The Lost Souls

My honest instinct after looking into this one is to advocate for your time more than the game itself, which is a strange position for someone who champions small solo projects. The Lost Souls puts you in a first-person perspective inside a hellish afterlife. Your character dies mid-ritual and wakes up in a grey underworld, wandering toward an old cemetery in search of salvation. The premise is genuinely atmospheric in its concept: isolation, lost memory, a world stripped of warmth. That kernel of an idea has real potential. Sadly, the execution rarely reaches it. The gameplay is built almost entirely around two actions: flipping switches to open doors, and typing words backwards to solve so-called puzzles. Those reverse-typing moments are not puzzles in any meaningful sense. There is no deduction, no environmental reading, just a hint on the screen that says to use the keyboard and a word waiting to be mirrored. It is over before the mechanic even registers as a mechanic. The lone monster that appears is lifted directly from the developer's previous title, White Mirror, and offers no meaningful threat or tension. The horror promised by the premise simply does not materialise in play. The technical state is where things get harder to excuse. Players have reported frequent crashes when crossing between zones, during saves, and during loads. A game that runs under 30 minutes has no business asking you to attempt it three times to finish it once. There is no options menu at any point, meaning audio mixing, resolution and controls are fixed wherever the developer left them. The audio itself has been flagged repeatedly, with looping sounds that cut awkwardly and volume levels that feel unbalanced rather than atmospherically intentional. I want to be fair about what some players have found in it: a handful of reviewers noted a certain oppressive atmosphere in the darker corridors, and the water visuals draw the odd compliment in an otherwise flat environment. There is a version of this game, made with more time and more playtesting, that could have landed as a brief but affecting mood piece. GDNomaD clearly has a fixation on hellscapes and afterlife imagery that could sustain something interesting. This release, though, feels like that version's rough draft shipped before it was ready. If you are a completionist who collects trading cards and does not mind a rocky 20-to-30-minute session with a real chance of crashes, the risk is minimal at this price point. If you are looking for genuine indie horror craft, something that earns its atmosphere, this is not where your evening should go.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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