Soulmask Preview – Escaping a Ritual

2024 has been a great year for all survival game fans. In addition to the great successes of Palworld and Enshrouded, there were also other games of the same genre that managed to have their say. The developers of Soulmask hope that the same will be true for their game.

In this Soulmask preview, therefore, we will try to tell you what our impressions were regarding this new game. Obviously, we must point out that we did not have the opportunity to try the entire game, but only part of it as it was a preview.

An Ancient Mask

As often happens in survival games, there is no real plot to follow. Or rather, it is created ad hoc to make players understand what the setting is and the pretext for what they are doing. Soulmask is no exception.

From the beginning, even before we can actually set foot in the game world, we understand that everything is linked to an ancient mask. In fact, after managing to escape from a sacrificial rite, we will find the aforementioned mask.

Since the mask will be the bearer of great knowledge, our task will be to try to survive and create your tribe to reveal the mysteries that lie behind it. Obviously, it won't be easy at all. After all, we are still talking about a survival game.

Survival is the Key

It goes without saying that the most important part of Soulmask is obviously survival. So, as in the most classic survival games, you will start your adventure with nothing; you will have to roll up your sleeves and figure out what to do to ensure that you do not meet an unpleasant fate.

The most important thing is certainly the collection of resources that you can find around the game map. Obviously, before you can start building and creating things, you will have to familiarize yourself with the game mechanics. So, our advice is to follow the objectives that the game will give you gradually. This is advice that even veterans of the genre will have to follow, also because it is essential to continue.

Once you understand how the game works, Soulmask actually has a lot to offer. You will be able to unlock a myriad of different things, also linked to skills. In fact, Soulmask is certainly not a game in which you have no way to unlock skills. There are three main branches, but each branch is made up of many different skills.

This will allow us to shape an experience that is as similar as possible to the way you play. It's true that Soulmask is a survival game, but it also has a large RPG component that shouldn't be underestimated. This is certainly a point in the game's favor, since it allows it to be approached in different ways based on the player.

It seems, in fact, that the developers also wanted to focus heavily on this aspect, as well as just on the purely survival one. But we can say that the two aspects are well integrated with each other, at least from what we have seen so far. Obviously, there may be some differences in the full release of the game, but if this is the case, we will highlight it in a future article.

What's Happening?

We know that what we had the opportunity to test is definitely not the definitive build and there will be a lot of changes in this regard, so talking about the technical side would not be exactly correct, but in any case we need to have an idea. From what we've seen, there are some issues that will need to be resolved before the game releases.

First, we encountered several issues with the game's framerate, which was unable to remain stable for a long time. Furthermore, as if that wasn't enough, in some sections of the game the experience was truly bordering on frustrating due to performance standards that had a significant impact. Among other things, for example, texture loading and many continuous lag problems.

However, in addition to these problems linked merely to the performance part of Soulmask, the game, from a graphic point of view, still has some interesting ideas. For example, the effect of wetness and rain is very good, as is the movement of the foliage. The sound effects are also on point, and we don't have to report any major problems in this regard.

Obviously, we cannot comment on the multiplayer part since the servers are not yet active. This is a feature that will be present at launch (with all possibilities, unless they decide to add it at a later time), but in this first build we have not had the opportunity to see what it will be like. To be able to give you our opinion on this topic, you will have to wait for a next build.

Soulmask Preview

Since we haven't had access to the full game and several features are still missing, we certainly can't express a complete opinion. For this reason, we will not give any ratings. Voting will only be reserved for the final version of the game. What we can say is that the game seems to have excellent premises and could become a flagship like other survival games.

However, there is certainly no shortage of things that the development team needs to fix before launching the game on the market. The technical side, to date, has several uncertainties that must be resolved in such a way as to be able to give players the best possible gaming experience. This isn't anything the development team can't fix along the way, so we're confident that this is the case.