Soulless (2012)
Soulless is a platformer released in 2012 for the Commodore 64. Modern players without an actual C64 have been taken into account. A digital download package is available that includes an emulator and a shortcut for launching the game. The emulator settings are also pre-configured. Soulless features gorgeous graphics and music, an intriguing framing narrative and solid animation. It is an excellently polished, fully finished game.
Soulless was created by Georg Rottensteiner (coding) and Trevor Storey (graphics). Since then the duo has released two more high-quality platformers — Guns 'n' Ghosts (2013) and Barnsley Badger (2016). All of the games are commercial releases. The minimum price for a digital download is $2.99, but I got Soulless even cheaper as part of a bundle including several games. Cassette and disk versions are also available. Publisher Psytronik Software does important work supporting new game releases for 8-bit systems.
The yearning of the soulless soul
In Soulless the player controls a green monster-like creature. In reality this is King Rizek, cursed by a powerful wizard. As a human, Rizek was a great warlord who eventually grew tired of war. He sought peace, but his generals still craved violence and hired a wizard to get rid of him. The wizard’s spell split the king in two — the soul separated from the body, and without its soul the body became unrecognisably distorted. The king’s body was thrown into a dungeon for eternity, but a thousand years later a massive earthquake has broken the dungeon open.
The player’s task is to collect from the temple 12 pieces of soul — symbolic spirit stones — and place them in the correct order to free the soul and reunite it with the body. The game world consists of several rooms arranged in a slightly labyrinthine fashion, filled with platforms and different obstacles. Obstacles are mostly moving enemies that must be avoided. Touching one injures the player character. Other hazards include projectile-throwing and bomb-dropping objects, trench-like gaps and falling stone mallets.
While searching for spirit stones, the player inspects various chests, sacks, rugs and ornamental objects, which contain gems, gold and minor spells in addition to the spirit stones. The searching animation — in which the character turns his back to the player while a progress bar appears — brought to mind Impossible Mission. A nice detail is that when standing still, the character turns to face the player. Room structure, “furnishings” and hazards are the same on each playthrough, but the placement of treasures is random. The soul code also changes with every new game.
Pixel-precise — and therefore clumsy
I played using the keyboard. Everything is controlled with the arrow keys and one jump key. It took quite a while before I learned to master the character’s movements — especially the jumps — with sufficient pixel precision. For a modern player the movement feels stiff; it would seem natural to be able to steer the character during a jump. The controls are not flexible, but once I adapted, I began to see them more as a stylistic choice than a limitation. Pixel graphics imply pixel animations. (With that in mind, the opening cutscene features a surprisingly fluid walking animation.)
Baroque richness with minimal resources
I greatly appreciated the graphics in Soulless. The game world contains fascinating details, many different characters, objects and ornaments. Rooms are easy to distinguish from one another even though certain elements are inevitably reused. The game world is quite large — completing the game takes around 40 minutes.
The game is rendered in character graphics, mixing hi-res and multicolour modes. In hi-res mode a pixel is 1 × 1 and two colours are available. In multicolour mode a pixel is 2 × 1 and four colours are available. The switching between modes is easy to notice in Soulless. Hi-res mode appears in the blue ornaments, the red grid and the numbers in the background. Everything else, including the player character, is in multicolour mode and thus stretched horizontally.
The in-game music complements the graphics and suits this type of fantasy setting. I was especially charmed by the baroque ornamentation of the melodic lines. In addition to the in-game soundtrack there are separate pieces for the intro and ending cutscenes and a theme for the title screen.
Verdict
I was motivated to restore the king’s soul, even if this type of simple platformer is admittedly difficult to justify except as a demonstration of the creators’ skill. Still, Soulless is a high-quality, stylish and mature C64 game. I give my play experience a total score of 75 out of 100.
Availability
Soulless is available as a physical cassette or disk version for the Commodore 64 and as an emulator version for Windows, macOS and Linux — easily accessible for modern players.