The survivors-like genre has seen a meteoric rise, but few have achieved the scale and success of Soulstone Survivors. Running a triumphant Steam Early Access period, developer Game Smithing is preparing to unleash its “power fantasy simulator” on a whole new audience.
On June 17th, Soulstone Survivors will have its full global launch, not only on PC but also on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S for the first time.
Described as going from level 1 to 100 in ten minutes, the game promises near-limitless power, hundreds of skills, and battles of an insane scale. To find out what Xbox players can expect when they dive into the chaos, we spoke with Allan Smith, founder of Game Smithing and Game Lead for Soulstone Survivors, about the game’s journey, its design philosophy, and the challenges of bottling godlike power for consoles.
Please introduce yourself – what is your role at Game Smithing and on the creation of Soulstone Survivors?
Hi! My name is Allan Smith, I’m the founder of Game Smithing and Game Lead for Soulstone Survivors!
So sell it to us – why should Xbox players be interested in Soulstone Survivors?
Soulstone Survivors is essentially a power fantasy simulator. It’s like playing a fast-paced action-RPG, but going from level 1 to 100 in ten minutes, and then you keep going until you are truly godlike, while quickly experimenting with different builds, combinations and finding that perfect synergy where you just disintegrate everything.
With almost 500 skills, there’s a good chance it will have exactly that perfect playstyle you seek.
And how did Soulstone Survivors first come about?
I was always a big fan of games like Path of Exile, World of Warcraft, Hades… and when Vampire Survivors came along, we felt that there was something there that we could make into a game of our own.
For me personally, I always struggled with creating dozens of “alts”, secondary characters in games like PoE or WoW, to feel and experiment with different classes and playstyles. Spending hundreds of hours to try and get those “alts” leveled and geared up, only to then think “hmm, I don’t like this class very much” – Soulstone Survivors is an attempt at a solution for that.
There is a ton of meta progression, all shared between all your characters, the gameplay is fast and rewarding from the get go, there’s a ton of depth and ways to play that allow for loads of exploration, and with every match you unlock something that makes you think “hmm, what if I try that?” We really tried to create a “class sandbox” with the game, with loads of freedom and things to try.
You’ve had some incredible success from the couple of years on Steam via Early Access. How important has that period been for the development of the game and is there a specific example of player feedback that led to a significant change or new feature?
It was critical! From the very beginning, we developed the game as close to players as we could, gathering feedback (there were only a dozen players in our Discord at first) and trying to improve the game in the right direction. There are soooo many examples of features that we came up with based on player feedback, but to give a key one I would say the Character Ascensions.
We kept getting a lot of feedback bringing up how different characters in the game didn’t feel “different enough” from each other, despite each having unique weapons and quite a few unique skills. So after a lot of brainstorming we came with the Ascensions – these are unique powers you unlock for each character that really empowers the main playstyles of the character in question. Those can vary from taming a panther to ride through hordes of enemies, to summoning a ghost ship that bombards enemies with powerful cannons, and everything in between, really influencing how the moment-to-moment gameplay feels for each character.
And now you’re going for a full global multi-format release in June – have there been any challenges bringing the game from PC to that of console?
This is the first time we are bringing a game to consoles so it has definitely been a journey!
At first glance, you might think it should be easy – there are no super realistic graphics, ray-traced reflections or whatever going on… but in addition to all of the standard challenges of making sure the game conforms to all rules from different platforms, Soulstone Survivors has a quite unique performance challenge. The game has basically no limits to player power, so you can easily be throwing thousands of skills per second while blowing up the entire world. Getting that to run well on consoles has been a huge challenge!
To give a quick example of the madness, at one point we added a tracker to see how many targets you could hit per second in the end game – and we counted over 500,000, with physics and complex damage calculations for each of those.
So when I say the scale can be insane, I mean it!
You promise 22 Void Hunters. Could you talk more about them, how they differ and of any challenges that number has brought in terms of keeping the game challenging yet rewarding?
It’s funny because when we first promised the number of characters we would have in the game, each character was a lot simpler than they are today. But as I mentioned in a previous answer, there was this huge demand to make characters more and more unique, which inevitably means more and more content for each of them. So before we added any new characters, we worked on the initial 14 that were released with Early Access until they felt in a good place. Were they interesting? Did they offer different playstyles? Were they fun to experiment with? We kept on adding and adding complexity to each of them until we got there.
Then, we looked forward and thought “Man, now we need to make eight new characters with all of this new stuff, too!” I must admit it was a huge challenge to come up with new fantasies and playstyles that felt fresh and unique, but I think we got there!
