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Soulslinger: Envoy of Death is a roguelite FPS where you take the role of a torn man who took a deal with Death itself in hopes of seeing the love of his life again. In doing Death’s dirty deeds, you must rid the realm of Limbo of the influence of a terror group known as the Cartel. In this western-themed domain, you must thrash all sorts of enemies and bosses until there aren’t any left.

Considering that this is a roguelite, one could infer that the gameplay loop consists of a lot of replayed runs with gained upgrades. With five different persisting currencies/materials between runs, there is much to do in the lobby area called Haven for upgrading and changing your experience in the upcoming runs. Here, you can change your stats, add passive abilities, or craft new weapons to use.

In each run, you go through various different arenas to fight hordes of enemies. At the end of each one, you get to choose a portal which determines the rewards you’ll get at the end of the next. There’s a large pool of different rewards, and you’ll have to pick from 3-5 of them in each level. They can consist of various elemental essences, persistent resources, or the portal might take you somewhere else like a shopping area or upgrading area. Overall, the progression of each run is pretty engaging, following the format of a few levels, then a miniboss, more levels, then a boss that can progress you to the next area. After you clear a major boss for the first time, fighting it becomes optional in any future runs. If you choose to face it again, you can get a ton of rewards for it, but you can move on with what you previously had if you’d like.

Most commonly, the reward for completing a level will be what’s called an essence. Such incentives have a variant for several different elements, such as fire, blood, shadow, electricity, and poison. Collecting an essence gives you a choice of three perks which have many different styles of effects. Some might give you a usable skill. Some skills imbue the bullets with whatever the element might be, such as a fire essence making bullets explode into flames or a blood essence granting a damage boost with lifesteal. One of the other types of skills has a more miscellaneous style. For example, the poison one leaves behind a dummy that explodes into an acidic torrent upon death, but the shadow one creates two spectral gunslingers that create homing projectiles whenever you fire any of your guns. I found the latter very useful for clearing levels very quickly, yet still found a lot of use for most of the abilities.

The pool of weapons that you can get throughout each run starts off at being only two, however recipes for crafting more will be obtained over time. You start with a standard revolver and double-barrel shotgun, and most of the craftable weapons are variants of the two styles. For example, there’s a revolver with more ammo and a special effect that occurs upon the use of skills. My personal favorite is called the Night Quartet, which acts as a shotgun which you don’t need to reload. It instead uses an overheat system, where you can’t shoot too fast or else you’ll be penalized with a long cooldown. When I played, though, I didn’t find much incentive to craft too many weapons, as the permanent upgrades that use the same resources seemed much more worthwhile in the long run.

The conflicts that Soulslinger tosses you into involve an enemy group called the Cartel, which has a plethora of different foes at their disposal. They are generally themed based off of the area that they’re from, so the first has mainly different skeletons, the second has cowboys, etc. There’s a large theme of undead enemies, likely because of the game taking place in a sort of afterlife. Something I found, though, is that very few of the enemies actually have a unique strategy required. I found it very effective to simply run away from the enemies in a circle, facing backwards to shoot them. As long as you can prioritize the ones that move faster than you, most won’t stand a chance. The only thing that puts a stunt on this hack is that the level geometry may require you to avoid some obstacle or jump over a pit. That said, I definitely have to give some credit to the level design; the environments are pretty good if you have the time to take them in.

I must admit that the graphics are something impressive, and the environments are elegant enough within the game’s style to make them fit so well. The sound design is impressive too, with sound effects that are well chosen and placed. Musically, it isn’t mind-blowing, but the songs have a nice western vibe with a blend of acoustic and electric rhythm and lead guitars. The controls catch on well, make sense, and don’t cause any issues. I also didn’t personally encounter any game-breaking glitches, though some collisions feel off and annoying.

For the most part, I found little moral issues with Soulslinger. Obviously, the morality of the story is up to interpretation, considering how the premise is your deal with Death embodied. To nobody's surprise, violence is seen throughout the whole gameplay loop; however, I don’t recall seeing any blood or gore. Foul language is very mild, with words you’d find in a PG rated movie used sparingly. Something that caught me a little off guard, though, was that the only prominent female character has a quite skintight suit on and a notable lack of a bra. It’s nothing harsh, but there’s no reason not to smoothen her model a little.

Soulslinger makes the repetitive nature of roguelite games a fairly unique experience each run. I would recommend giving it a try, and think it to be worth the price. It’s up to the beholder how many hours can be gotten out of it; I feel that this title can keep it fresh well enough.