The Game Mechanics of Soul Knight fall into a role-playing category. In this game, mechanics include movement, fighting enemies, using virtual currency, interacting with objects, etc. The game allows players to do everything through the controls.
Movement
The player moves their character with a joystick in the controls. Moving one's character allows them to go through rooms, evade attacks, attack different enemies, etc. Players can increase the speed of their character's movements with weapons, the Plant in the Living Room, or taking Buffs and Drinks. Some weapons may cause the character to move upon usage.
Fighting enemies
Players can fight and defeat enemies with weapons by dealing damage to them. When a certain amount of damage is done, the enemy will die. The shooting mechanism of weapons is automatic: it will always aim for the closest enemy. The targeted enemy is indicated by a red circle around the enemy's feet. In order to move from one room to the next, the player has to defeat every enemy in the room they are currently in, if there are any.
Stats
Every character has their own set of stats, being Health, Armor (sometimes known as Shield), Energy, Melee Damage and Crit Chance.
Health, armor, and energy are shown on a bar in the top left screen.
An example of the Health, Armor and Energy HUD.
- Health
: Reduced by being hit by enemy attacks. If it reaches 0, the player dies and has the option to revive. Healed by most potions and certain skills, weapons and Buffs. Health has a maximum, however. All characters start a run with full health, and a character cannot heal beyond that maximum. This cap can be increased by the Health Buff and certain weapons. - Armor
: Reduced by being hit by enemy attacks, must be fully depleted before attacks can damage the player's health. Starts regenerating at a pace of 1 Armor per second after 5 seconds of not being damaged. There is a maximum amount of Armor a character can regenerate. All characters start a run will full shield. Armor can be regenerated faster with the Armor Boost status effect or the Strong Body condition. - Energy
: Reduced by using most weapons, acts as a sort of "ammo" supply. Every weapon has a certain Energy cost, the amount of energy the character uses every time they shoot the weapon. If the remaining amount of Energy is smaller than the Energy cost of the weapon, the weapon isn't allowed to shoot or loses great part of its functionality. Energy can be recovered through the Statue of the Priest, certain skills, weapons and buffs, Energy Stone and most potions. - Melee Damage : When using any weapon that isn't a Melee weapon, pressing the attack button when near an enemy will cause the character to do a melee swipe dealing as much damage as this stat indicates. Also says how much damage the character will deal with an empty hand.
- Crit Chance : This value gives a crit chance buff to every weapon the character picks up, which isn't visible from the tooltip. Every point of this stat is 1% crit chance added.
Virtual currency usage
Currency in the game includes gems and gold. During a run, players can interact with objects, spending gold, and receive items or weapons in return. At the end of a run, gold is converted to gems. Gems are used for buying characters and skins, upgrading said characters, using the Gashapon Machine, buying pets, buying items in the Living Room, etc.
Interactions
Interacting with certain things can trigger an effect. They may include a character or NPCs' speech, receiving resources, spending money, etc. In a run, many things require players to pay gold in exchange for something they may need. To interact with something, the player must press the fire button when nearby an interactive object. Said fire button will now resemble an exclamation mark, indicating that they can interact with whatever is nearby.
Skills
Every character has their own unique set of two or three skills, one unlocked by buying the character and the other has to be bought. Skills can be used when they're ready and require a cooldown time afterwards, shown by the button with a cartoony lightning bolt on it. Every character's skill is upgraded when that character reaches level 5.
Weapons
Combat makes up most of the Soul Knight experience. It is unsafe to go alone, as bare fists will usually not be enough to fight off all the enemies. Weapons make this task easier. Every weapon has an attack that is triggered when the fire button is pressed, the button with a targeting reticle on it. Once used, that weapon will consume the allotted amount of energy and attack the targeted enemy. Almost all weapons are unique in its own way. There are 399 weapons as of now in this game, meaning the experience can be extremely diverse depending on what weapons were used.
Every character starts with one weapon, their Starter Weapon. Any weapon on the ground can be picked up by pressing the fire button (which will be replaced with the interact button) when nearby it. All characters can hold up to two weapons unless the Extra Weapon Buff is present. Trying to pick up a third will drop the weapon currently equipped. Players can switch freely between their two weapons, and pressing the fire button will only fire the currently equipped weapon, wth the only exception being Knight's Superior Fire skill, which allows him to fire all currently equipped weapons.
All weapons have a set of stats, despite the fact that stats are rarely the way the player values a weapon:
- Damage : This is the amount of damage that every bullet/hit will apply to enemies. This can be misleading, as weapons like shotguns have multiple bullets that in total can deal a lot of damage, but new players might discard them as the damage stat, indicating the damage of each individual bullet, is very low. Also, the damage of secondary bullets, like if every bullet were to split into multiple smaller and weaker ones, will not be shown, and neither will the damage of the bullets in secondary modes like that of the Varkolyn Assault Rifle. This stat might have two values and a slash in this manner "x/x", indicating there is a certain factor that can make its damage vary. This might have two values separated by an approximate sign in this manner "x~x". This indicates that charging the weapon will change the attack value.
- Energy Cost : This is the amount of Energy that will be consumed whenever this weapon is fired. If the player has less Energy than the value, the weapon is either unusable or loses most of its functionality.
- Crit Chance : This is the % chance of every one of the weapon's bullets dealing a critical hit to the hit enemy. A critical hit, under normal conditions, means the weapon will deal double damage. Otherwise, it will have another effect, mainly applying status effects to enemies. Sometimes the weapon cannot crit or doesn't have crit chance at all. Some even have negative values in this stat. This stat can be shown as two values separated by an approximate sign in this manner "x~x". This means crit chance will increase with the weapon's charge.
- Inaccuracy : Despite it being shown as a targeting reticle indicating it should be accurate, this stat does the opposite: it describes in what angle the bullets can spread (e.g. a weapon with 50 inaccuracy will shoot bullets in any direction within a 50º cone), indicating how likely the bullets are to miss at long range. This value is the highest in shotgun weapons, and the lowest in sniper weapons.
All of these stats can be increased/decreased by certain buffs and attachments.