There’s no denying the impact that Vampire Survivors has had on the industry at large. Essentially creating a genre all its own that turned the bullet hell dynamic on its head while employing ‘idle’ and roguelite game mechanics, Vampire Survivors wasn’t just an irresistibly compelling proposition that was worthy of its numerous GOTY nods, it also kickstarted a wave of similar titles that would follow in its pixelated wake. The latest of these, as you might expect, is Soulstone Survivors but quite unlike many of its peers however, Soulstone Survivors really feels like a robust step forward for the Survivors genre.
Soulstone Survivors PS5 Review
The Survivors Genre Comes Of Age
Though a fair few Survivors style games don’t really have any kind of narrative or story setup (and that includes Vampire Survivors to an extent), Soulstone Survivors actually couches its reverse bullet hell shenanigans in a story that sees you taking the role of a Void Hunter fighting against the Void King by laying waste to his armies of chaos. There are even real-time cutscenes too, though to be honest while the story is a thin affair anyway – it’s just nice to have something a little more than window dressing to support the on-screen action. It’s not essential, sure, but it’s nice to have all the same.
Stepping into the weeds of the game itself, another rather large area that Soulstone Survivors differentiates itself from other Survivors-like efforts, is in the width and breadth of progression systems that are on offer. I mean, where to begin? Not only do you have well over twenty different character classes to choose from, but each of those characters have four weapons that can be unlocked and on top of that, you have a persistent progression grid which carries permanent buffs across whatever character you choose. And then on top of all *that*, there are special runes that when locked by fulfilling various conditions, provide special buffs to each character too. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of play to be had here and the depth for customising your character feels near endless as well.
Additionally, fans of Vampire Survivors will also recognise how Soulstone Survivors allows players to enable various negative modifiers, or ‘curses’ as they’re known here, to make each run harder by doing things like having enemies with more HP, more damage, the spawning of elite enemies and more in return for additional experience gains and so on.
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Speaking of gains and going back to the progression side of things, each run has ore clusters (thankfully easily located by virtue of the mini-map) that randomly spawn during battle and, much like the collectible items in Vampire Survivors, provides players with something to run towards while their hero is automatically smashing the enemy throng with whatever abilities they have available.
You’ll want to smash all of those ore clusters as soon as you see them too, since they basically represent currency that can be used to level up your persistent progression grid while also paying for your numerous weapon upgrades. And considering just how many weapons there are and how big the progression grid is in totality, you’re going to be chasing that ore (especially in the later levels when the rarer ores become available) for a good long time indeed.
In terms of the combat itself, Soulstone Survivors is easily one of the most hectic entries in the survivors genre to date and a big part of this is down to the murder’s row of enemies that you’ll face. Not only are the more than ninety different enemy types in Soulstone Survivors, each of them have their own very unique patterns of attack too. Unlike Vampire Survivors where the standard mode of attack for many enemies is just to touch your character, in Soulstone Survivors you have enemies that can blast you at range with spearing straight attacks, conjure up AoE areas of damage, summon smaller mobs and so much more besides. In fact, arguably the enemy variety in Soulstone Survivors is what makes the combat so interesting in the first place and when you start having different enemies with different attack types all meshing with one another, it presents a hybrid challenge that is hugely satisfying to topple in each instance.
There’s also a broader goal to each run across the various maps in Soulstone Survivors too. Not only do you need to collect gems to level up and choose between a variety of new abilities and upgrades, but destroying certain numbers of enemies allows you to release a Void Lord which must be defeated – with the eventual goal being to destroy all of these Void Lord bosses to complete that run.
The thing is, once that run has been completed you then have the option of going into an arena to fight even more enemies, or, embark on an endless run in a bid to score even more prestige experience and ore for your upgrades. Of course, it’s also worth noting that you get absolutely zip if you die, so it’s worth bearing that in mind from a risk and reward perspective after you’ve just come off a particularly hectic bit of combat.
Unfortunately, such hectic combat where the screen is filled with enemies, special effects, damage numbers, health bars and more causes the frame rate to drop a bit – even on PS5 Pro when played at its highest 4K setting at a 60 frames per second cap. Though there is the option to lower the resolution and tweak the settings to get a better result, Soulstone Survivors on the face of it is not an especially complex title and so getting 60 frames per second or higher on a PS5 Pro, should be achievable without compromise. Though I’m hopeful that future patches for Soulstone Survivors will implement some welcome optimisations in this regard.
Another slight technical drawback of Soulstone Survivors, though not necessarily one that can be tied to performance, is the size of the maps. Quite simply, the maps in Soulstone Survivors are much smaller than those glimpsed in Vampire Survivors and in other survivor-like titles, and really feel much more like walled arenas of a modest size, rather than the sort of near-endless field of space that Vampire Survivors allows players to work with.
Despite such technical drawbacks, Soulstone Survivors is an attractive offering as it channels a somewhat cartoon styled, almost World of Warcraft style aesthetic (with fonts to match) and full 3D character models and environments which make it easy on the eyes to say the least. Indeed, it’s a world away from the 2D sprite work seen in other survivors-like titles such as Brotato and others.
For anybody who enjoyed Vampire Survivors and wanted something resembling a full-throated next step of that formula, Soulstone Survivors fits the bill handily. Though the small map sizes and occasional slowdown take the sheen of the package a little, Soulstone Survivors nevertheless makes a compelling case for itself as the next essential Survivors title that is very much worth of your hard earned cash.
Soulstone Survivors releases for PS5 on June 17, 2025.
Review code kindly provided by PR.