Soul Knight
GOTTA CLEAR ONE MORE ROOM!
Free with IAP | www.chillyroom.com MOBILE TITLES LIVE or die on their ability to be played in short bursts, so what happens when a game tries very hard to not be put down? Soul Knight faces this conundrum for two reasons: the first is that its format is moreish, and the second is that its moreishness is successful.
There are several facets of Soul Knight that aren’t worthy of fanfare — the art style and soundtrack are passable, and the narrative, close to non-existent — but these are all entirely forgivable in the face of its focal gameplay mechanics, which take the form of a top-down arcade shooter with roguelite mechanics. To begin, you select from an unlockable array of classes (knights, druids, wizards, et al.), each with their own unique stats and unique power, such as briefly duplicating and dual-wielding your weapon. You then shoot and slash your way through randomly generated roomfuls of monsters in order to get to the portal at the end. Each of these levels has around 5–8 rooms, and around half of them will be full of monsters that will shoot back or try and impale you, with the other half housing chests, merchants and other goodies. From these rooms you can acquire any two of the 120 available weapons, each of which offers something surprisingly unique. After you’ve made it through several levels, carefully conserving your ammo and health, you’ll meet a boss and probably die. If not, you can go through another set of five or so levels and meet another boss, and so on until the end. Once you do die, you’re returned to the character select screen without your weapons and perks and are free to set out on a new randomly generated journey. You do get to keep in-game coins post-mortem, and can spend them on permanent class buffs and character unlocks or, naturally, you can buy these with real-world money.
All of the aforementioned mechanics work seamlessly to deliver a compelling and addictive game, one that begs not to be put down until your dungeon delving comes to an end, even though you technically can pause at any time if you (for some reason) want to give it a break.