Souno's Curse

My first hours with Souno's Curse felt like finding a folded note someone left in a library book. The whole thing has that quality: small, personal, handmade with intention. Kiro Team built this on Kickstarter funding, and you can feel the single-studio care in every background panel. The cave environments are drawn by hand, and they carry the gothic weight of something like Hollow Knight filtered through the warmer colour sense of Journey - large atmospheric interiors giving way to outdoor stretches with a genuinely diverse palette. The thematic soundtrack leans into that eerie-yet-tender tone consistently, and it earns its keep as the emotional glue holding the story together. When the music shifts at a story beat, you feel it. The structure is classic metroidvania: you start with limited movement and combat options, earn new abilities as you push deeper into the cave, and the world quietly opens up behind you. There are bonfire-style rest points serving as checkpoints, hidden passages to find, collectibles to chase, and boss fights that mark the end of each major section. Souno's combat toolkit is melee-first - primarily kicks, with a magic attack available and a third move unlockable through upgrades - and the loop of pressing into unfamiliar rooms, reading enemy patterns, and backtracking with new skills works as intended. The NPC cast adds a little warmth and dry humour to what could have been a purely brooding experience. But the community feedback since launch is honest enough to repeat here. Combat has been the game's sore point from day one. Hitboxes are inconsistent: enemies that move toward you can clip damage in ways that feel arbitrary, and the dodge roll timing is punishing in boss arenas where the game's short health pool means a few bad reads end a run quickly. The absence of a map at launch frustrated players significantly, especially given the metroidvania promise of meaningful exploration. To their credit, Kiro Team responded publicly and committed to adding a map in a post-launch patch, which is the right call. Whether that update is live for your build is worth checking before you dive deep. The final boss in particular has drawn criticism for difficulty spikes that feel less designed and more accidental - a polish gap, not a vision problem. Who is this for? Players who love the genre's mood and narrative side more than its combat precision will find something genuinely affecting here. If you came for tight Hollow Knight-calibre combat, this is not the right cave. If you came for a hand-drawn world with a story about loss and presence, told in a compact session that knows where it ends, Souno's Curse earns your patience. The rough edges are real, the heart underneath them is too. Kai, Scout Team