Soulslikes: Withering Realms
I am a huge fan of Withering Rooms, a weird 2d soulslike (that is NOT a roguelike despite what people say) set in a Victorian horror setting that is way larger and more interesting than you might initially think. If you haven't played it yet, I recommend picking it up on Steam. It is a truly impressive showing by a single dev.
Withering Realms is perhaps obviously, the sequel to Withering Rooms. It's currently in Early Access but I was such a huge fan that I went and picked it up right away. A few days ago I managed to beat the game, so I felt like writing about it.
The tl;dr is that it's good, but don't pick it up right yet. It needs some time to bake and to the dev's credit, they perfectly explained the state it is in right now. So I'd like to dive into the game a bit, explain some of the issues it has and what I enjoyed about it. There will be some spoilers here, but nothing too grand.
A versatile arsenal
The 'soul' of a soulslike to me lies in the gear you find along the way, much like Symphony of the Night constantly throws new toys at you Withering Realms is no stranger to that concept. You can equip a total of four weapons: two right arm attachments and then two left hand tools. Each arm can have talismans attached to them which augment the effect.
(an example of my current equipment)
Weapons and tools are associated with one or more of your arm's stats: strength, dex, precision, and attunement. In your average soulslike I tend to favor dex weapons and so that's what I went with here. I ended up favoring a large dex-oriented sword along with a spear for long range pokes, which did well against the encounter design in this game. Each weapon has a light and heavy attack with good variation in hitboxes and speed. There's some balance issues to iron out here but it's just numbers/scaling tweaks.
Additionally you have slots for four spells, but right now spells are in a weird spot and need tuning. I ended up using the shield spell almost exclusively, which functions similarly to Harden from Mortal Shell letting you negate an attack even mid-swing. Notably spells are not cast from the doll you control but rather the ghost you play as, letting you cast spells while in the middle of any other action.
Finally rounding out the equipment is an assortment of armor and body talismans which further augment your build decisions. Thankfully there's a glam system too, so you can fashionsouls without losing your stat...souls.
(for most of the game, i looked like the phantom of the opera)
Evil Residents
One of the areas the game falters a bit however is enemy design. Soulslikes can fall apart when you throw multiple enemies into a fight because their attack patterns get tangled together reducing openings and encouraging not fighting them. Withering Realms has a good chunk of enemies that have one or more of the following traits:
- An instant speed attack that they pull out on reaction
- Low recovery time between actions
- Poor and mismatched hitboxes
- Small tracking projectile spam
- Long range grabs
(fighting these enemies is the purest example of the encounter design gone wrong)
When you fight one of these kind of enemies at a time it's not an issue, but multiple becomes deadly. In a sort of concession to this design not being great flasks don't actively have to be used. If your health goes to 0, you'll get a brief period of invuln while you down a flask and recover health. This causes fights to sometimes devolve into simple damage races. It's better to just try to kill them as fast as possible than it is to engage them safely. I admit I employed this strategy very often and it was surprisingly effective.
Boss design also falls into a similar space though usually they're 1v1 encounters making them far easier. They could use a bit of touching up to be made harder with more patterns.
Misc
There were a surprising amount of puzzles blocking my critical path forward. Nothing obtuse or bad mind you, they were just spicy enough that the diversion was welcome. It's practically a requirement in a game with horror and mansions that you have puzzles here and there; mansion designers LOVE puzzles.
It took me about ~16 hours to beat the game, but there's more stuff I have to do and unlock. I'd also like to note that the dev is incredibly responsive with feedback and updating; I would fully expect the game to undergo some radical changes on the road to 1.0. While I think people should wait for the full release the game already has all of the bones it needs to be a strong game.
Withering Realms is in Early Access on Steam with a demo that's a good showing of the game. I recommend adding it to your wishlist at minimum, but if you're okay with a bit of jank and some balancing issues give the demo a shot and see if it speaks to you.