Similarly, what about the 350 Skills and 100 different weapons? We’d love to hear more about those, but also of any that missed the mark and got cut…
Coming up with the almost 500 skills the game has (now that we’re getting closer to release) has also been another huge challenge. We always try to make sure that skills have something unique, that they fit different holes in different synergies and can always be used at least in a few builds, but it’s an interesting design challenge because you have to consider the constraints of the game, such as the sheer scale.
Each skill might be launched hundreds of times per second, might cover the entire screen, and is launched automatically without direct input from the player… and then you still have to make each of them interesting on their own.
We even ran a few ‘skill suggestion challenges’ in our Discord, where we got players to suggest skills they would like to see in the game and vote for them, and those really helped us a lot not only with cool ideas, but with seeing the type of thing players would want to see in the game to inform our future decisions.
So again, I can safely say it has only been possible to get here thanks to the help of our community!
The Summoning mechanic sounds like a core part of the experience. Can you elaborate on the design behind it and how it all helps escalate the madness?
Ah yes, it is definitely one of the favourite playstyles among the community.
By now, there are dozens of skills that summon minions to fight from you, from skeletons to golems to mooses, haha! And while you are definitely NOT forced to pick summons, they are usually one of the first playstyles new players tend to gravitate to because the summons can tank hits for you, distract enemies, they can focus on bosses to take them out quickly without your control… plus it’s just cool looking at hundreds of tigers, boars, snakes, moose and more just mowing down enemies! It’s awesome to see there are more minions fighting for you than against you, and they inherit all your power ups, stats and everything, so they can scale insanely into the late game as well!
“Unleash Chaos. Become a God”, is your tagline. How does the gameplay and progression empower players to reach that godlike state?
I’ve touched on this a little in my previous answers, but the key way in which we achieve this is with quick and more importantly meaningful progression while in a match, with power ups that all really make a difference to your power level one way or another, while having this huge external layer of meta-progression with Character Skill Trees and over a hundred runes to choose that really focus your gameplay on certain builds.
It’s a two-pronged approach where you can feel satisfied playing a single match, but there is always something new unlocked, some new skill or rune or character or weapon that you can try, that keeps you going forward in the game, and it’s really awesome to see how the player’s curiosity drives them forward in the game in a natural manner.
Suddenly they find themselves more knowledgeable about what’s in the game, how things work, and just like that they come up with a build that makes everything they had done so far feel weak and they get that amazing feeling of “I just broke the game.”
Looking beyond the June launch, what are your ambitions for Soulstone Survivors on PC and consoles? Are there any plans for post-launch content or updates that we can look forward to?
Absolutely, we already have a couple of content updates planned for the months immediately after the full release.
We haven’t talked much about those yet but we will expand on the systems already in the game, such as the newly added game mode Titan Hunt, with new bosses, maps and challenges.
But more importantly we are also keeping an eye at what the community is asking and will keep adjusting our plan based on that.
Rogue Soulstone is in pre-production. While it may be early, can you give any hints as to how it might build upon or differ from the Soulstone Survivors experience?
I think the easiest way to describe it is that Rogue Soulstone feels closer to games like Risk of Rain 2 than Soulstone Survivors.
It is still veeeery early, but we are super excited because it is a completely different gameplay experience, that borrows from the same universe and where you will see a few familiar faces, still with fast-paced gameplay, challenging bosses and what not. But since skills are in your direct control and the game is in actual three dimensions, it really changes everything.
It will still take a little while before we are ready to share more details, but it’s coming, and we can’t wait to show rather than tell!
And finally, Soulstone Survivors lets players wield incredible powers. If you could have one skill or ability from Soulstone Survivors in real life for 24 hours, which one would you choose, and what’s the most mundane or most outrageous thing you’d do with it? 😉
Hahah, I think I would say Shadow Step – it’s an Assassin skill and probably one of the more unique ones in the game, where you create two portals (one close to you and one further away) and when you interact with one, you teleport to the other dealing damage in an area, sort of like a short distance teleport… you know, the sort of stuff you can use to cross the street, teleport upstairs to avoid you know… going up the stairs…
Man, this answer makes me think I’m lazier than I thought!
The journey of Soulstone Survivors is a testament to Game Smithing’s dedication. Allan Smith’s insights reveal a team passionate about creating the ultimate power fantasy; a game where player curiosity and creativity are the main drivers of fun.
With post-launch content already planned and with Rogue Soulstone on the horizon, the future looks bright and chaotic. For now, players won’t have to wait long to forge their own godlike hero – or just find a more efficient way to avoid taking the stairs.
Our thanks to Allan Smith for his time. Soulstone Survivors launches on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC on June 17th 2025. A free demo is available to download now on all platforms, including on Xbox through the Xbox Store.
We’ll follow with a launch article to let you know once Soulstone Survivors is available to play in full. And stay tuned for a review from us too.
