Like a never ending gobstopper you enjoyed as a kid, this 80’s homage just keeps on going…

The Story

The story of Crossing Souls is split into two parts. The first is Fourattic’s take on their own Saturday morning cartoon.

Something strange is going on in a small Californian town. 5 kids stumble across a peculiar looking stone after prying it from the hands of a lifeless body. Chris, Matt, Big Joe, Charlie and Kevin find that the stone has some supernatural powers and lets them see into the realm of the dead. However, this power comes at a cost, as the kids find out that the stone is powered by human life force and if they hold it too long, it will drain them of their life!

Luckily, Matt is a scientific genius and invents a way to power the stone without it needing life force. However, they’re not the only ones who are looking for the stone. The local gang; the Purple Skulls, also want the precious gem. After a tough encounter against the gang’s leader Quincy Queen, Kevin (the youngest of the group) manages to save the stone but it costs him his life.

This part of the story was very fun and care free and borrows a lot from movies that were set in the 80’s. The group of five characters all have their stereotypical archetypes. Chris is the baseball bat wielding leader, Matt is the computer wiz, Big Joe is the street wise brawler, Charlie is the tough female character and Kevin is the young joker. The story takes from 80’s pop culture with influences like Stand By Me, E.T., Earthbound and Back to the Future all having an influence on the game. Plus, the game is littered with 80’s references and easter eggs. Until Kevin’s death, Crossing Soul’s story was mostly what I was expecting.

The second part however, moves from a Saturday morning cartoon to an angsty teenage ‘coming of age’ story.

This is because there are people far worse than the Purple Skulls looking for the ‘Duat Stone’ as the kids name it. An evil organisation run by Major Oh Rus plans to use the stone to rule both the living and dead realms and make the Major into a God.

To do this the Major will stop at nothing. He captures the kids’ families and destroys their town in the hopes of leading them into a trap. As the kids leave town they will have to use the Duat Stone to solve puzzles and even travel back through time to try and get to the Major’s base. Pair this with the Egyptian mythology introduced by the Duat Stone and a love interest between Chris and Charlie and I think you can why I think the plot separates about half way through the game.

Overall, I thought the story was ok… I preferred the smaller scope of the kids being in their town and maybe trying to solve the mystery of whom the dead person was and why they had the Duat Stone. For me, this had much more of a ‘Stranger Things’ feel to it and I think that Fourattic could have gone on to develop the story that way. Perhaps by making it a little creepier and add a bit more of the supernatural element into the story- which I think was forgotten about towards the end of the game.

The Gameplay

Crossing Souls is a top down action adventure game with a linear story and world. You can play as each of the five characters and scroll between them at anytime by pressing L.

Each character has their own unique ability that is needed to solve puzzles and progress the story. Some abilities are cooler than others however. For example, Matt can use his hover boots to travel across gaps, whereas Chris has the ability to climb. And it’s only Chris that can climb! So if you come across a ladder and want to climb up it as say Big Joe, then you have to switch to Chris, climb the ladder, then switch back to Joe. There are some puzzles that require Chris to climb vines, which I think is fair enough. However, it really made me laugh when I came up to the first ladder in the game and had no idea why Kevin couldn’t go up it!

Furthermore, each character has their own weapons to use in combat (apart from Kevin). Chris has a baseball bat that can deflect projectiles, Matt has a laser gun, Charlie an Indiana Jones style whip and Big Joe his fists, which do more damage than the other characters’ weapons. I liked that each character was different in combat and it was fun to cycle through them to find which kid was best at beating up bad guys. SPOILER: it’s Big Joe, just use Big Joe.

The world is kind of split up into levels which more or less always end with a boss fight. The levels are usually always a mix of platforming, combat and minor puzzle solving and I didn’t feel like they were that special or different from other games in this genre. However, the bosses were always completely unique with the characters themselves been quirky and interesting. Sadly though, I never really had fun or enjoyed fighting the bosses.

