Soulmask

It's a bit like Conan Exiles and Ark had a baby (without the Funcom incompetence)

The Good

1. It's very polished for an early access game
2. Minimal amount of bugs
3. The devs are active
4. It's very pretty
5. Combat is fun

The Not so good

1. For armour and decoration unlocks related to bosses YOU have to get the killing shot. I feel this is quite punishing to people who play with friends and should be changed to allow for everyone that did a certain percentage of damage to receive the unlocks. It also leaves people on public servers open to being griefed when someone can snipe the last shot in without having been involved in the fight at all. While the game is great overall this would be the one reason I would not recommend it to friends.

Feels like early Conan Exiles mixed with thrall camp management. This is not a short game, you will have to grind for better thralls - ones for you to play as, 3 fighter companions to travel with, and several more for your camp specialising in gathering, crafting, slaughtering etc. The map is large and exp is slow.

I recommend playing on casual or easy to start off with. It is brutal. You can change settings at any time.

9/10 - love this grindy game. Combat is good, different weapons all have several abilities to choose from (some hidden behind different thrall-types like warrior, guard, hunter, etc). I also love that the animals and mounts you capture have tiers, so you can grind for better ones (mythic mounts are a different colour and have better stats).

I look forward to further development: hopefully they introduce more decorations for my base, and fill in some areas of the map that are a little lacking or repetitive.

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!

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.

SP review only.
TLDR: Soulmask is a very good survival sandbox for SP. It's a largely bug free and fun game with a long and varied game play loop that ticks all the needed boxes.
Now the TL bit: Very good survival sandbox that can be played in genuine SP mode where you can do all that is on offer, progress and complete various tasks/quests - there appears to be nothing that is locked away behind PvP/co-op modes etc so a SP can experience all the game has to offer.
The map is big with varied biomes, the game has lots to do and offers variety (e,g. building, farming, boss fights, gear upgrades, mining, capturing followers etc) - it's a well-rounded and well thought-out game world that allows a real sandbox experience. Of note here is that the followers you get actually work for you - not like other games in this genre where you still do all the grinding and the pleb just sits and waits at a bench, they actually get out there and gather, harvest, fertilize fields and so on - a high degree of automation is more than possible. You can have up to 10 plebs follow you at a time, meaning fairly big raiding parties to hit the NPC villages and dungeons. Furthermore, you can play your customised starting character ad infinitum or take control of any of your tribesmen/women as these each have different stats, strengths, weaknesses and abilites that may better suit your play style or needs for a particular area/aspect of gameplay.
Additionally, the devs are active in the community and in pushing the game forward and, I have to say, seem EXCEEDINGLY responsive and receptive to feedback from the community, which has already seen many QOL and gameplay changes introduced that have significantly improved player experience.
There are 5 presets for difficulty (casual to OMG hardcore) but an already substantial and ever-growing number of sliders are available for SPs to tailor the game to your own play style and desired level of challenge (e.g. damage received/inflicted, manage the grind, turn on/off decay and reduce tool/weapon/armour durability loss etc.) - so yeah, you don't have to eat 8 Capybara per day to survive nor do you need to drink 50 litres per day to stay hydrated, if that's not your thing.
As a SP, the single most important feature for me in games like this is the building and the base building here is extremely good compared to many other products out there (way better than MoE and ARK, for example). Snap points work, there's no gaps between pieces, a generous amount of terrain clipping is provided (e.g. walls can be placed into the map surface under foundations to eliminate unsightly gaps, foundations/floors can clip into cliffs and virtually sit flush with the surface of the map), roofs overhang walls to give a small eave (aesthetically great), good variety in pieces (half walls, steep/shallow sloping walls) - you get the idea. There are 4 tiers of build materials (thatch, wood, stone and blackstone) and whilst perhaps not as beautiful and culturally distinct as some of the build sets in say Conan Exiles, the build pieces in Soulmask all look good and are well suited to the whole ancient Meso-American thing the game has going - this allows you to have a base that is both functional and looks good.
Currently, I'm 330+ hrs in (probably logged about 200hrs in the demo and previous starts, so this play through is about 130hrs(?)), have completed 2 of 5 boss fights (although each boss has 3 levels, so technically I have done 3 of 15) and my main character is level 50 (60 is the current cap). Even with my settings to accelerate character advancement somewhat and manage the grind, it has been a very enjoyable to make steady progress rather than be max level with top-tier everything after a few game days - which brings me back to Conan where the relatively rapid advancement can also be rewarding, but it is nice to have the change of pace that Soulmask offers without the mindless drudgery offered by MoE.
I'm very happy with my purchase and even at €29(full price), Soulmask only costs the same a 2 and a bit McMeals from McDonalds where I live - the game will last longer and is less likely to require you to visit to a hospital, so it seems to be the better option!
A few other aspects not mentioned above:
---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Meh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐Some lore
☑Average
☐Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
(I put 'long' here for the story aspect, infinite sandbox is a genuine option)
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a bug
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

A brutal take on the survival crafting genre. If you are new to the genre be prepared for a difficult start and if you are a veteran, this is going to give you something to chew on immediately.
Now, after over 100 hours (including pre-release tests) I decided to give a review for this new title.
If you are new to this genre this is a difficult combat system, the controls are simple enough, the systems simple enough, however, the combat difficulty is high. The comments saying 'the jaguar instantly killed me' are not wrong, but there is a bright side to this (if you stick it out and I encourage you do give it a try). This game wants you to do several things differently then many others. You as your character are not great at any task, you recruit new tribespeople who are good at these tasks, combat, crafting, harvesting, etc... your task here is to manage the chaos of the tribe and then, with your mystical mask, become these recruits to do these tasks better. This means, if you recruit an amazing warrior and get in over your head and get defeated, that warrior is dead, gone, time to find a replacement and hopefully better one... or is it truly the end of that recruit? If you make it far enough there might be ways around these horrors.
If you are a veteran of the genre, think of this game as ARK Survival meets Palworld, but instead of hunting endlessly for that X/Y stat dinosaur or pal to fight this or that boss, you swap it to recruiting people with the right combination of stats, perks, and traits, over and over again to find that perfect candidate. Endlessly hunting more and more materials to fight your rivals. You will spend time recruiting, raiding, and of course, building your slice of paradise and defending it from other players, but also those predators in the dark.
A quick edit and addition that is possibly lost in the description of what this game is in its current state of 11/29/2024. They have changed a lot since launch into early access, now you can upgrade your created character in multiple ways, you can have much larger tribes, new mounts and animals. CLOUD CRAFTING is in, although I enjoy doing it the old way using the tribe. They have also done a lot of QoL fixes and balancing. Like many modern survival games they have plenty of custom sliders for difficulty you can play with and servers for different game play styles. So, at the moment it generally looks bright for the game going forward.
Overall, for a 30$ USD game that is in early access and just came out, this is already a solid game. Having far more content then many of its competitors in their own early days (especially if you are like me and lived through the entire Conan Exiles and ARK early access) and definitely attempts to be unique in many of its aspects despite not deviating from the genre norms in terms of building and gathering. If you are not sold on it because its early access (I understand, half my currently playing feels like its in early access anymore) then at least keep an eye on this, its got a lot going for it already and hopefully more on the horizon.

I played a lot of survival games, like rust, the forest, conan exiles, runescape dragonwilds, valheim and i can say that SOULMASK is super underrated survival game, which combines many mechanics together and does a better job than other survival games.