6Souls - Switch Review
"6Souls does all the basics and does them pretty well."
From publisher Ratalaika Games, 6Souls is an action platformer where you play as Jack and his beloved pup Butch. With bright graphics and a cutesy character pairing, 6Souls certainly caught my eye – I’ve been a sucker for the human/dog duo act since Turner & Hooch! In the promotional videos, the action appears fast and furious, and I had a go myself to see if this was just the good bits or whether it was reflective of the gameplay throughout.
The Good
The overall goal of 6Souls is to reach a dark castle while saving six different souls along the way, all of whom have been entrapped in a crystal by a mysterious cloaked baddie. Each time you find a soul crystal, a little flashback plays as to how that particular soul was captured and this serves as a nice way of moving the plot along without bogging you down in lengthy cutscenes and text boxes at the start.
Each soul you rescue gives you a new movement ability, allowing you to traverse further throughout 6Souls. The progression of the levels is linear so there is little need for backtracking, which for many will be a boon as backtracking doesn’t appear to be that popular these days (personally, I enjoy it)!
The graphics are also nice and vibrant and they pop off the screen as you work your way through the various levels. The music is catchy and befitting of the various environments that you encounter.
TL;DR
- Quick, punchy storyline
- No backtracking required!
- Solid graphics and soundtrack
The Bad
I really enjoyed the first hour or so of gameplay, however it soon became slightly repetitive. When you rescue a soul and unlock a new ability, there’s an initial excitement in using your ability as you progress, however this soon wears off when the rooms that immediately follow are basically the same movement puzzle but in various different shapes or forms.
Also, 6Souls was crying out for some proper secrets! In each level, you can collect some tokens (for Jack) and bacon pieces (for Butch) but each collectible is pretty much in plain sight and not that challenging to collect. I was longing for some real head scratchers through invisible walls or something similar. It just felt as though the collectible side of things was put in as an afterthought rather than an actual distraction to the main gameplay.
There’s also a plethora of instant death spikes which are a pet-hate of mine. I appreciate that in an indie-game with technical limitations, this may be purposeful so as to avoid designing slightly complicated damage and recovery animations, however they always feel a bit unnecessarily punishing. Fortunately in this case, the checkpoints are close enough together to stop this from being completely unbearable.
TL;DR
- Repetitive at times
- Collectibles/secrets are low on imagination/non-existent
- Instant death spikes everywhere argggghhhh
Final Score: 7/10
6Souls is a solid platformer and is certainly worth it at this price point. It’s definitely a game for anyone after a casual platforming experience but if you want more depth and something a little more expansive, then maybe this isn’t for you.
All in all, 6Souls does all the basics and does them pretty well. The best part of being an indie games reviewer is that every now and then, a hidden gem comes along and takes you by surprise (pleasantly), and 6Souls is certainly one of those instances.
Thank you for checking out our 6Souls Switch review, thank you to Ratalaika Games (via PR Hound) for providing the review code and thank you to our $5 and up Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
For more reading, check out our review of Doki Doki Literature Club.