- Joined
- Jun 5, 2026
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- 4
What is Trail of Soup?
Trail of Soup is a 1-4 player roguelike dungeon crawler that takes place in a procedurally generated world. You'll be dropped off in the wilderness and must travel through a series of randomly generated levels in search of the fabled "end of the game" while building your character and dealing with a challenging creature set. There's wildlife, monsters, and sentient factions like orcs, trolls, humans and ogres that players must deal with, all the while balancing limited resources and managing your food supply so as not to starve to death before reaching the final destination. Players will encounter outposts and villages belonging to sentient beings, battles and skirmishes between monsters and animals, and random events scattered throughout their travels.
Some trolls guarding an outpost, an example of a structure you can find in the world.
ToS is a mashup of these three games:
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - The map borrows a lot of mechanics and concepts from DCSS, far too many to count. If you have not played it, and you are into roguelikes, go. Go now. (And then come back)
Oregon Trail - ToS is inspired by the concept of a ragtag group setting off on a journey together, stocking up on supplies, and managing limited resources whilst traveling great distances across varied landscapes and challenges.
Slay the Spire - StS is a roguelike card battler. While we are not a card battler, the structure is similar. You will start with a rather blank character and must use the random things that you find, attempt to create a build strong enough to survive, navigate through several available routes, deal with random enemies and events, and if you die, you're dead.
An example of a populated map. Each level will feature a different variety of creatures and monsters that players need to battle through, or navigate around, to proceed.
ToS will feature monster infighting; this troll warrior attempted to engage a group of deer and is about to get pounded into the dirt.
There is a focus on effective combat and fighting monsters in ToS, but, there are also multiple kinds of items and decision-making spread across a few different systems that the player must balance to survive effectively.
Players will start by choosing a race, each with subtle differences.
Initially, there will be four races, each with different stats and perks, and their own individual pros and cons.
Players can also learn a profession, which are mostly based on collecting items you would naturally come across anyway, with increasing perks and benefits as players invest in them.
Metalworker: Gathers rocks and metal things, creates weapons and armor, and other rocklike and metallic things.
Survivalist: Skilled with wood, leather, crafting useful items and cooking.
Alchemist/Herbalist: Cares about plants and small animals for creating potions, chemical weapons and other slightly magical things.
Artificer: Collects random bits of everything to create magical objects used to evoke spell-like effects.
Monsters will each have their own set of skills, and will be dangerous and numerous, so of course, you'll have several different options to defend yourself.
Melee: The classic weapon swinging build.
Spellcasting: Players can invest in intellect and find spellbooks to learn how to cast spells.
Ranged: Bows, slings, javelins and stones, there are a variety of ranged weapons players can use to engage at a distance.
Artificer: Artificers can create and utilize enchanted objects like rods, wands, staves and trinkets that emit magical powers.
Players will need to make do with what they find throughout the world, and having a variety of options allows for a gameplay experience that's a little different every time.
Wild goats flee an angry pack of wolves and a scorpion who decided to join in.
Additionally, players must feed they asses.
Hunger: The player characters will also experience hunger, and will expend energy doing exhausting things like casting spells and using abilities. Using more powerful spells and abilities takes a considerable amount of effort and requires a solid food supply to sustain. Players need enough food to avoid starving, but also enough to support their groups needs.
The world is also filled with several different types of consumable items, which will help players overcome challenges, and may be necessary for more difficult encounters.
Consumable Items: Limited use items are an important resource and must be utilized correctly to survive. These include potions, scrolls, evocable items, ranged and thrown items, and other random usable things like campfires and trinkets. Without their effects, players may not be strong enough to overcome the powerful monsters and unexpected events they may encounter.
Beyond items, the randomly generated world itself must be navigated, with each level branching into several available paths.
Navigation: As players move from map to map, there will be an intermediate area between each level that will allow players to vote on which direction to proceed. This will allow your group to travel with intention, taking a route that your team is properly equipped to deal with, and avoid areas filled with threats you may not be able to handle. Some information regarding the biome and inhabitants of the upcoming areas will be available to allow players to make these choices.
And of course, it wouldn’t be a caravan unless players were able to enlist the help of the strange creatures and natives they come across.
Taming and Hiring: Players will be able to tame, hire, bribe, or otherwise enlist the help of various creatures and entities throughout the world to aid them in their quest. These will likely require food to sustain, and may not be able to be controlled directly, so remember to recruit wisely, and take proper care of your companions.
Migrating herds of goats and bison traveling through a randomly generated map. There will be all manner of strange creatures and events to discover.
The goal of Trail of Soup is to create a challenging roguelike dungeon crawling experience that you can play as a party game with your friends, with every playthrough being unique, and each questionable decision made ultimately leading to your parties demise, or maybe even sweet victory.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and I hope you are excited to try ToS, once it exists.
Currently we're a team of two, myself and one awesome programmer.
We are looking to hire on 1 additional programmer to help with some of the more technical aspects of the map. Looking for someone experienced and familiar backend mechanics for more complex item and ability design, and most importantly, knowledge in creating custom UI to support inventory and ability management.
And.. more stuff, probably. Please send me a DM mentioning your experience and previous projects, if this interests you.
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. Also, since the map allows hiring companions, it would be cool if one could grant control of one their companions to a dead buddy.
