Soulash

They bad reviewers haven't bought the game and are just attacking the creator for being sane.

TAKEN FROM MY STEAM REVIEW: Where to begin? The beginning: I began following Soulash a few years ago, It was ascii 3d-like only without graphics and promising world destruction features where you are a crazy god on a revenge path. There was only a single developer Artur and nothing like the crazy races we got now (Golem, Djinn, Demon, Lizardsfolk, Abomination, Gnoll) and what not..there was no modding editor tools or map editor and such, this game is crazy for creative people like me: You can create your own world in a simple editor way with entities and what not, and mod many many things. The developer has always listened to our feedback, being a supporter of Soulash or not, he also communicates with the community daily and I can tell that's his true love project, a labour of love and sweat. The core (Vanilla) game is amazing even tho i suck at it and I like to mod too much for my own good, max level i reached was 5 but I saw stories of people getting really far into it and killing other crazy gods which affects the world in serious ways. This game and modding the game saved me a lot through my depression, I tried going to another project then realised Soulash is where i belong for gaming and returned to my roots. Xiclu the master artist that joined Artur on this game created beautiful roguelike graphics and pixels in my opinion, with some dark and grim style without being too dark if i make sense. I'm not a good reviewer, but these devs deserved my opinion and feedback and so do people looking into Soulash or seeking for an unique roguelike where you can truly mess up the world. Err in short: Give Soulash a try, you shouldn't be disappointed if you know what you're getting into!

I have very much enjoyed my timewith soulash. I've played about 12 hours now, died about a dozen times, highest level I've reached so far was 4 and died to my own hubris. The map is freaking huge and the world is very detailed for being such a simple game. The combination of all the different races and classes you can play as is really staggering too, the game is just fun. I also appreciate seeing your scores when you die and seeing I ranked 40th for warlocks and other data like that, makes me want to try again and score even higher. I love it.

If you want an adventure game with tactical turn based hack and slash combat with semi randomised environments then this is the game for you. It does this quite terrifically, and every time I die I curse the game, hate it, and then feel compelled to go again 20 minutes later. There's tons of stuff to figure out and do, and plenty of variety so you can have plenty of options in how you approach problems. Downside is that fundamentally this game is about having your character bump into the other character, then heal up, and repeat; forever. It's good, very good, but I was sold on this being an 'evil overlord'-type game and I don't really feel it is. The story is interesting and presented in a very unintrusive and tasteful way, but despite picking your character at the start of the game this is just the "vessel" for the main character, "The Devourer", who has nothing to do with that character narratively speaking. So whether you are a human barbarian or a gnoll cultist is just stats - it has no bearing on the story or how others interact with you. Which is, to me, the biggest disappointment. There's also a very involved crafting system that is incredibly deep and sophisticated and also entirely vestigial; you'll pick up loot from victims constantly. On the whole it is very different from what I wanted, and what it was advertised as back when I first saw it however many moons ago. But what is there is great and the fact that they put effort into making it so character class and type has meaningful mechanical differences is delightful. I'd hope for a balance pass or two in its lifetime but at the time of writing I put 15 hours in and intend to put in at least twice that. Help I'm being bushwhacked by elves, send flails.