Top

Trying Out Soulmask – Tribal Survival

Posted on August 29, 2024 by Aywren

We’ve been on a real survival/RPG kick this year, trying so many of the great early access games that have dropped in this genre. While we didn’t need yet another, Syn suggested the newer addition on Steam called Soulmask.

It embraces the tribal feels of an Ark-like game, minus the dinos and plus true tribe building. Instead of capturing dinosaurs to do your bidding, you recruit outcasts to become tribe members that add their skills and abilities to create a new clan of your own.

Basically, it feels a little like Palworld without the palballs and the Pokemon elements. If you wanted a crafting, base building, “capture” game, but didn’t get on the Palworld wagon, this might be something to check into.

The Mask

The main hook of this game, what makes it different, is the whole mask feature. It’s the magical mask that allows you to “capture” new tribes members through an influence system. Not only that, it also allows you to hop into their bodies and control them as if they were your own character.

I was a little iffy on this element of the game when I first heard of it. But once I realized the original character I rolled at the start of the game will only ever be somewhat mediocre compared to some you can recruit, I got on board with this.

I won’t go into all the details, but similar to Pokemon and Palworld, tribesmen have an innate potential when it comes to every skill you can level in the game. There are many weapon types (and battle styles!), many crafting skills, and, of course, gathering skills. All of these have a max cap based on the individual, and the system allows you to hunt and recruit for the best for your tribe… once you know how.

I find this one of the most fun aspects of the game, especially since they each have their own talents and negative traits. As well as some rather… interesting… preferences.

The Complexity

I can’t talk about Soulmask without talking about the complexity of this game. Everywhere you look, there’s layer upon layer of leveling, skill trees, traits, etc. It gets to be quite a lot to keep up with – but this could be a good thing once you wrap your head around it, if that’s something you enjoy.

So, you have your basic leveling, which you earn experience from everything you do.

Your individual skills also have levels, which you earn from using that skill repeatedly. For example, shooting things with a bow will level up your bow skill.

There’s a tech tree that you unlock with tech points, which you earn as you level, or from finding special locations on the map. Think Ark or Palworld.

There’s an entire tree of skills based around your mask’s abilities. Your mask also levels as you unlock these skills.

Then there’s a hunter’s rank, which you earn by hunting specific prey.

Then there’s a whole screen of what seems like in-game achievements, based on how many times you successfully do things in game. I’m not sure if these equate to Steam achievements, though I have earned some of those, too.

Aside from the complexity of leveling, there is an incredible number of crafting benches in this game. If you thought Palworld had a lot, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Make sure that you build a base with lots of wide-open space because these machines take up a massive amount of room.

Learning how to set up automation for your tribes-people to carry out the crafting and gathering tasks (similar to Palworld) was a hurtle we had to overcome. It wasn’t immediately obvious how this worked to me – I was trying to do it the Palworld way, and that wasn’t the correct method. Once we watched a few videos and got some tips under our belts, things got a lot smoother.

Animals and Mounts

Just a quick touch upon a topic near and dear to me – mounts and creatures. There is a “breeding” system in the game, but it’s not very complex compared to something like Ark. Basically, only certain creatures can be caught, tamed, and put into breeding pens.

These seem mostly like static decorations at this point where the animals just multiply on their own. You have a tribes-person assigned to it, where they retrieve resources from the animals, and also slaughter the excess once the pens reach a certain percentage full. You can’t name these animals – they’re mostly just a different sort of farm in the end.

It is amusing to capture piranha, run them to your camp, and breed them, however.

Mounts you can name, but seem to be a limited choice. It was pretty easy to get an alpaca mount from early on – the long, long, long tutorial leads you right to them. I know that eventually you can also get llamas and jaguars as mounts, with more mounts coming on through development (boars, elephants).

Currently, we’ve built up our original starting base to a pretty nice flow. We’re already scoping out some new areas nearer to better resources to start our second base. It’s going to be a big move, but we’re still having fun, even after 36 hours in the past week or so. Lots to explore, and that’s what we like doing!

Not to mention, coming next month, we’ll see development and modding tools place in the players hands as Steam Workshop opens up for this game. This is exciting stuff!

Comments