Soul's Remnant

Soul's Remnant, also known as SRO for its former name, is a 2D MMORPG developed by chaomoon. The gameplay is classless, designed with flexibility and strategization in mind, allowing the player to specialize into skills as desired. The gameplay focuses on grinding monsters and harvesting materials for XP and resources, with various crafting mechanisms built in to assist progression and play. The game is only playable through public and private tests.

Soul's Remnant began life on April 16th, 2016, under the name untitled. chaomoon has continued to work on development in between other projects. Chaomoon later adopted the name Soul's Remnant Online or SRO, occasionally also referring to the game as simply Soul's Remnant or SR. Chaomoon eventually settled on the name Soul's Remnant, abbreviated as SRO. The game has primarily seen activity during public tests, of which there have been 5 to date starting in 2018.

Soul's Remnant's artstyle emulates 8-bit graphics, with significant pixelization, with significant pixelization and few colors. Soul's Remnant's soundtrack is predominantly atmospheric, designed as background music for specific settings, such as biomes or bossfights.

Gameplay

Main article: →Gameplay
SRO's gameplay mainly consists of fighting monsters and gathering materials, both of which acrue both XP and resources. These resources are then used in crafting or sold on an open market.

Fighting

Enemies can be fought using either basic melee attacks or skills. In SRO, a player can build spellcasting builds with skills like Frost or Gravity Well, melee builds with skills like Heavy Strike or Upward Strike, ranged builds with skills like Ninja Throw, or support builds with skills like Revitalize or Gravity Well. Additionally, the player can also play multiple roles, as SRO is classless.

Enemies, when killed, will drop XP and resources. Nearly every monster will drop Soul Crystals (SC), which serve as a basic currency. Monsters will also occasionally drop essence of the associated monster, allowing the player to gain knowledge of the various monsters in the game and even tame them.

Gathering

Materials such as herbs, ores, and wood do not drop from mobs and instead are harvested from sites in the world. Plants and ore deposits can be found using the Search skill and harvested using the Herbalism and Mining skills respectively. Trees can be harvested using the Herbalism skill. Plants and trees will drop herbs and wood, along with seeds and saplings, which can be used to plant new plants and trees which will grow over time. Ore deposits will drop ore and either crystals or stone, depending on the ore type.

Crafting

Materials and resources can be used in crafting, which allows for both crafting new items and learning new skills. The Cooking, Alchemy, and Blacksmith skills all assist with crafting by unlocking more complex recipes and increasing success rates on learned existing recipes. Recipes can drop from monsters, especially bosses and dungeons.

Development

Soul's Remnant currently runs using a client designed in GameMaker Studio and a server running Java. The game is solely developed by chaomoon, with art assets being drawn by chaomoon and by other artists based on commission.

Chaomoon has said that she aims to test annually.

History

Main article: →History of Soul's Remnant
Soul's Remnant began development in April of 2016, under the name untitled. chaomoon, inspired by titles like Mabinogi and Maple Story, began working on the game sporadically, and continues to this day.

The pre-alpha test opened in 2018.

The alpha test opened in 2019. This test shipped with most of the basic gameplay and crafting system. This test also included a very basic story in the form of mysterious notes which would very occasionally drop from mobs. This test featured randomly generated maps and a depth system, with each depth corresponding to a specific biome.

The beta test opened in 2020. This test did away with the randomly generated maps and depth system, instead using a pre-generated map. This update also added Caves, Deep Caves, and a permanent dungeon entrance. This update also did away with biome dungeons, instead using the same dungeon background and setting for all dungeons. This update also added the housing system.

The Christmas 2021 challenge opened before Christmas 2021. This update themed the game around Christmas, with Santa Hat on Slime and monsters dropping Candy Cane and Gingerbread Figure.

The 2022 public test opened in 2022. This update added dungeon tickets and revamped trading by allowing merchants to convert soul crystal to XP at a one-to-one ratio.

The first season opened on December 22nd, 2023. It is planned to complete on January 12th, 2024. This update shifted the game from Gamemaker Studio to the Godot game engine, which was one of the reasons that this season was delayed by a week, beginning o the 22nd rather than the 15th as had been planned to that point.