Crossing Souls
| Crossing Souls | |
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| Developer(s) | Fourattic |
| Publisher(s) | Devolver Digital |
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| Artist(s) |
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| Engine | Unity |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch |
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| Genre(s) | Action-adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Crossing Souls is an action-adventure video game developed by Spain-based indie development studio Fourattic and published by Devolver Digital. The game was released on 13 February 2018 for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux PlayStation 4 and 26 July 2018 on Nintendo Switch.[1]
Plot
[edit]Setting and characters
Crossing Souls takes place in 1986 at the town of Tajunga, California. Protagonists include five teenage friends, Chris, baseball player, his younger, obnoxious brother Kevin, Matt, bookworm inventor, Big Joe, big hearted muscle and tomboy Charlie. They discover magical Duat Stone, which allows them to see and interact with spirits of the dead. The antagonists include Major Oh Russ, military maverick who seeks to use the Duat Stone for world domination alongside Dr. Spielgman, resident mad scientist, Heartless, right hand man of Oh Russ, Bronson, police officer who works for Oh Russ with his two lackies, Zed and Tackleberry and Quincy Queen, leader of the street gang, Purple Skulls that terrorizes Tajunga.
Story
In 1986 at Tajunga, California, Five teenage friends discover a corpse near the town`s river which holds a Duat Stone. Taking the stone home and driven by curiosity, Matt is able to build a device with which the friends are able to unlock and control the stone's power. Though the friends do not fully understand the artifact's power, they find out that it is able to make them see and interact with the spirits of the dead. However, stone also drains the life source of those who hold it. This gets Kevin tragically killed when they run into Quincy Queen, who steals the stone. After several days of mourning, four friends steal back the stone and use it to talk with Kevin. They also meet the ghost of the McKittrick, who reveals that he used work for former U.S. Army general Colonel Beringer, self-proclaimed Major Oh Russ, who had organized the Duat Stone's recovery and use it to control the deceased to accomplish his world invasion plan. McKittrick rebelled and stole the Duat stone. Tajunga gets quarantine lockdowned over a goverment conspiracy involving contagious disease as a cover up operation. Four friends escape only to fall off the road into the dark forest where they encounter military camp of ghost children deceived by an evil ghost. After liberating the ghost children, four friends return Tajunga in order to save their friends and families, but Oh Russ has already captured them. Children escape in to the cavern, only for Big Joe to get mortally wounded and eventually dies. Surviving trio discover inside the cavern hieroglyphs, which seems to imply the Duat Stone was an artifact of the gods. After getting out of the cavern and dealing with the ghosts of the old west, Major Oh Russ catches up to them, steals the Duat Stone and kidnaps Charlie. Matt and Chris give a chase and infiltrate Oh Russ`s headquarters where they encounter Osis, god of balance, who reveals Oh Russ being servant of Seth, Egyptian god of destruction who usurped his brother Osis' position as the Keeper of the Living Balance. The boys also learn Oh Russ using their families and friends as an energy source to power up the Duat Stone. While they manage to defeat Oh Russ and rescue Charlie, Matt dies. Charlie and Chris share a final kiss before Charlie escapes with all of the townsfolk. Chris stays behind, activates the interdimensional portal to confront and destroy Seth with his soul, thus saving everyone at the cost of his own life. In the epilogue, Charlie, having grown old, tells the events of the game as a story to her grandchildren. After they leave, she activates a machine based on Matt's discoveries to send her soul to the afterlife as a girl she was back then and reunites with her childhood friends.
Development
[edit]Crossing Souls' storyline was largely influenced by those of the films The Goonies, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Super 8, while the level design and the orthogonal view were adapted from the original The Legend of Zelda, with the animation style of the cutscenes having been inspired by Teen Wolf, Saint Seiya, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all of which are items of the 1980s. Development on the game started in January 2014, after the final update for Fourattic's previous game, Bin This Pic: Guess the Wrong One (or Odd Pic Out), was released. The pre-production was first presented to the public through the TIGSource forums on 5 February 2014.[2][3] In the forums, it was met with a positive reception, thus, development was continued and team members regularly posted development updates.[2] Around March 2014, the team was running out of money, wherefore the development on the game was halted, enabling the team to create Pixel Puzzle Mania, a free-to-play puzzle video game for iOS, published by Genera Games, which was released on 29 August 2014.[4] In August 2014, Fourattic partnered with Devolver Digital for a publishing deal on Crossing Souls. On 17 November 2014, the game was brought to Kickstarter, aiming for US$45,000.[5][6] Devolver Digital announced that they would publish it, regardless if, and how far, the project would get funded.[6] Crossing Souls was successfully funded on 13 December 2014, and the campaign ended on 17 December 2014 with a total of US$51,983 raised.[5] In January 2015, using the funds raised from Kickstarter, Fourattic moved from their original attic location to a new office in Sevilla, Spain and rebooted development on the game.[4] A first demo of Crossing Souls was shown off at E3 2015, from 16–18 June 2015, and at Gamelab Barcelona 2015, from 24–26 June 2015. As announced in December 2017, the game will be released on 13 February 2018.[7][8] Devolver Digital announced the game was releasing on Nintendo Switch on 26 July 2018 as part of Devolver Digital's 'Summer of Devolver'.[9]
Reception
[edit]| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | (PC) 70/100[10] (PS4) 75/100[11] (NS) 67/100[12] |
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| Game Informer | 9/10[13] |
| GameSpot | 6/10[14] |
| Nintendo Life | 7/10[15] |
| PC Gamer (US) | 62/100[16] |
Crossing Souls received "generally favourable reviews" for the PlayStation 4 version, while the Windows and Nintendo Switch versions were met with "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.[10][11][12]
References
[edit]- ^ "Nostalgic Indie Title Crossing Souls Now on Switch". Game Informer. Archived from the original on September 18, 2018.
- ^ a b sephi_6 (5 February 2014). "Crossing Souls". TIGSource.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Chalk, Andy (17 November 2014). "Crossing Souls is a Goonies-like action-adventure". PC Gamer. Future US.
- ^ a b Webster, Andrew (4 December 2014). "This game will remind you why the '80s were awesome - 'We missed being kids.'". The Verge. Vox Media.
- ^ a b Fourattic (17 November 2014). "Crossing Souls: An Adventure Between Life and Death by Fourattic". Kickstarter.
- ^ a b Savage, Phil (17 November 2014). "Crossing Souls is an '80s adventure, now on Kickstarter". PC Gamer. Future US.
- ^ Tarason, Dominic (3 December 2017). "Crossing Souls goes back to the future in February". Rock Paper Shotgun.
- ^ "'80s adventure Crossing Souls locked in for February". December 2017.
- ^ "Devolver Digital's Nintendo Switch "Summer of Devolver" Begins July 26th". 23 July 2018.
- ^ a b "Crossing Souls (PC)". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 26 August 2020.
- ^ a b "Crossing Souls (PS4)". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 26 August 2020.
- ^ a b "Crossing Souls (Switch)". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 26 August 2020.
- ^ Gwaltney, Javy (13 February 2018). "Crossing Souls Review - A Nostalgic Epic". Game Informer. Archived from the original on February 14, 2018. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
- ^ Tran, Edmond (13 February 2018). "Crossing Souls Review: Stuck In The Past". GameSpot. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 28 August 2020.
- ^ Wahlgren, Jon (9 August 2018). "Crossing Souls Review". Nintendo Life. Retrieved 28 August 2020.
- ^ Horti, Samuel (13 February 2018). "Crossing Souls review". PC Gamer. Future US. Retrieved 28 August 2020.