Each one added in a new mechanic that hadn’t been seen in the game before. Therefore, you would fight your way through a level, get to the save point before the boss, sit through their prose and then die straight away because you had no idea what the hell was going on. The most obvious example of this was chasing after Charlie when she jumps onto Major Oh Rus’s jet. The boss fight becomes a 2D bullet hell schmup, with you having to stay alive long enough to reach the end of the sequence.

I appreciate what Fourattic was trying to do by introducing these new (and very 80’s style) game modes into the game. However, I always felt like you were getting thrown in at the deep end with them- often taking at least 10 tries to beat them. What makes it worse is that there is no way to skip through the prose for every boss. So every time you die you have to listen to them waffle on again! I really wish there was some forshadowing to the bosses in their level, at least to get you warmed up (and give you a chance) to beat them.

Finally, each character has a stamina bar, which I hated! It was so frustrating to have a character run out of stamina when they were in combat or during platforming. Often in combat there are waves of enemies coming at you that you have to fight. Therefore, I couldn’t understand why there were so many enemies to kill, but Chris could only swing his bat 6 times before he got tired. Or when platforming, Matt’s boots would always run out just before a ledge, making him fall to his death. I believe Crossing Souls would have been a way better game without the stamina bar!

Art, Music and Writing

The art in Crossing Souls is so colourful and vibrant. I love that Fourattic created their own little cartoon within the game, with beautifully hand drawn and animated cutscenes. The environments too looked wonderful, with so much detail piled into the pixel art. From 80’s comic books and arcade cabinets to flowers and machinery. Crossing Souls’s world was always a joy to explore and look at.

The only thing I didn’t like about the art direction was the character sprites. Compared to the world, I felt that they lacked a lot of detail and looked too simple, often making the characters not look human.

The music and sound design blew me away! The soundtrack can stand on it’s own as an epic sci-fi electronic album, it was so good! It gave me the vibes of the music from ‘Stranger Things’. At times it shared the same mysterious, almost creepy quality that built suspense earlier on in the game.

The writing on the other hand was not as high of quality as the art and music. I felt that at times the conversations the characters had were over complicated- like instead of just saying ‘let’s go here’ it was, ‘we need to go to the base of the sergeant of the evil leader who is trying to kill us’.

Furthermore, I felt like everything the characters said was so predictable and unsurprising that reading though their conversations was often boring. Especially since the game really wants you to care for the characters and the story beats are supposed to get some kind of reaction out of the player. However, I found the characters to be two dimensional and had really no idea what their determination was, therefore, when bad things (or good things) happened to them, I really didn’t care.

Finally, my issues with the writing was further frustrated as the game never seemed to end! The final two chapters were a drag for me as they involved two difficult boss battles and a dramatic ending, which I didn’t care too much for. In total honesty I think if Crossing Souls was condensed down into a 5 hour game it would be so much better (having taken closer to 10 for me to beat)!

Problems

Technically, the game ran well on the Switch. The were a few little stutters when there was a lot of action on the screen but nothing to complain about. To be noted, I was playing the entire game in handheld mode, so maybe when docked there would have been no problems.

I did encounter a few bugs though, especially in the final boss battle. Some enemies would get stuck in inaccessible areas, which I couldn’t kill to trigger the next wave of enemies. Plus, at one point I got hit off the screen and couldn’t see myself. Again, not the worst problems ever but annoying to have to restart the boss fight twice and sit through the boss’s monolgue.

Summary

If you want an 80’s nostalgia trip with a beautiful world and an ok Saturday morning cartoon story, then Crossing Souls is for you. However, with it’s weak writing, bland characters and frustrating boss battles, I’d rather spend $14.99 on other games like Hollow Knight or Undertale, which you should defintely play first. I’m happy I picked it up at 50% off.

Therefore, I give Crossing Souls by Fourattic my rating of

Are you an 80’s kid? Will you be picking up Crossing Souls? If so let me know in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter or on Discord.

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