Rivaling The Forest and Rust, Steam hidden gem Soulmask gets big, free DLC

If you want to lose yourself in a survival game, the surface-level pitch for Soulmask is pretty irresistible: the world is massive, you can create custom buildings, and developer Campfire promises a play time of some 500 hours. Heck, even the free demo, released at the top of 2024, was 40 hours long. Despite 'very positive' Steam reviews, however, the initial fervor around Soulmask has died off a little. At peak, it pulled in more than 45,000 concurrent players – right now, it's still doing admirably, but the simultaneous player base averages around 3,000. An alternative spin on the genre pioneered by Rust, The Forest, and The Long Dark, if you want a unique, hidden-gem survival game, Soulmask is mounting a resurgence with new, free DLC.

So, what makes Soulmask different? The clue is in the name. The eponymous Soulmasks are magical items that can extract certain abilities and essences from the game's NPCs. If you recruit a villager who has a special characteristic or skill, you can absorb that into your mask, granting the skill unto yourself – the more people you meet and the more you explore the world, the greater range of buffs, talents, and traits you have to customize your masks.

Conversely, you can recruit NPCs to be part of your tribe, and farm out some of the typical survival game busywork to them – using a command menu, you can direct your citizens to chop wood, gather resources, and maintain your base, leaving you free to complete quests and design your own buildings and decorations.

Combat in Soulmask is somewhere between a classic hack-and-slash – think old-school God of War, or Bayonetta – and Fromsoftware-style parrying and swiping. There are 75 fighting styles, eight weapon types, and, as well as quests, you can also compete in PvP. You can even hunt, farm, and craft your own gear and supplies.

Soulmask entered Steam Early Access at the end of May 2024. Now, to mark the game's first anniversary, Campfire has released a free DLC that includes a new, underwater zone where you can explore shipwrecks and recover lost relics. There's also an additional mask that gives you better reconnaissance abilities, allowing you to detect threats and scan enemy's stats from a distance.

If you create a custom building, you can now save the blueprint and recall it at any time, using your villagers to construct your personal creations without having to redraw the plans over and over. Once you have multiple bases and homesteads, you can also install a powered zipline to move resources and supplies between them more quickly.

Revealed just ahead of the game's first birthday, Soulmask's Golden Legend DLC will be available free for all players from Thursday June 5. Campfire says that the building game will leave early access and hit 1.0 later this year, and that its full launch will coincide with a new, Egyptian-themed expansion. If you want to try Soulmask out yourself, just go here.

Otherwise, try some of the other best open-world games, or maybe the best sandbox games on PC today.

You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We've also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.