Wayward Souls

Wayward Souls is a rogue-like style game. The levels are procedurally-generated, and it features permadeth, so you have to start again when you die. Any coins you collect are kept to upgrade your characters, and you can earn them with one character but spend them on another.

The characters are different classes, so there's a Warrior, Mage, Rogue and 3 others to unlock; who have different abilities. The story is quite minimal but there's a different one for each character.

The graphics are great pixel graphics. There's a lot of detail too like shadows, blood, exploding pieces, and swinging lanterns.

There's basically corridors and rooms with plenty of items to smash, and enemies to defeat. Sometimes you are locked in a room until you defeat the enemies. You can randomly come across a furnace that allows upgrading of weapons, shrines to give you temporary boosts, or can find pets which boost stats.

The randomness can really go against you. I once cleared out a room only to have 4 enemies spawn around me and hit me at point blank, taking down half my health and it was completely unavoidable.

Pick-ups are fairly rare and are activated via a menu. These give you temporary effects such as speed, extra attacks and area damage etc. I think you could find some instant use healing items but you mainly recover health when moving down a floor.

Controls are: left side of the screen controls movement, the right side controls attacks. Tap to attack, then can swipe up/down/horizontally to trigger special moves. Press and hold for power attack. Each character has different abilities though. There's two options for movement but the only difference I saw is that a circle is drawn around your thumb placement.

The controls were the biggest limitation of the game. I found it quite uncomfortable after a few minutes, especially with my left thumb constantly sliding about for the movement. I often found that my character stopped when I was still touching the screen. The attacking gestures were quite awkward and unresponsive too. To use the Warrior's Shield, you need to swipe down but sometimes he just swiped his sword instead. Flicking a direction activated his throwing Axe (apart from Down since that is his Shield; you need to swipe Up whilst facing down for that).

It's very hard, but the difficulty is partially due to the controls and the randomness. I thought this game would have been on the PC then ported to mobile, but it's actually the other way around. The game is in Steam Early Access at the moment (October 2018). Even with better controls, I can't imagine this game is that fun. There's much better games than this.