Soulless: Ray Of Hope Reviews

Unfortunately the game is mildly buggy. Dialogue boxes don't show and the game occasionally gets stuck, but I managed to complete everything in a few hours and 100% all the achievements. The story was worth the mild frustrations, and the multiple endings were a nice touch.

Puzzles are too easy, survivals are too hard sometimes. The game looks unbalanced. The plot is weird and boring. LIMBO was cool, this one looks kinda the same but worse.

I liked the game and the story. I loved the music. But... 1) The control keys don't match the instructions: It says "X" for action, but the action key was "E" on the keyboard; it says "A" for jump but it was "Spacebar" instead. 2) The Xbox controller is not fully supported. I was able to move the character but I couldn't jump or activate anything: no button was bound to those, so I gave up using a controller with this game. 3) Navigation through the menu is awful. Sometimes I could move through the options with the "WASP" keys, sometimes with the mouse, but I couldn't find out how to "accept" or "cancel" (clicks didn't work). The "Esc" key got me always out of there, sometimes keeping the changes but sometimes not affecting anything at all. 4) The game is too short (2 hours in game and it's over).

Full disclosure: I'm a puzzler more than a platformer who played a very small amount of this game before swiftly requesting a refund. In the opening scene, when I caught the edge of a bookcase and realised it took my character ~3 seconds to lift itself up onto it, I thought: "Huh. I sure hope this doesn't have one of those speed run sections with moving platforms and something death-inducing right behind you." So I plodded along... some nice intro puzzles, some basic mechanics- boxes, switches, moving platforms with timed saws of death- very nice... 15mins in: "aw man"... 3 mins and ~15 deaths later: "Refund please."

This was a nice surprise. It really is a great game. I don't even barely like platformer games but I really enjoyed this game and wouldn't stop playing. (encouraged by the achievement "No Breaks") The puzzles are nearly all original. The perfect difficulty. You can figure them out on your own but they aren't easy. The control is perfect. The bosses are great. The graphics and music are really nice. The checkpoints are fair and the gameplay is varied. The story doesn't annoy and manages to end with intrigue. And it has multiple endings.

This game is fun to play. Once. There are 3 endings but one of the dialogues made so little sense to me as about the good ending. The music is nice everywhere besides the two dark realms where it's actually annoying. There's not much replay value. The game doesn't change but that makes it easier to search for secrets or try getting other endings, since the replays take less time. I beat it twice and it clocked 4 hours but the second playthrough was much shorter for me. I'll take some break and go for the 3rd ending sometime. There's very little lore given as is and in dialogues but if you look around and read between the lines, you can get some hints about what's going on. I can tell the creators put a lot of good effort into making it.

It’s very short. Less than 3 hours. You move very slowly. You take 3 seconds to pull yourself up a ledge. (WHAT?! WHY?! WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?!) Very easy, but the slow movement and slow climbing makes the chase sections very annoying. Bad endings, and it is painful to obtain all of the endings. I was left with the feeling of “That’s it? That’s all there is to the story and ending?!”

I bought this game after seeing it looked like Limbo but the main character had a cool flying mechanic. After a short time in the game our hero loses his wings :( This made me a little sad for him but also now I didn't get to fly about like I'd hoped! The way in which the camera follows Elin (that's his name!) about whilst flying is far from ideal. Most of the time you can't see where you're flying to vertically meaning having to just have faith, sometimes this means impacting with deadly spikes. Sorry Elin.... The game is pretty short and the puzzles are pitched at an enjoyable level. I had to google the solution to one puzzle about two-thirds through and I'm no expert when it comes to solving puzzles! Two of the achievements can possibly add longevity to the game : Complete the game in one sitting and Complete the game without dying. I do enjoy these type of achievements, so may very well attempt them which will add more game-time to the current two hours it takes to complete. The code just about does the job, it doesn't feel at all solid. I'm not sure some people would have an issue with this aspect but it's one of the things that bugs me and Unity is especially guilty of producing games with this feeling. The overall design is a little odd and feels a bit like ideas have simply been bodged together. A boss half-way through the game, no boss at end but some seemingly moralistic questions that alter the achievement you get instead? Although they have managed to pace the stages out well so that none of the ideas become stale and this is probably most important. I bought the game during sale at -75% and at this price I can recommend the game, not sure it's worth the full asking price.

