Soulmask

IMPORTANT FOREWORD: With respect, I genuinely don't understand how people who complain about the game's difficulty are able to write reviews saying as much, because there is absolutely no way that those people can read. Not only does the game prompt you to customize your difficulty when starting out, but it asks you if you want to change how hard it is EVERY TIME YOU LOAD INTO IT. Don't like decay? Okay... then don't play with it. Do you like decay but worried it might turn into a "second job"? Then tell your AI tribe members to take care of it.
Game is great so far, and it almost feels suspiciously cheap for the amount of content that is already in the game. Making your own custom mask, covering yourself in tattoos, and running through the bush to hunt down a target feels pretty good. I don't write many reviews but I'll try to list the general pros and cons. So far I have played on standard difficulty without changing anything, on a private session. TLDR: game almost too good for the price point, especially with release discount.
PROS:
- Gaining XP to progress is not tied to any one thing specifically, so you aren't ham-fisted into doing any one thing in particular for general progression. Want to be a civilization builder that has an expansive farmland and automated workers to facilitate that? Cool, every single action you take levels you up the same way as running around and constantly killing things.
- Combat in the game starts out slow and simple, but it ramps up with the different build customizations. There are I think 8 weapons in current early access, and each has their own quirks and skills. The animations can be a bit stiff and jank sometimes, but visceral. Try countering with the one-handed blade and doing a punisher, it feels wonderful.
- As a second but separate point to the combat, it feels like you are fighting for your life against just the AI tribe members, but in the best way possible. The AI post guards around their camps, and if one of them hears something they will investigate and alert others to the noise. When they find you, they have access to the same skills and weapons the player does (minus any mask related abilities). I had a fight outside of an AI tribal village with two guys pinning me down with arrow fire behind a rock, and a third flanking the rock with dual swords to push me in the open. I don't know if any of that is intended in the game, but when I finally won the fight I felt like a god.
- There is quite a bit of customization this early in the EA phase. You can add ornaments and feathers to your mask, get new hairstyles and paint for your body, add modifiers and buffs to your armor and weapon sets, etc. The skill trees are expansive enough that you can set yourself apart from players easily, and your weapon/equipment loadouts appear on your character themselves.
- The building is not as in-depth as Valheim (no structural integrity), but it has some similarities. There are a lot of little decorations and items to help make your little tribal hut look cool, and after a long expedition to investigate some ruins it feels pretty good to go home to your little tribe members running around and maintaining your base.
- Once you figure out the AI work system for your tribe, it's nice to watch them run around and do a lot of the annoying collecting for you. You can set work zones for tribe members, and what each tribe member can do in those zones. Need a lot of wood for your bonfire so it doesn't decay? Tell your tribe member to go get it, they will collect it while you are offline and keep the fire going.
CONS:
- The animations are a bit jank and stiff. Sometimes it looks like the characters teleport between certain stances and actions. If these were smoothed out it would do wonders for immersion.
- There are a LOT of recipes in the game. Your AI tribe members can do most (if not all) of them for you, but it may be a bit confusing at first to even figure out where to begin a recipe chain. The lack of an early mount system when you need clay or any other location specific resource means a long walk in multiple directions for either you or the AI tribe.
- No crashes so far, but some minor bugs may be annoying. Want to loot the chest when there aren't any enemies around, but you get a warning saying there are enemies? One of the enemies might have spawned under the map, so you have to poke them with a stick through the floor until they die. Want to move a workbench that has an AI tribe member assigned to it? They may get confused and stand in a corner where the bench was, so you have to toggle their job assignments for them to regain sentience.
CON THAT I WANT FIXED IMMEDIATELY:
- If a worker breaks their tool, they will sit around the bonfire and cry about it. Let us create a work condition to let the AI workers repair their own stuff if under X% condition. The only time I feel any genuine annoyance is when I have to manually take someone's axe out of their inventory, duct tape it up right in front of them, and then hand it back to them. As of my current time in the game I have not seen anything to remedy this, and it puts a slightly annoying break in the otherwise nice automation chain.
Side note: try equipping the dual blades and running back and forth between the trees as you sprint through the jungle. The camera is slightly slower than your character and it feels pretty cinematic, especially if you disable the UI. It's hard to describe what I mean, but the camera motion feels very good and that specific combination highlights it well.

To all the people leaving negative reviews because of either building decay over time, you can turn that off in advance settings, or having to run back to your death box you can also turn that off in advance settings i know asking the average gamer to read is a lot but please do try as indie studios dont want to have to call you an idiot for not doing so, games awesome.

