Soulstone Survivors Interview – Game Smithing’s Allan Smith Talks Community, Unity Engine, and Snow-Covered Trees

With over one million players (and counting!), the world of Game Smithing’s action roguelike Soulstone Survivors is seeing its full 1.0 next month, on June 17.

Gamers Heroes recently spoke with Game Smithing’s Lead Developer Allan Smith to discuss Soulstone Survivors’ devout community, stellar use of the Unity engine, and even its nefarious snow-covered trees.

Soulstone Survivors Interview – Game Smithing’s Allan Smith Talks Community, Unity Engine, and Snow-Covered Trees

Gamers Heroes

Next month is the big month! I’m really appreciative of your time. 

I’ll just jump right into it, I love what I’m seeing – I know you just got back from gamescom! 

I’d love to know exactly how things went at the event.

Allan Smith

It was really cool!

I’m from Brazil – and the whole company is Brazilian.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to gamescom, especially in Brazil. I got to re-meet lot of people I knew from the Brazilian industry. 

It was really cool! We went to talk with Epic and whatnot, looking to bring some attention to the game with them.

I think it was really productive – it was really cool to rekindle so many old friendships.

Gamers Heroes

I saw that you’ve got a very, very active community, with a very active Reddit – close to 9,000 followers. That is no small feat!

What’s it been like working with community all these years?

Allan Smith

It has been great, but very challenging at the same time, you know?

When we started, it was basically the two of us. The game then started getting attention, and we started getting people ready on Reddit, on Discord, and other forums. 

For us –  from the very beginning – it was always very important to be as close as possible to the community, really listening for the feedback. 

We wanted to learn from players, see what they wanted, what their troubles were, and what they wanted to see more of or less of in the game. 

It’s always been a lot of effort, because it takes a lot of time to digest everything. However, it’s something that we see as kind of the core pillar that we need to live by! 

We learn so much from the players. It’s crazy that among the game evolved over time thanks to feedback.

Gamers Heroes

Absolutely!

That actually leads me to my next question: I saw something about overpowered snow-covered trees. Can you tell me a bit more about that? [laughs]

Allan Smith

This happens because, for the longest time, players had this sort of meme about how the strongest enemies are actually the trees! If you dodge a little bit weird and hit the trees, they’re absolutely immovable. 

So everything is fine, then you dodge into a tree – and things stop.

And there are a million attacks coming! So you slowly die, and you don’t even see why.

And there is a tree.

Gamers Heroes

It’s always in the details!

But on that note – taking the trees out of the equation…

Have there been any elements from the community, builds or something like that, that have truly surprised you over the years?

Allan Smith

It’s almost a daily occurrence! 

There are a few players that are extremely knowledgeable about the game. 

You know, they know. 

They understand the intricacies of every choice much better than I do. Sometimes I will speak to them and ask: 

“What are the meta builds right now?”

They will then give me this list of, “oh, you picked this and picked that.”

From there, I’ll try to build. It can sound a bit random when they say it; I’m like:

“I don’t know, is this the thing that works?”  

I then test it – and it’s insanely powerful! 

So I combined this room with that skill and this negative fact, leading to something I didn’t even expect!

Gamers Heroes

I did my homework on this one, and I saw you had a Game Jam out of a castle – that is too cool! I’m sure you gave the interns what for with some arrows. 

On that note, I saw that there was a party game and a gathering game that we’re toyed with. I don’t know how much you can talk about right now, but are there any insights from those two games that you’re looking to put into version 1.0?

Allan Smith

This was an amazing experience!

I’m so glad that we managed to get the whole team, because we’re all fully remote! This was an opportunity for people to meet for the first time, and was a really cool experience. 

Regarding the two games, they’re both projects that we would love to explore more. 

We as a team play a lot of party games – that’s why we wanted to get a co-op party game going, because it’s fun, right? We love those games!

The foraging game plays into more desire to bring more meaning to the world – so it’s not just the mindless skill. 

There is something there, but we just don’t explore too much in the game yet.

Gamers Heroes

I saw that somebody used Soulstone Survivors as a Unity case study! 

They talked all about and all the great things that you’re doing – it’s very impressive. I have a Bachelor’s in Arts, so it’s over my head, but I can definitely appreciate the level of detail, the care and the wizardry that went into it. 

What’s it been like working with this engine throughout development?

Allan Smith

Honestly, it’s been really good!

We’ve been working together and developing games for almost 15 years. We’ve made many, many mistakes over time, and that helped make Soulstone Survivors better.

We knew what sort of errors we could run into, and we knew the troubles we usually went through with other projects. 

For Soulstone Survivors, we actually have a very robust skill system. That’s what allows us with two or three people to make 500 skills that all have their own unique aspects and work in different ways. 

We rarely have bugs, and rarely need to rework systems!

I think that the experience we bring from other games really helped make development a lot faster for us!

Gamers Heroes

I saw that there are some Titanic Bosses that are making their way to Soulstone Survivors as part of version 1.0.

What’s been like designing each one?

Allan Smith

Honestly, it’s a big challenge. 

When you think of bosses, it’s easy to think of other games you play, right? 

I’m a big World of Warcraft fan, for example – the bosses are kind of the charm.

There are a million things you can look at, but when you bring it into the context of our game, there are specific challenges. That changes a lot of the dynamics of what you can do with a boss – or can’t do.

I cannot consider that the player needs to use a skill at a certain time, because they’re always using this skill, or I cannot think of how the movement will happen in different ways, because the player only has a dash. 

Then you bring the craziness of our game, where it can scale so much! A player might have zero dashes if he’s playing like the Death Knight, or it might have five dashes and he’s zooming around. 

How does the boss respond to this range of movement?

This honestly makes it very challenging. 

There were so many things we wanted to do with the bosses that we felt we couldn’t because the mechanics don’t really allow for it. 

It has been really challenging thinking of how to make them challenging and different from each other, but at the same time not impossible for certain characters or not make your run a specific build to kill this boss.

The game is all about experimentation and trying things out, so we didn’t want to punish players for that.

Gamers Heroes

Last question:

I know you’re almost at the finish line – June 17 is the big day!

Are there any last things you’re looking to do in the last month? 

Allan Smith

It’s crazy, but yeah, there is a lot we’re still working on. 

That’s why I might be rushing a lot this last few weeks – and probably the next month as well. 

Gamers Heroes

Like you said, I know this is a very, very busy time in the gaming industry.

I really appreciate your time, and, more importantly, I appreciate the energy, the passion, and the heart you provide! 

One can get Soulstone Survivors in Early Access via its official Steam page; note that the full release of Soulstone Survivors will come out for PC and consoles (PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S) June 17.

Feeling social? 

Be sure to follow Game Smithing via their official Twitter/X and YouTube social media channels, and can also join the conversation via the official Discord channel.

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