The atmosphere is on point, I felt genuine adrenaline at times. Sound design is excellent. Mimics are completely terrifying, its terrific. If you listen closely enough you can hear them breathe. With a bit of tweaking this could be an amazing title, but for now it will gather dust.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 22, 2020

  Initial review after playing for over an hour straight. The core of this game is here, functioning, and quite fun. Obviously as a solo developer it is a large task to create a game with excellent polish right out of the gate, so given that, I'd say this is a great start to this game. I'm a big fan of the dungeon / rogue like style game, and it is certainly something we've wanted in the VR community for a while now. A randomly generating dungeon with dangerous foes and cool bosses is the perfect game for VR. The introduction to the game is there, so far the spells are clean and work fairly well, the weapon collision system is very satisfying. Do I think the current state / polish of the game is worth 20 dollars? That may be a little bit high. 15 dollars would be more appropriate, but that is just an opinion and not meant to insult the worth this game has, as I am very very excited to see this game get bigger and more polished. All that being said, here are some things I hope the developer notices as I think they are critical to fix to make the game fit the 20 dollar ask price: #1) Footsteps from both the player and enemy creatures is incredibly obnoxious. They are so so loud, and their volume doesn't change when behind walls, so most of the game all I hear is 'clang clang clang'. I'm sure there is a way to muffle footsteps when behind walls and when further away, and I think that would be a big improvement to the game and the player's immersion. #2) Enemies really like to get close and in your face, particularly the skeleton warriors and the vampire knights. It feels less like a sword fight when I fight them and more like I should headbutt them. If those two enemies in particular gave the player about 1 or 2 more feet of space, it would feel much better, and feel better for sword combat. #3) I don't know how to use potions. I suspect with more play time I will figure it out, but so far I don't get it and I wish the tutorial told me how to use potions. Especially because I've already filled up my slots with potions. #4) Enemies really start to glitch out when they fight you on stairs. They either float up, or they sink into the stairs, so I found myself avoiding stair combat. #5) I think the weapons the player wields should have a little bit of 'weight' to them, similar to Blade and Sorcery but not to that scale. Right now the swords respond to every little flick and quiver of my hand and it is a little strange. #6) I would love to see an addition of some kind of 'inventory' system, and more weapons introduced to be found along the dungeon. Adding armor (to increase player HP or defense) that can be found in the dungeon would be very cool, as well as weapons or spell books. Adding these elements would greatly increase the investment I have in how I play the game. #7) Finally, add maybe a class system? Or weapons that allow you to function as a certain 'class'. Rogue, warrior, mage, ranger, that type of thing. I think that would be fun. I know that's a bunch of different things that take time to fix or add but the only reason I took the time to type it all out was because I think this game has a lot of potential. And I know that if the above things I listed were implemented I would easily sink days and days of my time into this game. Good luck to the developer, I eagerly wait to see how this game evolves! Do I recommend this game right now? Yes, but probably for a cheaper price right now, 10 to 15 bucks.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 23, 2020

  The combat feels great and the enemies are responsive and dynamic. It feels like being inside a game of Dungeons and Dragons. It’s easily a go-to game for a quick session of hack and slash with standard RPG elements that reward prolonged playing. I’m hoping the final version will have a large variety of enemies, which may be the case already but I’ve only come across knights, gollums, skeletons and a couple others so far. It might benefit from some cannon fodder types like in Serious Sam that can be dispatched with a single swipe but are a challenge in swarms. Overall it seems very promising and I look forward to the future additions.
• Lasagna Magillicutty

  Jul 25, 2020

  I'd give it a 7/10 allowing for issues attributed to it still being in active development. I did a recording instead of a stream because of background noise but i'll post it soon. A few points: There was constant jitter on everything, almost like low frame rates which made it really hard to play and it seemed to get worse over time especially with 2 or more enemies around. It's very dark, which is actually kind of cool in the dungeon but in the starting castle area it makes it hard to find stuff. The UI could be more user friendly. Things like assigning skill points, looting chests, opening doors, picking spells can be difficult due to things like picking the wrong stat (and resetting resets alll the points), or accidentally lobbing a fireball. Also on the spell selection wheel the horizontal cursor axis is inverted, and on the spell assigning window having to use the other hand to pick the spell is hard to wrap my head around. Falling off a ledge seems to reset the entire floor, which is fair enough but with the sensitivity of some controller setups (I'm on the vive pro) and the speed the character moves at it's really hard to accidentally walk off a ledge while you're trying to pick a spell or something. It might be nicer if you maybe just lost some health or something instead. I can't for the life of me figure out how to unequip and reequip weapons, at one point i had to throw my sword across a gap so before I could climb across it, but I did accidentally summon and banish my weapons a few times without knowing how i did it. I bought the heal spell and was so excited that I didn't read the book explaining how to use it, and now I can't make the explanation come back up like it does with the other books and I have no idea how to use the spell. Good stuff: The level design is AWESOME, I love the levels and how they're generated. The monsters are really cool and I like the models a lot, great work there. The combat is great, it's a good balance of animation based and physics based and it was just the right balance of difficulty for me. The magic is badass, when I realized the magic does different stuff by slamming them together when dual wielding spells it blew my mind. The sound design is excellent, I saw another review where somebody was complaining about the footsteps but I don't know wtf they were talking about, I thought the music and the sounds in general were top notch. (I now see that was patched) All things considered this game is amazing and I'm looking forward to seeing it progress!