I recently put about 30hrs into the new early access horror-soulslike Withering Realms, the sort-of-sequel to Withering Rooms. While Withering Rooms was a mix of Luigi's Mansion and Dark Souls I, Withering Realms takes much more inspiration from older horror games like Silent Hill, with slightly faster combat closer to what you see in Dark Souls III, but not nearly as complicated or punishing.
The developer has stated you don't need to play or understand the story of Withering Rooms to play this game, which is true, but if you have played it, there's lots of payoff because you'll have a better understanding of the world and recognize some elements that reappear in this game.
Story-wise, the plot is fairly straightforward, with the world in a sort of apocalypse setting. Something called the "occult event" occurred years prior to when the game starts, which unleashed strange magic that created undead and magic. You play as a ghost girl, Clover, who controls a doll which acts as your actual character. Your objectives are pretty simple: finding the girl's father, and ultimately, a solution to the state of the world.
Difficulty & Combat
When I describe this game as a souls-like, I'm doing so because the game has i-frame dodge mechanics, precise hitboxes, sort of tough bosses, refilling healing items, etc. It is a fairly hard game, but I don't think it's as unapproachable as something like Elden Ring or Dark Souls III. There are difficulty options to make it easier, and some hidden in-game ways to make the game much harder.
The feedback about the game's combat being janky is accurate. The best way I can describe it is a mix between the clunkiness of Dark Souls I and the strange floaty feeling of Dark Souls II. However, bosses and most mobs don't have complicated movesets. Dodging around feels fairly responsive, and enemy hitboxes aren't terrible. Where you run into issues is certain weapons just won't hit certain mobs because the precise hitboxes mean your weapon will miss them by a few pixels.
Since it's still early access, you'll run into strange difficulty spikes and fall-offs. Some of the endgame bosses feel like their health and damage values are way out of line with the rest of the game's bosses, but this is stuff that'll be fixed or addressed in the future.
On the upside, healing is very straightforward. The ghost girl will just give the doll healing potions when its health hits zero, meaning that as long as you have some, you won't die no matter how hard an enemy hits.
As far as combat options go, they all seem quite viable to me, with ranged obviously being easiest for certain encounters, but electing to go all melee or all ranged won't handicap you.
There are some difficulty options in settings, though I didn't mess around with them. Normal mode means you'll keep all XP on death, while on hard, you lose it, but enemies aren't buffed or anything.
World & Atmosphere
Atmospherically, my favorite part of this game has to be the lighting and sound design. Lighting in dark areas feels satisfying, as different light sources give completely different moods to the room you're in. There's even a night mode you can enter locations in, although this drastically increases the difficulty and isn't something you're expected to do until late-game.
The soundtrack is also perfect and easily among my favorites this decade. I can't actually find the full OST on YouTube yet for whatever reason, but the OST of the main town, Penwyll, is pretty good and you can listen without any spoilers.
https://youtu.be/GWbVe6PfVIo?si=2hBp3oIRhOTfnhrw
Withering Realms has a surprisingly large set of environments compared to the first game. There are huge open fields, graveyards, caves, mansions, labs, and even a few procedurally generated dungeons. Interior locations are generally handmade, while more boring areas like open spaces and dungeons are always randomized. Personally I found the randomness to be a bit interesting, as you'll likely die a lot in this game, and with the world not being huge, it makes sense to switch it up a bit.
My personal favorite location is the basement of this creepy lab / hospital building you encounter early game that's flooded with this really gross-looking water.
Mechanics
This game uses a fairly simple upgrade system that you've seen in most RPGs and soulslikes, but with a strange twist. You get XP by killing mobs and bosses (none from quests), but instead of just upgrading the stats of your doll, you have to upgrade his body, left arm, and right arm. This is less annoying than it sounds, as the cost to upgrade each part is scaled independently. The arms share four damage-type stats, while the body handles things like health and stamina.
A big innovation in this genre is that weapon upgrade materials are separated by type, meaning you have materials for strength, ranged, and magic weapons. Fortunately, you can freely reset your doll's stats, and even refund weapon upgrades. Armor and other equipment aren't upgradeable. These two systems mean that changing builds has almost no friction. Unlike in most souls-likes, you can switch between melee and ranged builds without sinking huge amounts of resources and worrying about being underpowered later.
Bosses & Mob Variety
Mob variety is generally regarded as one of the most important parts of any souls-like. Seeing new mobs in a new area is always interesting due to most actually being new enemies and not just reskins.
I don't want to spoil how the enemies look, but below is one of my favorites, as seeing them for the first time is a big part of exploration. But I can say the categories of mobs are pretty extensive, including things like undead, ghosts, monsters, humans, and robot / construct things.
Final Take
Overall, Withering Realms is a solid 8.5/10 game with a lot of potential. I'm surprised how stable it's been for me, even being an early access game. The story, level design, and overall atmosphere are already perfect. I recommend picking it up if you like soulslikes or horror games, just don't expect it to be polished for quite a long time. The developer has a roadmap out, with 1.0 being targeted for Q2 of 2027. I don't think it being early access is a hindrance in this case.
