Soulbound: Online lands in Steam early access on 21 July (early on the 22nd for us in Australia), and it arrives with one of the stranger origin stories of the year: this pixel-art roguelite MMO used to be a blockchain game, and it gave that up to become a normal one.
What It Is
Developer SpiderWare describes it as fast bullet-heaven dungeon runs bolted onto a persistent MMO overworld: you take on roguelite dungeons solo or in three-player co-op, fight boss raids, craft gear from the loot, and build out a personal base between runs. The Steam page leans hard on the hybrid pitch, and the pixel art carries it: the world genuinely looks lovely, somewhere between Sea of Stars and a Saturday-morning anime.
About That Past
Soulbound began life as Worldwide Webb, a blockchain MMORPG, before that version was discontinued and the project relaunched as a straightforward game, as Massively Overpowered reports. No NFTs, no tokens, just a Steam release. SpiderWare says the game has already passed a million players across its earlier incarnations. We are usually allergic to crypto pivots, but walking away from the blockchain entirely is the version of the story we like: the game now has to survive on being fun.
Why We're Watching
The Next Fest demo offered around seven hours of play, which is a confident amount of game to hand out before an early access launch. The open questions are the usual ones for the genre mashup: whether the MMO layer adds anything beyond a lobby, and whether bullet-heaven combat stays interesting once the novelty wears off. We will find out on Tuesday; the demo made a decent case. Wishlist-and-watch territory.
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