Soulless: Ray of Hope is an interesting minimal platformer with light puzzle elements, featuring a black silhouetted world with a bright white protagonist. In concept, this would be great for a linear platformer that has you going from start to finish, and that is something Soulless tries to push you along to do. However, This NOT acceptable when secret passageways to collectables, and ever important switches for various devices in the levels are ALSO painted in the same black silhouette as the environment. Checkpoints are fairly placed, but some areas in the game are buggy if you die, forcing you to restart the last checkpoint you encountered just to get the mechanics of the game working (This was most proment with the actual boss of Act 2). Some dialogue boxes are broken, mostly with the Guide of the story. The time invested you see along with this review was playing the game from start to finish. The game boasts three endings, yet in the time playing, I was only ever able to see two of the three; the third ending requires you to "remain pure", which you have given no indications of messing up the route for this ending until you've basically beaten the game, nor are you given any indication of where you messed up, forcing additional replays of the whole game, rather then being able to make use of the load checkpoint feature on the main menu to simply see the endings back to back (which IS possible to do with the other two endings: complete one, reload checkpoint before the choice, make other choice). I wish I could recommand this game, but unlike Algebra, puzzles require all the pieces to be known and accounted for, otherwise they're not puzzles at all. If you feel bold enough to try it out despite the issues listed above, I encourage acquiring the game while on sale.

I can't believe this game only has 35 reviews. I'm not going to write an essay covering each aspect of the plot/controls/audio/ etc, but I will mention them all briefly because they have made a distinct impression on me. I think many people picked up or considered picking up this game because of its side-scrolling nature and apparent similarity to the popular title Limbo (a good game, don't get me wrong - also check out Inside). But this game is different. True it's a side scroller, death can come fast, and checkpoints are frequent. But the similarities mostly end there. What I truly want to point out is the incredicle art style of the game. While Limbo was dreary greyscale from start to finish, this game effortly changes color pallates and showcases a beautifully immersive, artstic art style. All while maintaining an air of creepinesss. Just take a look at the screenshots. The main character controls well and the game is more about quick-ish progression in a linear fasion rather than Limbo's style of challenging/borderline frustrating time-based/backtracking puzzles. Not once did I find myself stuck in this game, which was very refreshing. Not to be mistaken, light puzzling elements are present but they are relatively simple and a joy to solve while taking in each new breathtaking environment. The musical score is also incredible. Turn the volume up, especially during the section where you're traversing the environment without using your feet or wings *attempt to avoid spoiler*. The (few) alternative characters are well- designed and fit within the general art style perfectly. There is also an AWESOME boss fight that is difficult, but I didn't find it frustrating despite dying dozens of times. Not to mention the ominous sections when you are pulled into an alternate demain and forced to quickly escape. The game is incredibly fluid, artistic, and creative. The world of Soulless is aboslutly stunning and deserves to be experienced. The game is on sale for 99c until March 20, 2017. Please pick this up. You will not be disappointed. I will happily take a negative review if you disagree. I earlier stated that Limbo was not the best comparison to this game. I would say it is more akin to something like Badlands or perhaps Ori and the Blind Forest. Seriously, CHECK THIS OUT FOR CHEAP. This is one of my first reviews (w/ over 300 steam games) and I'm writing it because I don't think this game has gotten enough attention. Also - I recommend playing with a controller. FYI - 4.2 hrs and finished the game (not all achievements). There are multiple endings which I did not experience all of. Also one of the steam cards sells currently for $0.17 - sooo that's almost 20% of the price right there :)