It is a run and gun game influenced by Liero and Scorched Earth, combined with elements from Counter-Strike and Worms.

Soldat's head developer changed over time: Michał "MM" Marcinkowski led the project until 2008, followed until 2010 by Nick "EnEsCe" Cooper.

The significant release changes were "startup" modifications in the M82A1 Barrett, M72 LAW, and Combat Knife, as well as minor bugs with flags and maps.

In addition to a long list of bug fixes, major new features in this version include in game radio commands, TeamSpeak2 integration and animated GIF scenery.

It also adds a new anti-cheat solution, new maps, support for widescreen resolutions, the ability to ban by hardwareID and many in-game improvements.

1.7.0 introduced some bigger changes: It included a new OpenGL-based renderer with improved performance and major graphical updates.

[6] During its first hours on Steam, Soldat hit close to 400 active players at the same time, getting over 130 user reviews with a general score of "Very Positive".

On May 26, 2020 the source code of an unfinished future version 1.8 of Soldat was released under MIT license on GitHub.

These boots allow the soldier to fly for a relatively short time, before needing to automatically regenerate their fuel.

Some servers enable temporary-lasting power-ups that grant multiplied damage (Berserker), invisibility (Predator mode), a flamethrower along with temporary invincibility (FlameGod), or Cluster Grenades (which temporarily replace regular grenades with three of more powerful, modified versions) or even a Bulletproof Vest (effectiveness of the vest depends on the distance from the firer of the bullet, and the vest slowly decreases as it soaks up damage, disappearing after absorbing a certain amount of damage, though there is no time limit).

Health crates (known in the game as "Medikits") are available in many locations for healing injury back to 100% no matter how much a player is injured.

Upon death and after waiting for a server-specified amount of time (on average 5 seconds), players re-spawn and may choose another weapon—this cycle repeats for the duration of the map, unless Survival Mode is enabled (in which case a spawning system similar to Counter-Strike is used).

After a certain allotted time (on average 15 or 20 minutes), the map changes and scores are reset as players continue in another round.

Besides its ragdoll physics, the game's engine, written in the Borland Delphi programming language, employs realistic concepts such as momentum and gravity.

This has led to the existence of an entire section of the official community message board devoted to discussion about the weapons' game balance.

Polygons can be given special attributes to simulate lethal death pits, icy terrain, health-regenerative platforms, and more.

Some servers enable the powerful stationary M2 turret specified by particular maps (usually CTF and INF) which players can man.

There are many fan web-pages serving a multitude of purposes and tastes, mainly different clans for the official tournaments the game's community sponsors.

Around the time of Soldat v1.3.1, most R/S matches developed a certain "gentlemen's rule" that a player should not capture the flag unless the opposing team is defeated.

"Capping" or "Running" in an R/S server is usually considered bad etiquette, because it effectively defeats the other team without having to kill them.

Eurogamer's Jim Rossignol named Soldat among a top 20 list of Summer of PC freeware games in 2006.