Soulestination

Better than Deltarune

A great in-depth magic tower game with wide range of possible approaches thanks to the artifact system which lets you customize your builds. The game isn't excessively difficult and has decent margin of error so that you don't need to find the strictest best path to complete it, but like with all magic tower games, mistakes will compound and can lead to softlock so save often and don't overwrite your saves too much to always have a way back, especially given that it's a 40-50h long game.

魂之归宿 Soulestination, developed and published by Zaxiquej, is a strategy-focused RPG that revitalizes the classic “magic tower” formula with expanded scale, narrative ambition, and a carefully layered progression system. While it draws structural inspiration from traditional fixed-damage dungeon climbers, it evolves the concept into something more deliberate and story-driven, offering players a lengthy and mechanically rich single-player experience that balances calculation, exploration, and incremental empowerment. At its core, Soulestination revolves around strategic resource management and forward planning. Unlike conventional RPGs where reflexes and real-time combat dominate, here battles are largely determined by numerical values and careful preparation. Each enemy encounter becomes a puzzle: whether your current stats, equipment, and abilities are sufficient to survive without catastrophic loss. This design encourages players to analyze enemy attributes before committing, creating a steady rhythm of assessment, adaptation, and execution. Progress rarely feels accidental; advancement is the result of thoughtful decision-making rather than brute force grinding. The narrative f…

If I had to describe Soulestination, I'd say it's just a really condensed puzzle game experience. Magic Tower games are boats that get holes when you mess up. Maybe you don't make more mistakes and you are able to fix the hole and take the water out, or make more holes and then have to restart back to the point before you made your initial mistake. For this game, you'd slowly be bleeding HP while never being able to make enough net positive trades so you'd have to restart and replan your steps. Although frustrating (like with all Magic Tower games), Soulestination has very unique bosses, with just enough story and world building to keep you immersed with trying to save it's world. Personally what stood out to me was the meta bossfights. I think one where you have to change the time of your pc to avoid attacks. Even moving the game outside your pc border to create imaginary walls. I was like 'what the ♥♥♥♥, you can do that in rpgm'. Honestly it's kind of insane what you can do.

Bought this game for 1.5 bucks expecting cute girl RPG shiz. Got a graph theory optimization problem instead. 10/10 edit: 63 hours later, with almost all achievements done and Hard mode cleared. This was my first time with this genre, and the early game was quite brutal (for a complete newbie). That said, once you kinda understand what's going on, the rough flow of what to do, and know what equipment to buy beforehand (or don't mind replaying an entire chapter), you can break the game quite easily halfway thru'. Wacky translation at times, but for a game that costs less than half a burger, it's not bad. The overall plot is nothing special, and I can't exactly say I didn't see the meta parts coming from miles away, but for what it's worth, it serves its purpose. All boss fights are some form of puzzle with different approaches/genres, which is neat. Final judgement: this game costs like 2 bucks max, and if you haven't tried the genre before, you have nothing to lose. Go for it.

softlocked myself twice in three hours yeah no i'd rather not