At first glance, Devolver Digital and Fourattic's role-playing adventure, Crossing Souls, seems to be simply a flashy send from everything all of us loved from the 80's. The main elements of the game have it all: young kids discovering adventure just beyond the white picket fence, a government performing nefarious acts, a classic pixel-art style, and a synth-heavy score. However, Crossing Souls ultimately becomes a reminder that games may have a heart and soul that go much deeper compared to surface.
Let's take a step back, though, to own elevator pitch of what Crossing Soulsoffers. It's 1986. Five friends have just made a Stand by Me-esque discovery of the dead body within the woods. Together they must uncover the mystery from the man's death, including exactly what the strange talisman is he was clutching in his hands. Along the way the kids will be fighting monsters and government agents, understanding the power friendship, and cross between the arena of the living and the dead. Typical teenage rights of passage, right? While the gameplay and story begin as nostalgic retreads of 80's movies and games, Crossing Souls takes risks and detours from expectations for better-and for worse.
Nothing scratches my nerd itch more than when the narrative and elements of gameplay overlap and intertwine. Crossing Souls does this to some degree which i never expected, and thankfully, is clearly an intentional choice. Without revealing which character this happens to, there is a death of one from the five playable heroes early into the game. In turn, you can switch backwards and forwards between the realm of the living and that of the dead, which creates a new means of exploration. Not only does this separate the sport from its purely nostalgic label, because it steps away from being only a coming-of-age brawler, additionally, it gives players a reason to expect more from what's about to unravel in each and every respect, from how you can play to character arcs.
For the building blocks of gameplay, a majority of time players navigate the various areas in a top-down adventure style, like the original Legend of Zelda, with every character housing their own skills. Chris, the smoothness players are first introduced to, is easily the most well rounded, as he can swing a bat to attack, jump, and dodge roll. However, his unique trait is his ability to climb vines and ladders. Kevin, our lead's younger brother, doesn't have a particularly unique skill, but could navigate the more perilous platforming servings of the game with better ease than anyone. The rest of the young gang have similar mechanics to Chris, but much like his climbing skill, present an integral reason to become a area of the team. Matt, the brainy nerd, comes fitted with a laser gun for ranged attacks, but his jetpack also helps him hover over long distances. The lone girl in the group, Charlie, is experienced together with her jumping rope, allowing her to perform semi-ranged attacks and vault herself across long chasms. Big Joe, the challenging and tank-like teen, moves slowly but his close-ranged punches deal a lot of damage, also using his brute strength to maneuver large objects.
As stated previously, the death of one character provides them the opportunity to be a ghost and move through walls, providing new ways to travel through the various locales Crossing Souls has to offer. This, combined with other useful skills at a player's disposal, gives the game its first point of positive complexity. I truly enjoyed understanding that navigating fights and new areas will come down to using everyone's abilities, instead of just picking one character and forgetting the remainder are even there. On top of it, much more the dead realm, you can interact with other ghosts to discover a brief history of an area, or at times, appease their wandering soul by helping them deal with a sin of history. It adds side quests and reasons to always switch to the ghostly realm's view, which can be completed with a press of the right shoulder button (I played on PS4).
However, the gameplay also takes mechanics from different arcade genres and sprinkles them throughout, making each stage feel not the same as the last. At one point, Chris needs to outrun a villain's car on his bike, which changes the gameplay into high-speed side-scrolling. While it is a blast to experience, the developers didn't waste the opportunity to then add difficulty to the experience by pulling inspiration from iconically intense side-scrolling levels. Similar to the Turbo Tunnel level in Battletoads, or Sewer Surfin' from Turtles in Time, players must navigate obstacles and select the best path to succeed, which I can promise will take many attempts to master. In another stage, the gang is chasing after in charge in an airship, which becomes a Galaga-style top-down shooter experience. Apart from being exciting deviations from the top-down portions of Crossing Souls, it's another mining of retro material, part of a modern package.
When you are looking at the tale in Crossing Souls, this is where the creative work that entered the game really shines. What begins as a nostalgia-driven retread of iconic 80's popular culture takes twists and liberties that are fairly unexpected. For a story that revolves around several young teens, the writers weren't afraid to transmit them down dark paths which are typically taboo, like placing life and death stakes on them. Better still, once the story does push the envelope, it does not feel exploitive, but rather, adds a complex emotional layer to those more hard-hitting moments. It's tough to delve too deeply into specific moments without spoiling the surprisingly emotionally hefty plot, but suffice it to say, it's a journey that kept attention through every cutscene and NPC interaction.
My opening praise of narrative elements melding with gameplay mechanics is also on display here. Once the kids are embroiled deeper within the plot, more death occurs, in which you because the player must experience the suffering of a typically fast-moving or powerful character through gameplay. As the physical or emotional toll from the experience weighs on the teen under consideration, moving them all over the world feels sluggish and labored, providing you with an individual connection to the character that isn't seen often in games.
The ending stages are where things start to get muddled, though. The plot takes some needlessly romantic turns between characters that weren't properly developed and the finale is strangely open-ended. It doesn't ruin the story by any means, however it does stick out as a misstep compared to the rest of the characters' more well-developed arcs. Sadly, gameplay takes a detour here, too, as the final stages and boss fight feel less polished compared to entirety from the game up to those points. Certainly one of my personal favorite parts of Crossing Souls was waiting to see the following boss fight and discover which skills was required to overpower them. Much like the arcade-style stages mentioned previously, they offered an excellent departure in the norm and felt like real triumphs when beaten. However, the final bosses, who should arguably offer the greatest challenge and variation on gameplay, were forgettable.
The different aspects of Crossing Souls, from gameplay to art design, are created well and announce developer Fourattic knows what it's aping from, rather than using nostalgia like a one-trick pony. More importantly, they took risks by opting for an emotionally driven experience, instead of sitting on the whole “look, it's 80's stuff!” Another overwhelming illustration of this is the score, including John Williams-esque strings by Chris K”obke and synth from Timecop1983. Both forms of music capture the emotional depth they take, from K”obke's focus on grand strings and horns for that moments of chance to TimeCop1983's action-packed synth numbers in the boss battles.
There are lots of bones which make the body of Crossing Souls amazing, but like most gambles, it doesn't always pay off. In this case, the ribbon to tie everything good together did not really complete the package. However, it's offerings under the surface are definitely worth applauding.
