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Wayward Souls is an upcoming title from Rocketcat Games. Currently in development, the game
expands on the core action-oriented gameplay of Mage Gauntlet by adding highly celebrated
rogue-like elements such as randomly generated dungeons, character progression and permadeath.
Even in its early stages, and despite missing some key features, Wayward Souls looks fantastic.
The level of polish Rocketcat brings to their pixel art titles is present in spades.
I was lucky enough to be invited to play the early access version of the game.
The game revolves around fighting through randomly generated dungeon floors that become
more difficult the further you go, collecting gold and useable items in the form of pickups,
upgrading items at Emberforges to increase your survivability and damage output and of
course, not dying. Any items upgraded in-game change the appearance of your character and
will only stay with the player for THAT game, meaning that choosing which path to take when
upgrading can become crucial to success.
Four characters, the Warrior, Adventurer, Mage and Rogue, will be unlocked when you
start the game for the first time. Two other characters, the Spellsword and Cultist will
be available to those able to progress to a certain point in the game. Kepa Auwae, Rocketcat's
designer has informed me that people who buy the game in the first week will have these
two extra characters already unlocked, as well as a few special hats as a bonus. From
what I understand, hats are purely cosmetic, as they were in Mage Gauntlet.
The gold you collect in-game is also extremely important as this allows players to purchase
active and passive boosts. These are different for each character. For example, the warrior
focuses on health and damage output, the mage on energy regeneration, etc. Each of the six
classes has a final, top-tier passive bonus that applies to every character. These are
very expensive for obvious reasons, but allows for great amounts of replayability, given
that griding now has a purpose.
The game is hard. Very hard. In fact, it's so hard that Kepa even gone so far as to say
that most people won't even see the final boss of the game. Fortunately, and unusually,
after defeating a boss in the game, the player doesn't simply just continue on. Instead,
a checkpoint is unlocked and players are able to continue where they left off on subsequent
playthroughs. Obviously, this also resets in-game item progression, meaning that you're
left with base items only.
Typical of many Rocketcat's games, the graphics and music are amazing. It'll be interesting
to see what changes are made in subsequent builds. MFi controller support has not as
of yet been hinted at, but is something I'm hoping Kepa and team are looking in to.
Rocketcat originally planned Wayward Souls to be free-to-play, with additional characters
available as in-game purchases. Instead, they are now releasing the game in a premium format
for $5. I've been assured that there will be no in-app purchases, ever. The game is
planned for release in March 2014. Expect to see even more polish and additional features
being added over the next month. I'll be streaming Wayward Souls each week over on Twitch. Be
sure to follow the channel to be notified when I broadcast.
Thanks for joining me today. Stay tuned for more Wayward Souls updates.