This game deserves way more attention.
Imagine Conan exiles but without all that Tencent micro transactions and content locked behind the bazaar.
It has better graphics, bigger map, smarter npc AI, really nice features like assigning tribesmen to do most of the work for you. The devs have been adding content and features their community ask for at a nice pace.
I play solo and the game is really fun. You can tweak most settings.

Good game, very similar to conan exiles, crafting is a lot more complex and your captured tribesmen are actually useful for other than fighting, they can craft, patrol, transport and gather resources, anyone that complains that the amount of resources that they get is not enough is just not using the system properly.
I do have one caveat, that is to say that you are not playing a character, you are playing as the mask, that is very important to consider and something the game does a poor job at explaining. Your mask allows you to take control of any tribesmen you capture and play as them.
The thing is, you create your character, customize it, choose a name, all of that, but that character is going to be the worst character you will have, your initial body starts with a maximum proficiency of 50 (can increase it up to 70) on every single skill, meanwhile captured tribesmen can roll up to 125, they can also have class skills, and traits like self healing while standing still. Increasing your proficiency on weapons gives you more abilities to use with that weapon, and some passive perks that increase damage done, reduces stamina cost, things like that. Crafting proficiency makes crafting faster and gives you a higher chance of getting double the amount of crafts done.
Obviously once you figure out all of that you realize that past a certain point you don't want to keep playing with your initial body, which is fine if you already know that going into it, but it feels weird if you find out about it in the middle of the game like me and my friends did.
I do think this system is poorly explained, implemented and that they should change some aspects of it. I like the idea of playing as the mask and not just one character, but maybe they shouldn't make you create a character, customize it, name it, just to have it sit at the base for most of the game, You also have no way of getting rid of your initial body and it doesn't act as a normal tribesman, you can't make them craft, gather or do anything, they'll just sit there waiting for you to take control of their body again. Even if you could, they'll never be as good as a random outcast that you can find on the beach at level 1.
I think they should just let you randomize the character and eventually permanently get rid of it, it would reinforce the idea that you are the mask and not that character, or just let you actually grow your main character into something useful, absorb other people's skills in some way, maybe build a temple to sacrifice other tribesmen and get their powers. I think a lot of people do want to mostly play as one character and giving the option to do that should be in the game as well.

The game has been amazing so far. My husband and I actually saw this on a whim browsing through upcoming games a few days ago and I am so glad we did. The game is very in depth with every aspect they offer. It's like Conan Exiles but better and without tethering when you play with a friend and not on a dedicated server. So far no issues it runs like a dream. I know nothing about the PVP aspect but for the PVE I highly recommend it's so great and a nice breath of fresh air finally an EA game that releases and works well enough to test and enjoy.

Our 3 person crew has beat valheim, modded 7D2D, many minecraft modpacks, modded multiplayer rimworld, the forest, and various other co-op crafting survival games.

So far we're enjoying SoulMask! It has enough QoL features such that eating/drinking/managing inventory isn't a horrible grind. We can focus on what each of us enjoys: scouting the map, automating supply chains, and base building. Then we go out together on bigger combat adventures.

Works great hosting a private instance or dedicated server for your gaming crew!

It's early access, so it's common knowledge that it is not a completed game yet. Having said that, this game offers a lot, and I mean A LOT of content. Some tweaks are needed here and there, but nothing that takes away from your experience. I'm just gonna rapid fire some of my favorite things about the game in hopes that persuades someone into supporting this game.
Normal survival game functionalities ( needing to sleep, eat, drink) that don't feel like the grind is about to make you lose 5 years off your life.
Yes you can have slaves.
Boob jiggle physics turned up to 11.
You can make pretty much any body type (thank you so much Devs <3).
Breaking rocks scratches in itch in my brain I didn't know existed.
The trees on the other hand just fall into an infinite void after chopping them down and it tickles my funny bone.
TINY TURKEY.
Building feels really, REALLY good. That's usually where some games lose me cause nothing is more frustrating then having to spend hours base building on janky mechanics.
Haven't experienced anything in the way of bugs beside stumbling upon a dupe glitch on accident. Great day one EA launch and Devs put out a very promising road map. If you love survival games, Soulmask is definitely worth taking a deep dive on.
Edit: It wasn't a dupe glitch. You have a chance of making more than what you set out to make. Tribesman pathing is a bit wonky. They constantly get stuck on each other even when you space out the area where they rest. But luckily there's a reset location option to band-aid the problem. Games still great and I'll die on that hill even though there's a percentage of gamers that can't read, have zero game awareness and probably not much survival game experience filling the review section with copium.