A couple of years ago Cobra Blade hit us with Powerslam (OSX), a wrestler that played like it came straight from the SNES era. This year Cobra Blade serves that nostalgia-like factor one more time by going a bit old school (think PSX this time around) with Soulless.

In Soulless the unthinkable has happened: a zombie outbreak has taken out a settlement in the distant future. Okay, it’s pretty thinkable…Anyways Soulless is dripping with 90’s vibe from it’s graphics to its general game mechanics. This is a 2D platform-shooter where you’ll choose to play as one of 9 Space Marines and blast zombies. The catch here is that in order to play as a Space Marine, you’ll actually need to rescue/encounter them throughout the game. I actually missed a couple Space Marines so therefore didn’t have them as a playable option.

So why does that matter anyways? Well like in the older gaming days when games were less forgiving, once a soldier dies, he/she dies for good. So finding soldiers is like finding extra lives which is very important to beat the game. Let me throw a bit more harshness at you! Although there’s some health packs and ammo placed here and there in each level, if your Space Marine takes damage, that damage is spread through the rest of the game! Ouch! But I love it!

Pushing the 90’s vibe a bit further are the different types of zombies that you’ll be facing off against. You’ve got your standard slow walkers. You’ve got zombies that toss knives as well as puke up a gross toxic green mass. Even a zombie with a chainsaw? For a retro feeling game, there’s a bit of variety here.

I played Soulless on both the iOS as well as OSX version. Everything in this review can be said about both platforms, with the only difference between the two being the controls—yet they both have control issues. On the iOS side, the virtual controls are so small that it is very difficult to maneuver. I’m talking about even having a hard time climbing up/down ladders (like a few seconds of trial and error with each one). This problem doesn’t exist on a Mac since you’re using a keyboard (there’s no instructions telling you what keys to use so I had to push buttons until I found the right ones: Z-shoot, X-jump, and arrow keys to move). The problem is more of a pet-peeve rather than an issue. The virtual controls on the iOS screen show up on OSX! While this is a bit annoying, this should be a super easy fix in an update. The one thing that I do want to say though is that the controls are responsive…they just have issues.

The Bottom Line: Soulless hits a fun 90’s vibe all of the way with it’s level design, gameplay mechanics, and the ramped up difficulty that you’ll find later on. The only major downside is the control issues.

While Google Play may have been a total bust, Amazon thankfully made it still possible for Android users to get their hands on Soulless. After a link? Here it is: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IZ7YELQ/ref=mas_pm_soulless

I did plan to release Soulless onto Android devices… but that was before I learnt that Google set the file size limit of apps/games to 50MB. So while that does make it impossible for Soulless.. or any none casual game I’ll ever create to be able to see a release on Google Play, the bright side is Samsung are looking to replace Android with the Tizen OS anyway. Tizen has no such silly limitations, and in fact has already accepted Soulless into their upcoming store.

User jshapiro00 form the Mac App Store left a nice 4 star review of Powerslam, so I thought I’d share it. Thanks jshapiro00! :)

Great Wrestling Game for the Mac
★★★★
by jshapiro00 - Version 1.0 - Jan 28, 2012

This is a great wrestling game that brings back memories of the classic Federation Online from years ago. Don’t expect a Smackdown vs Raw experience, the graphics and controls are very simple but that’s what keeps the game fun. My only two major complaints is I’d like to see a bigger more open arena or backstage area and it seems no matter how beaten my oppenent is, I cannot get them to submit or stay down for a 3 count, I just punch them one more time and they get KOed. Other than that this game has been a blast from the past to play.

Well Soulless is almost here. There appears to be a few bugs with GameSalad right now, which may mean a slight delay with the release of Soulless 2.0… but if I’m really lucky it’ll still pass Apple’s review phase and be up in the Mac App Store along with Powerslam before you know it.

Hostamania has been great so far. Amazing response time from the staff and its still only in its beta phase. Look forward to being hosted by these guys for the long haul.

It was Halloween of 2008 that Soulless first saw the light of day. Sadly the update won’t be here in time for this year’s Halloween, but fingers crossed it may still be here before the year is out.

The image here is the new look mission briefing screen. I’ve decided to do away with the secrecy of level paths as you can now see all explorable levels as well as the one you are currently up to with this Ziltron map. Decided to do this as some players didn’t even know that Soulless had multiple paths. This is also a good way to show exactly where I’m up to, all 10 levels on the left are finished and ready, while I still have to recreate the 11 levels on the right in GameSalad.

