Mistake Souls

I went in with low expectations and Mistake Souls still found ways to underdeliver in spots I hadn't anticipated. Developed and published by solo outfit Tarkill, this is a micro-budget adult-oriented JRPG built around a match-3 crystal puzzle mechanic: you align crystals in rows of three to generate either magical attacks or physical strikes against a roster of monster-girl enemies. The core loop sounds more interesting than it plays - each crystal selection ends your turn, you can chain magic and a physical hit in the same move, and enemy kills award currency to spend on new weapons, upgraded magic, or unlockable knowledge perks. On paper, that's a serviceable lite-RPG skeleton. In practice, the whole thing is paper-thin. The story frames a bankrupt mercenary deep in debt who accepts a desperate, probably suicidal contract to clear out a valley full of monster girls. That setup is fine as a pretext. The writing is rough - clearly machine-translated or written by a non-native English speaker - and the world map gives almost no guidance on where to go or what the four monster territories actually mean. Community posts from launch day onwards confirm there is no in-game tutorial, and several mechanics have to be reverse-engineered through trial and error. Buttons carry no mouseover text. The UI feels unfinished because, by most accounts, it launched unfinished. The adult content angle is worth flagging clearly. The game carries Sexual Content and Nudity tags, but the Steam version is censored, and the community has been asking about an uncensor patch since shortly after release with no clean resolution. Beyond that, a Steam community thread credibly identified multiple pieces of lifted artwork from other properties - card borders, character designs - which is a genuine red flag about the production's legitimacy. If the art you're buying isn't original, you're not getting what you think you're paying for. The one thing Mistake Souls has going for it is a playtime that RAWG clocks at roughly one hour. It is not pretending to be a 40-hour RPG. At its price point it has always sat at impulse-buy territory, and the match-3 combat, stripped of the context issues, is at least mechanically coherent - swapping crystals to build offensive or defensive outcomes is a workable loop. Genre completionists hunting every adult JRPG on Steam might find it worth a glance. Everyone else will exhaust the content before a cup of coffee goes cold, then remember the UI complaints and wonder why they bothered.

Alex · Scout Team

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