You can now buy dark fantasy action-RPG Soulframe rather than begging for a code, and it has a Steam page
Warframe devs Digital Extremes have launched a Founders program for their faded dark fantasy action-RPG Soulframe. This means that you can now pay to get access to the work-in-progress game, rather than signing up for a chance of a free code. What’s more, you can now wishlist it on Steam ahead of the eventual final release, inasmuch as a steadily updated gameworld like this ever reaches completion. There are always more layers to the setting, and more rad shoulderpads to unearth from the depths.
The purchase includes one or all of three “Wyld” characters, each with different weapons, skills and gear, or as Digital Extremes would have it “unique Pacts, Armour, Weapons, Sidearms, Figments, Spirit Guide Sparrow skins, Talismans, and Motifs of the Wylds.” There is a lot of this mildly confounding flavour text in Soulframe. Some of it exists for love of a fairytale; some of it is designed to magnify the lure of various craftables, currencies (including Arcs, bought with real cash) and other microtransactables. I’m not sure I’d call the Founders packs “micro”. They cost $39.99 or £24.99 apiece, or $129.99/£84.99 if you buy all three as part of the bumper Paragon pack.
I remain keen on Soulframe, based on the few hours I played around a year ago. It has a tense and mournful overworld full of exquisite metals, textiles and masonry, with commendably Moria-ish procedural dungeons beneath. It has characters who spend the hours and days between sign-ins snoozing among woodland animals.
It has a sturdy and balletic third-person combat system with some ornate special moves that channel the decade Digital Extremes have spent crafting ever-fancier playstyles for Warframe. It has a parallel Nightfold tent city dimension you can fall backwards into as though cosying up to a big, floofy dog at the end of a busy day’s spent *checks notes* gathering Moonsteel Threads to Bestitch your equipment. (There is, in fact, a big floofy dog in the Nightfold.)
I do quite like aspects of the backstory writing, which angles for the same gnomic intensity and byzantine cast relationships you’d find in the Souls series… then cakes it all up to the point that my eyes grow tired, and my brain fills with the squeaking of a million wheel-bound hamsters. The basic problem is that it’s a free-to-play sim powered by updates, and as in Destiny, this entails a relentless fusillade of world-building. They call it “Soulslite” but there’s nothing light about the lore. Much of this lives on the official website and social feeds. Wade through sign-up with gaze averted, and you may be surprised by the quietness of the gameworld beneath.
The Soulframe founder packs accompany the twelfth major “prelude” or pre-alpha update. Given the above complaints, the most important thing it introduces is probably an expanded and retuned new player experience, which lets you try out starting characters before committing to a pact. It also adds the ability to fast travel between World Trees using Wevetseeds, new boss spawning patterns, a mushroom you can eat to trigger a harrowing “Cogah” world shift for special rewards, a new Greatsword weapon, and a camel merchant for the Nightfold tent dimension. The camel has an eyeball attached to their beard. There will be an explanation for this and it will be exasperating. Read more on the official site.