Unfortunately, Soulless seems to be plagued with bad luck. I guess it is just as well I never set a release date for this update. Stencyl provided yet another dead end but worry not as there will still be an update to Soulless. Improvements are too numerous to list as the entire game engine is being rebuilt from scratch using GameSalad, so much has changed. Some things to look forward to however include more story elements, more detailed graphics for portraits and endings, new zombies, multiple end game bosses to discover along with a lot of other little surprises. So don’t give up, because I haven’t, I’ve even posted a pic of the most recent level I just finished recreating these past couple of weeks.

The good news is that Soulless 2.0 is complete and ready. The bad news is that it doesn’t currently compile in Stencyl 3. So depending on how long this issue will take to iron out will determine how much longer until Soulless hits the Mac App Store and iOS App Store. Fingers crossed someone over at Stencyl can help me with this as the log file doesn’t even show any errors, so this could be a tricky thing to track down. So in the meantime I’ll begin work on my next title. Stay tuned!

Most people don’t need much from a platformer. A little variety in the background, a few interesting puzzles, or even interesting ways to make things blow up are enough to make most people happy. The question lies in whether that’s enough for anyone to want to spend any money. Usually, it isn’t.

Sadly, Soulless is lacking any really interesting gameplay elements. It mainly consists of running around in a sphere of darkness and firing at zombies with a machine gun. This wouldn’t be so bad if it was a machine gun with different varieties of bullets, or if the enemies acted more intelligent than a homing missile, but all you can do is point in their general direction and hold down the firing button.

The platforming elements are also a tad premature. The character jumps sloppily and can often miss a platform because he jumped just a little too early. Not that it matters, though, as there’s no falling damage or death pits. You just climb all the way back up and keep trying until you finally cross the divide. You can also jump over zombies if you try hard enough, but that often gets you swatted so you might as well stand still and fire until they explode.

Well, until you run out of bullets. This happens extremely often if you pick a character with high “speed” as the speed translates into firing the machine gun faster with lesser damage. The enemies still die just as fast, but you waste a whole ton of bullets per enemy. This can be particularly devastating in levels without any reloads scattered around. For instance, there’s a level where dozens of zombies fall from above and you have to stand still and shoot them until you run out of bullets and die. It’s almost guaranteed that you will die, as the zombies tend to fall faster than you can shoot them. There’s also nowhere to run and hide.

The graphics are a little better. The backgrounds aren’t very varied, but they are interesting to look at occasionally. The enemies are poorly animated sprites that explode into blood and guts when they die, though. There’s nothing that exceptional there. The character looks the same no matter who you pick to play, and it can’t even shoot downwards. Upwards, forward, and slanted upwards, sure! But when zombies are crawling underneath your crouched fire, it seems really silly to not allow you to fire downwards.

The sound is ok. The machine gun sounds like a semi-automatic machine gun, the doors open with a classic sliding sound, and the canisters occasionally clink against the ground. However, half the zombies don’t make any noticeable sound when they die, and the other half scream annoyingly loudly. The music for the menu and marine selection screen is actually pretty good, though. It’s a shame it’s only heard for a short period before the jarring track of the actual game loops forever. None of this would be particularly bad, but there’s no way to turn off the sound or music. You’re stuck with it.

Overall, there’s really no reason to pay money for Soulless. It’s a pretty good attempt for a first try, but it’s not something that’s anywhere near the level of quality for half the free games on the market. For instance, The Magical Flying Pink Pony Game (google it) is way more fun and it can last you for hours!

Until Soulless is seriously improved, $12.95 is too high a cost. It needs a variety in levels, better sound and music, and something more than just holding down the firing button.

Pros

• Multiple characters

Cons

• Character choice doesn’t matter

• Poor graphics

• Annoying sound and music

• Monotonous gameplay

Will 2013 see Soulless and Powerslam go multi-platform? I believe so. The Stencyl port of Soulless is coming along well. I have ported 8 of the original 21 levels so far, but that does still leave 13 more levels. I really hope I can have them done before the end of January.

Not only this, but Erik has made progress with his hard work porting Powerslam over to Monkey (a huge thank you goes out to him for all of his continued help). So it certainly looks possible that 2013 will be the year these two games finally become available to the masses.

Stay tuned.