Sodaman is a roguelike bullet heaven similar to games like Vampire Survivors. Throughout each run, players accumulate various chosen upgrades that synergize and exponentially increase their power, all in the chase for the coveted “god run” where a nigh-invincible player dominates hordes of encroaching enemies. While most games in the genre tend to occupy the fantasy realm, Sodaman differs thanks to its vibrant, futuristic cyberpunk setting featuring guns, cybernetics, and sci-fi environments. Although Sodaman stands out aesthetically, its gameplay innovations are where the differences truly shine.
Game Rant sat down with the Sodaman team for an interview where game designer Arif Can Üçer, concept artist Utku Karan Saat, and pixel artist Asrın Sıla Şimşek weighed in on their unique approach to a bullet heaven game. In particular, they spoke about one of Sodaman‘s best qualities: players can manually aim, reload, and dodge during combat, which leads to more engaging gameplay than is typically found among its peers.
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Sodaman Gives Players More Control
Sodaman began development early in the genre’s heyday when Vampire Survivors was a viral hit that introduced a sizeable audience to the concept. The team soon noticed one drawback to the standard bullet heaven approach: players tended to only control where the character walked but had little agency in action. As a response, Sodaman cleverly focused on letting players aim, reload, and dodge attacks more similarly to a top-down action game. Üçer notes:
“We started developing Sodaman about two years ago, around the time when bullet heavens were becoming popular, like Vampire Survivors. It was still in its early days back then, maybe with just one or two more games following that style.
In these games, you just walk around, and you don’t really need to aim, shoot, use skills, or dash. But for Sodaman, we wanted to make the bullet hell, bullet heaven genre more active for the player. Something like Enter the Gungeon—not as hard as Enter the Gungeon or Hades, but still giving the player more control over the game. Of course, you can always play with auto-aim and auto-shoot enabled, just moving and dashing. And I think a lot of players play the game with those features on.
For some builds, it’s actually better to play without auto-aim and auto-shoot enabled. For example, with snipers, you need to line up enemies to take advantage of piercing shots. So, it really depends on the build you’re going for and the strategy you want to use.”
That said, Sodaman includes a powerful auto-aim feature that can do the work for the player. In fact, most players will probably opt to leave auto-aim on most of the time, but certain builds benefit from taking manual control. For example, using the sniper rifle, players may want to manually aim its penetrating shots to eliminate rows of enemies carefully. This is a tactical consideration seldom seen in bullet heaven games.
Sodaman’s Enemy Design Benefits From Player Agency
This action-oriented approach also inspired the game’s more engaging enemy design. In most popular bullet heaven titles, damage is typically dealt through contact damage upon touching enemies. Instead, Sodaman‘s enemies mostly inflict telegraphed attacks, giving players the chance to skillfully dodge out of the way. Saat spoke about Sodaman‘s enemy design:
“We designed the enemies with a different approach compared to many other Vampire Survivors-like games. In those games, enemies usually just deal damage by touching the player. We didn’t want that. We wanted the enemies to have attack animations so that the player could actively avoid them, giving more control and involvement in the gameplay. So, most of the enemy designs, like their attack patterns and behaviors, were made with these parameters in mind. We still wanted the enemies to be challenging, but we wanted the player to feel like they have control over their actions, not just relying on auto-aim and auto-shoot.”
With an easily toggleable auto-aim, an active dodge system, and responsive enemy designs, Sodaman is shaping up to be a roguelike bullet heaven game that shakes up well-established genre paradigms for the better. Hopefully, more player agency during combat will become an increasing sight in the ever-popular genre.
Bullet Hell
Action
Roguelike
- Released
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February 17, 2025
- Developer(s)
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Tape Corps
- Publisher(s)
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GameDev.ist