Xbox Indie Review: Soul

Soul reached out with its warm fuzzy ball of light and sucked me in before I had any idea what it was even about.  I feel superficial to say I like a game because of its style or because of the graphics, but Soul’s aesthetics are so charming and endearing, yet grimy and intimidating, that they captivated me before I could finish the first level.

Soul opens with a person dying in the grungiest, most decrepit, rundown excuse for a hospital ever conceived.  Flies hover around the toilet, clothes hang out of ramshackle furniture haphazardly and the walls are barely covered by a coat of cracked lime-green paint.  Out of that fresh carcass emerges its soul, represented by a glowing blue orb, which is probably quite intimidated by its oppressive, seedy environment.  Trapped in some form of dreary limbo, the goal of the game is to guide the soul to a heaven, a task made more imposing due to a network of mazes, puzzles and obstacles that lie in your path, not to mention the black oil demons that arise from the floors and ceilings to devour the poor little soul in one wide-mouthed gulp.

The sinister-looking demons are just one of many impressive graphical nuances in the game.  They are so well-animated and emerge from surfaces so quickly like evil fluid waves arising to devour the helpless soul.  The game makes excellent use of lighting, particularly for a hand-drawn 2D game.  Some of the levels are draped in complete darkness, only illuminated up by an occasional crack of lightning or the glow of the soul’s aura.

Levels are one screen long and as the soul progresses on its journey, they grow more complex and labyrinthine.  There are no power-ups to collect, no special attacks to master and no life bars to monitor; the soul is controlled simply by moving the left thumbstick in any direction to make it float that way.  It is a simple enough premise, and certainly one that is easily accessible to the most maladroit gamer.

The simple premise belies the game’s controller-smashing difficulty curve.  One small mistake on any segment of a level sends the soul back to the beginning of the stage.  Even something as trivial as nudging a wall or grazing against the ceiling spells doom for the fragile hero.  Death is all-too-frequent, and makes me wonder exactly what it takes to send this little bugger to hell.  Even a treasure chest hidden deep in a forgotten chasm sent the blue orb back to start, possibly the first time in gaming history that treasure is bad.

The complexity of the obstacles escalates rapidly to the point where the game is essentially a trial-and-error exercise in finding the correct path to navigate.  Sometimes that path is evident and the challenge is just making it through without bumping into anything.  It’s like annoying board game, Operation, fused with the environment of Silent Hill.

The game’s difficulty is exacerbated by the extremely sensitive controls.  A gentle nudge sends the soul dashing across the screen, and pushing the analog stick all the way spells certain death.  It creates a situation where survival is dependent upon micromanaging the analog stick and tapping it this way and that in order to inch the soul along bit-by-bit.

I took a break from Soul after an excess of thirty deaths in a single level.  I needed a break to steady my mind and my trembling hands and vowed to return re-focused.  Sadly, this led me to the discovery that there is no autosave and I had to start all over.  The expectation of an autosave is a modern-day crutch that we rest on to avoid replaying difficult segments of games, and its absence invokes a retro feel, but in all the wrong ways.

Admitting defeat, I put the game on wimpy mode and vowed to make it into heaven.  It turns out wimpy mode should have been dubbed fun mode.  The easier setting decreases the sensitivity of the controls, ostensibly admitting that poor controls were what make the game so difficult in the first place.  The soul’s max speed is reduced and the enemy speeds are reduced to compensate, but the game still provides an adequate challenge.  Unless you are a glutton for punishment, I would jump straight for the wuss mode, at least for the fist playthrough.

I’m thankful that I made this decision since the final stage is an incredible run through lightning-illuminated clouds that is one of the most beautiful gaming scenes I have ever witnessed.  Lightning bolts briefly flash to reveal the path through the purplish blue clouds and constant rain. The vibrant colors and detailed clouds are so rich and gorgeous; they are true revelation of the merits of hand-drawn 2D.

The interesting gameplay and dreary, yet colorful cartoony graphics make Soul one of the most remarkable gaming experiences in recent memory.  It is difficult to say if it is a great game, but unique atmospheric games like Soul are impossible not to recommend playing.

Visit the Xbox Marketplace to add a free demo of Soul to your Xbox 360 download queue.

Soul was provided for review by Kydos Studio.  It is available for 80 MS points ($1).

By Mike Wall at June 30, 2010.

About Mike Wall

Mike grew up and lives near Philadelphia and has been intrigued with games ever since his parents preached that they rotted his brain. He studied journalism at Penn State and got his master's degree in secondary education before realizing that not even summers off would make that job palatable. He now works in marketing and is trying to find time to continue writing a book about zombies, aliens, vampires, the end of the world, and a talking cat.