Soulstice, Reply Game Studios told us how the development of the Italian hack 'n' slash is proceeding
Soulstice
We have already talked extensively about Soulstice in the past few weeks. The new project by Reply Game Studios, the studio mainly famous for Lone Wolf and Theseus, during the last E3 had hit the headlines for a couple of reasons.The first is that, somewhat deceived by the Souls suffix contained in the name, initially many thought it was yet another Dark Souls clone. The second is that the game looked like the birth of an oriental studio and not of an all-Italian software house. It is true that, as Oscar Wilde said, it doesn't matter if you talk about it well or badly, but the important thing is that you talk about it, but for Fabio Paggetti, Game & Creative Director of the studio, in this case it is still better than the players arrive unprepared and "are not deceived. In the design phase of the game we did not think about the possible connections with Soulslike and I fell in love with the name Soulstice, it is perfect. We also asked for an external consultancy to understand if we understood the pun between anima (soul in English) and solstice (soulstice) and even then no one raised the problem. Then at E3 ... "everyone, or almost everyone, misunderstood. Francesco Serino and Pierpaolo Greco, during the live broadcast in which the game was shown for the first time, were also completely deceived. "Soulstice, however, is a pure hack 'n' slash, there is no escaping this," continued Paggetti. "Pad in the hand is very clear the difference".
Precisely for this reason we have returned to knock on the team's door, to ask how the development of Soulstice is proceeding.
Aiming for 2022
Soulstice's design is highly sought after "Soulstice will be released in 2022", product manager Samuele Perseo and lead artist Christian Ronchi confirmed in chorus. "Also because if he doesn't, they'll fire me" added Paggetti with a mocking smile. "The work is progressing very well, there are already people who are trying the game and are helping us to refine the gameplay, only there is still a lot to do". "Indeed, we want to invite those who want to try the gameplay ahead of time to subscribe to the official Soulstice Discord channel, added Perseus," an external point of view is always useful to understand how things are going, what works and what instead we we took it for granted, but it's not really that clear. "What has been shown so far, in fact, is all the studio actually has available. Now that the game has been planned and the concept revealed , all that remains is to build the actual game.
During the Games Week in Milan the studio showed the first Soulstice boss battle and the next few weeks will be used to advance the game as much as possible in anticipation of the At the moment, in fact, this hack 'n' slash is scheduled for next year on PC and next-generation consoles.
Covid-19 permitting, the work is proceeding swiftly and at full speed. " It has been several months now and we are working in the presence and with all the staff in attendance "confirmed the men of Reply," a situation that is allowing us to proceed smoothly and move forward with development faster ". Working from home, in fact, willy-nilly, slows down production processes. A video game, in fact, is created by the union of the work of many single people who work in parallel and who, inevitably, at some point have to combine what is produced.
In a normal situation, therefore, all it takes is a chat in front of the coffee machine, or a peek at a colleague's monitor to coordinate or to notice an error. With smartworking, although the volume of work was somewhat higher, the development of Soulstice progressed more slowly, as normally simple activities, such as exchanging views, required more bureaucracy to set up meetings, verify the code or share the project.
Growth
Soulstice's first boss battle As we said, however, crossing your fingers, the workflow should have normalized and stabilized. This means the team will use the next few weeks to shape their vision. As we have seen from the demo of the first Soulstice boss and as repeated by Reply Game Studios on every occasion, the game will be an action game inspired in all respects by oriental classics such as Devil May Cry.Starting from the style graphic: "for a game of this kind we could not use a too realistic style, and for the topics covered also a cel-shaded graphic, inspired by Japanese anime and manga, was not very suitable" said lead artist Christian Ronchi. "This is why we looked for a recognizable style that could be distinctive. We are very satisfied with the result achieved."
An enemy of Soulstice The change of pace compared to the two previous Reply Game Studios productions, also from this point of sight, it is evident. With all due respect to Theseus and Joe Dever's Lone Wolf, Soulstice seems to be made of another dough. "Of course it is. In recent years Reply Game Studios has grown considerably. We have gone from 10 developers of Lone Wolf to over 40 of Soulstice. Plus other people who work externally," Samuele Perseo and Fabio Paggetti told us. "Profiles that, moreover, have been chosen precisely in function of what would have been needed for the development of Soulstice".
The productive effort behind the game is evident and will hopefully lead to more substantial results than the pleasant , but too short Theseus. So we go back to the starting point: when will we finally be able to get our hands on Soulstice? "As we said, the release will be in 2022," said Paggetti. "But we hope to be able to start showing something concrete early next year. Anyone interested in the game can start putting it on Steam's wish list (a gesture that costs nothing and lends a hand to the team at get visibility on the platform, Perseo recalls), as well as subscribe to the Discord channel of the publisher Modus, in order to always be informed about all the news about the game, as well as participate in the beta testing phases ".
And, ça va sans dire, on sportsgaming.win you can find all the freshest news about the game.
Soulstice continues to be a very interesting project. Everything, from the genre of reference to the graphic style, seems to have a very convincing and original direction. To understand Reply Game Studios' ambitions, however, we need direct proof of the game. A hack 'n' slash can be aesthetically beautiful and with an interesting lore, but it is the gameplay that will determine its success or not. So we look forward to 2022 and the moment in which the Milanese studio and the publisher Modus will decide to share new information and Soulstice content.
