Over the years, the Souls genre has become increasingly popular. FromSoftware created a challenging genre with engaging and addicting gameplay. Of all the “Soulslike” titles that have come out of the woodwork over recent years, Deathbound has been one of the more intriguing entries I have tried. When trying out the Deathbound demo on Steam, I was met with an interesting world, gameplay with an engaging twist, and unique mechanics. For all the good that the Deathbound demo presents to its players, there are only a few rough edges that can sometimes be frustrating.
An Intriguing World
The world of Deathbound is an interesting amalgamation of fantasy character tropes, storytelling, and lore with the architecture of a modern city. The demo takes place in a football stadium, where players will encounter various enemies, mostly humanoid monsters. The map feels very interconnected, as shortcuts can often be unlocked, leading the player back to various checkpoints and safe areas of the stadium. This depth of interconnectedness feels as though it comes from a high degree of thoughtfulness from the developers, leading to an engaging level design rather than a quick and linear experience. Sometimes, in Deathbound, players will come across memory echoes, which can be absorbed by specific characters and used for trait points.
One of the most interesting mechanics in Deathbound is the player characters. In most Souls Games, players level up an individual player character around traits and builds; in Deathbound, players can swap between four prebuilt player characters. Starting, the player can access a swordsman, a spear woman, an agile fighter, and a ranged attacker. With a specific button input, the player can swap between these four characters at any moment. As mentioned earlier, players can find memory echoes with these characters; when found, these echoes will show the remnants of an event that had happened, allowing the player a trait point to upgrade their character. These four characters are equipped in a diamond and can be swapped out, as more characters can be unlocked throughout the game. In the demo, players can unlock a high-pose hammer-wielding warrior, with more unlockable characters in the full game.
Unique Customization and Engaging Combat
The customization in Deathbound comes from how players assign traits to upgrade their characters, level up, and place characters in their diamonds. The trait points from memory echoes can allow players to pick an upgrade that will give some buff or effect to specific characters. Like most Souls games, a currency can be used to upgrade character stats, such as souls. In Deathbound, this currency can be used to upgrade stats in a skill tree. This tree allows players to upgrade general stats for each character and stats for each character. Buffs and debuffs can form when placing characters onto specific spots in the diamond. This encourages the player to play with the slots equipped with the characters. Some characters being placed close together can form a strong buff between two characters or a strong debuff. It also encourages players to pick and choose, as sometimes, taking a debuff between two characters leads to a strong buff between others.
In combat, each character has an individual health pool and stamina pool. A character’s stamina is tied to their health, so their maximum stamina can never be higher than their current health. Health can be returned to a character through items and combat. When using one character, dealing damage to enemies can add health back to characters that the player currently isn’t playing as. It encourages players to switch between characters occasionally; additionally, there is a sync bar. This sync bar can be filled by defeating enemies; players can perform a powerful sync attack when filled. Sync attacks can be accomplished by swapping characters mid-attack. All these elements lead to fun gameplay that constantly keeps players on their toes.
Deathbound is mostly filled with fun and interesting mechanics. There are very few things about the game that I found to be frustrating. The game’s combat does feel a bit floaty and unnatural at the beginning, but that’s something that the player quickly gets accustomed to, and it fades into the background. Sometimes, textures will look rough, and assets will freeze in the air, but these rare instances never affect a player’s gameplay. The only truly frustrating thing about the game is the traps. Deathbound feels filled to the brim with traps. There are spikes everywhere that can cause blood debuffs, exploding tanks that enemies will often smack in combat, and places in walled areas that spray fire. Not only are these traps everywhere, but they’re usually small, or their textures are so mixed in with the environment that they’re hard to spot. These traps, especially those that spray fire, often throw a wrench in one’s exploration, leading to frustration. Despite the frustration that some of these traps lead to, I enjoyed my time with Deathbound; it was a fun and engaging experience. It introduced new concepts and ideas into the genre I hadn’t seen before. I’m looking forward to Deathbounds full release and seeing where it goes next.
