Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first few screens of Soul make their terms brutally clear. Your soul dies the instant it touches a wall, floor, ceiling, or enemy, so even moving through a seemingly ordinary passage becomes a test of nerve and control. Guiding it with the left thumb stick is simple in theory, but the game asks for deliberate movement rather than casual wandering. You are not looking for an opening to attack; you are looking for the one safe line through a lethal space.

That all-or-nothing rule gives the mazes real bite. A black, tooth-filled creature is not an opponent to outgun or a hazard to shrug off—it is a moving reason to reconsider your route and timing. With no attacks or power-ups, every problem remains about steering cleanly through danger. That purity can be satisfying when a route finally clicks, because success comes from reading the screen and executing rather than from finding a stronger ability.

The smart concession is the restart system. Death sends you back to the beginning of the current screen without an added penalty, which turns failure into immediate practice instead of a long march back through old ground. You will still die often, and the game’s single-minded approach can become frustrating when your thumb slips into a surface. But the reset is quick enough that persistence feels encouraged rather than punished.

Graphics

Soul mixes hand-drawn art with computer graphics for a bleak, hostile look. The glowing soul stands out against the dark maze-like spaces, while many enemies appear as shapeless black masses dominated by huge teeth. The contrast is direct and effective: you can see the vulnerable thing you are steering and the nightmare shapes waiting to consume it.

The horror imagery is less restrained. Sudden close-ups of screaming, deformed dead faces interrupt without warning, aiming for a jolt rather than a slow burn. They are ugly in the right way for this material, and they make the journey feel meaner than a standard obstacle course.

Story

You play the soul of a man who has just died, and the destination is heaven. It is a clean premise that immediately gives the mazes more weight than an abstract series of death traps: every dangerous screen is another stretch of an afterlife journey that has gone terribly wrong.

The horror comes from the route itself. The soul is hunted by devouring black creatures, hemmed in by lethal architecture, and confronted by grotesque faces at unexpected moments. Rather than asking you to admire a heroic character, the game puts you in the uncomfortable position of being small, exposed, and unable to fight back.

That framing suits the game’s stripped-down design. Reaching heaven is a simple goal, but it gives your repeated attempts a grim sense of direction. You are not conquering this place so much as surviving it one screen at a time.

Overall Experience

Soul is strongest when you accept how uncompromising it is. Its movement rules are severe, its dangers are immediate, and its horror is deliberately unpleasant. Yet it avoids becoming outright punishing because each death returns you to the current screen, ready to try the route again with a little more knowledge.

There is no safety valve in the form of combat or power-ups. For some, that will be the point: a concentrated maze challenge where every inch matters and every enemy remains dangerous. For others, the lack of alternate tools will make the repetition feel more exhausting than suspenseful.

Give it a chance if careful thumb-stick control, instant retries, and bleak horror imagery sound like a compelling combination. Soul does one thing with conviction: it makes a defenseless journey through the afterlife feel dangerous from the first touch of a wall to the final search for a way forward.

Retro Replay Score

6.5/10