Welcome to our review of Soul Searching, for some reason we played this depressing game…
Embark on a single or multiplayer survival adventure made of meaningful encounters with others…and yourself.
Sail away from your homeland, visit new islands, discover the stories of their people, and learn about souls.
The gameplay is about exploring and surviving, alone or as a crew of up to 4 travelers. You must deal with hunger, thirst, energy loss, merciless beasts, and the weather. You can fish, purchase new boats and tools, and even cast magic spells. There is not one correct play style or path to follow. Go where the wind blows and experiment on your own. Can you actually get lost when the journey is the destination?
The Story Mode of Soul Searching invites you to reflect on existence and search for meaning with contemplative moments and thought-provoking dialogues. Seven extra “short stories” also introduce you to various art and storytelling experiments. You may find them innovative and inspiring.
The Random Mode generates a unique map at the beginning of each new game, to explore by yourself or with up to 3 other players. But beware if you choose to cooperate: more people means more mouths to feed, and only good teamwork will lead to your survival.
Soul Searching is a top-down role-playing game that is about as simple in gameplay as it is depressing to play. Literally everything in the game reminds you life sucks and I truly just want to stop my review here and give it a 0. It really irritated me that much. Heck, I prefer doing real-life chores over playing this game.
But alas, I am a more or less professional guy so I will actually describe the game itself. The entire meaning of the game, once you look past all the “you will die in the end” and “nothing lasts forever” lines, is nothing more than a 2 button top-down RPG. You find a way to get from one island to the next, perform the required and often boring tasks and move on.
I say boring not out of spite, but because it really was boring. I spent half an hour gathering gold in the ocean by: finding a piece, stopping my raft, getting out the boat, swim towards it, grab it, return. I never got how developers like to pad a game with this mechanic. Grinding is not fun when it becomes so darn repetitive.
In conclusion, Soul Searching was nothing for me. I hated it from around the 20-minute mark and just removed it from my Switch prior to writing this review. Not my cup of tea….
