Soul Searching
Talha Kaya · 2017 · Indie, Survival, Adventure, Sailing, Local Co-Op
PC
Very Positive90% · 247 📉 Recent reviews down 81%
Compare prices in Official Stores
Screenshots
About Soul Searching
Soul Searching is a narrative survival game about sailing away from your homeland.
You sail on your small primitive boat to a world of islands, dragons, and magic. You can learn about stories of people living on islands you chose to visit, discover dragons, catch fish, customize your boats, find ghosts, cast magic spells, and more.
Soul Searching leaves you in an open world without any tutorialization except telling you the buttons to play. There is not one correct path. There are a number of play styles you can choose, depending on your hunger for gold and better boats. You might get lost, but it won’t take too long to find your way to the end.
Soul Searching is about growing up, leaving your homeland, standing on your own feet. It deals with themes like isolation, searching for meaning and direction, leading to depression and suicidal thoughts.
As the player, you are not a violent hero. The most violent thing you can do in this game is to catch fish to feed yourself. Other than that, it’s a game of humble survival and peaceful travels. But in that humbleness you are challenged to survive in a world of merciless dragons and endless seas.
Made by a one man team spanning 3 years of development, Soul Searching is a very personal game. It tries exciting story-telling methods to convey feelings rarely conveyed in games. Since all code, art, music, everything is made by one person, it offers a special sense of authorship hard to find in other games.
Other than the single player story mode, game also offers a randomly generated mode from 1 to 4 local players. This offers replay value and requires players to work together to survive. More players, more need for resources, so more challenge, but more skills to survive.
Soul Searching invites you to its world of mysteries. Even though the main story play time is not that long, if you want to unlock every achievement in the game, you will have to get lost in this world.
Features:
You sail on your small primitive boat to a world of islands, dragons, and magic. You can learn about stories of people living on islands you chose to visit, discover dragons, catch fish, customize your boats, find ghosts, cast magic spells, and more.
Soul Searching leaves you in an open world without any tutorialization except telling you the buttons to play. There is not one correct path. There are a number of play styles you can choose, depending on your hunger for gold and better boats. You might get lost, but it won’t take too long to find your way to the end.
Soul Searching is about growing up, leaving your homeland, standing on your own feet. It deals with themes like isolation, searching for meaning and direction, leading to depression and suicidal thoughts.
As the player, you are not a violent hero. The most violent thing you can do in this game is to catch fish to feed yourself. Other than that, it’s a game of humble survival and peaceful travels. But in that humbleness you are challenged to survive in a world of merciless dragons and endless seas.
Made by a one man team spanning 3 years of development, Soul Searching is a very personal game. It tries exciting story-telling methods to convey feelings rarely conveyed in games. Since all code, art, music, everything is made by one person, it offers a special sense of authorship hard to find in other games.
Other than the single player story mode, game also offers a randomly generated mode from 1 to 4 local players. This offers replay value and requires players to work together to survive. More players, more need for resources, so more challenge, but more skills to survive.
Soul Searching invites you to its world of mysteries. Even though the main story play time is not that long, if you want to unlock every achievement in the game, you will have to get lost in this world.
Features:
- Around 3 hours of single player story mode
- Random mode from 1 to 4 players that randomly generates a map and requires players to work together to survive
- Creatures at sea: dragons, killer whales, and more
- Islands with lots of monologues, and other islands that are not populated by humans
- Magic skills that let you survive on sea more easily
- Player appearance customization (including gender and sexual interest customization)
- Day night cycle that affects gameplay in subtle ways
- Extensive soundtrack
- English and Turkish language support
- Supporting selectable control schemes: 4 players on Xbox gamepads, 2 players on keyboard, 1 player on mouse
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
zorlayıcı olmayan basit ama keyifli mekaniklere sahip, özellikle Yerdeniz kitaplarının atmosferi ve hikayesiyle kurduğu paralellik sayesinde çok hoşuma giden bir oyun. ayrı bir kafa olan mini oyunlarından basketbol olanı favorim. 5-6 yıl önce offline oynamıştım galiba akşam akşam aklıma geldi geri döndüm.1 found this helpful
Neat little concept for this indie dev to start with, a no-frills island hopping survival adventure game. The graphics and controls are nothing revolutionary, but they’re satisfying. The obstacles on the open sea are intimidating enough to keep you on your toes. I like landing on each island, upgrading the boat, swimming around for gold and those cute little souls that follow you around. It gets a bit repetitive, especially when every island has the same water hole, food table, and boat part merchants, but the game isn’t too long, so it’s forgivable. Still, there are a handful of rookie inefficiencies and errors that brought the experience down. While the coins were fun to collect, it got irritating how difficult it was to spot them in time to get out of the boat without turning your hull around. Would have been nice if the binoculars extended your vision without having to stop the boat to use them. There are also mechanics that didn’t demand much attention, like the fishing also requires that you stop the boat completely, so I didn’t find a ton of use for it. I learned one magic spell, but never figured out how to use it (not that I tried or needed to). I guess you use th…
A beautiful piece of video game art, full of melancholia and a quiet sense of hope. The narrative and themes are weaved through the simple and forgiving survival mechanics quite brilliantly. The gameplay is most enjoyable: relaxing and contemplative. The minimalistic art is gorgeous — colour is used so well to create meaning — leaving plenty of space for the player-reader to use their imagination to fill in the visual gaps. The storytelling likewise leaves space for the reader to work, but without ever being wispy or vague. Even the wide overhead viewpoint ties in with the storytelling. It is a very writerly game. The music is very pretty, but sad, eliciting deep feelings. Indeed, it’s an emotional game, dealing sensitively with depression, existential dread and the complex relationship between art and life (is art merely an escape, or where we truly find ourselves?). It is also very good on the expat experience, on the push and pull of home, and how we are all — not just expats! — running away from something. But you can never outrun yourself.
wow glad i finally took the time to play this game. introspection about depression, the soundtrack is fantastic! thank you!
Does not have any sort of Trigger Warning for Suicide, self harm, overdosing or big mentions of alcohol... Has all of the above in it.
Inspirational game that dares to try something differently narrative-wise. The boat mechanics are clever and overall compliments the exploration in a way I haven't seen much elsewhere. 8/10
Community reviews
—
0 reviews
Sign in to write a review.
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this game.
