Can you conquer Clifford Castle?
6Souls is a challenging action-platformer with over 80 levels to beat and 6 bosses to defeat. Embark on an exciting journey to find the abandoned Clifford Castle and uncover its secrets! Our heroes, adventure enthusiasts Jack and his faithful dog companion Butch, go on an exciting quest to find an abandoned castle where the entire Clifford family vanished years ago. The whole castle is surrounded by mystery, from its dark dungeons to its highest towers. While discovering new rooms, our heroes will learn fascinating details about the Clifford family, meet the castle’s peculiar residents and uncover its secrets.
6Souls is a 2D platformer with a retro look in the form of its pixel-art visuals. You play as Jack who can jump, climb walls and attack his enemies, while his dog Butch can fit under certain areas of the castle to retrieve keys (and bacon) to push through to the next area. Jack gets other abilities as the game goes on like a dash to clear large gaps or to avoid enemy attacks but only after beating bosses and gaining them afterwards. Levels are a simple formula of finding the key, opening the door and moving onto the next room of the castle. The levels start out easy but definitely start getting tougher after the 2nd boss.
For achievement hunters though, you oddly only have to beat the 2nd boss to nab all 1000 Gamerscore unless you somehow don’t gather a few coins and slices of bacon along the way. It is a weird decision for the developers to essentially hand out all achievement this quickly with still 2 thirds of the game to go and it took me roughly 30 minutes to get to that point.
The good news is that the game itself is fun, even if it doesn’t break any new ground for platformers. It handles well, jumping feels responsive and you never feel like any death wasn’t your fault. Boss battles are fairly simple once you figure out their patterns, but you may die a few times before that happens. Jack can take 3 hits before he dies unless he falls in a chasm or impaled by spikes, he can also block attacks 3 times before his shield breaks. The good news is that each “level” is literally a single room and progress like damage taken is reset either through pushing forward to the next room or dying.
Visually, the pixel-art design works well and gives the game a classic feel to it. It’s simple but it works well here. Load times are essentially non-existent, and the framerate was smooth and consistent throughout like you would expect. The soundtrack wasn’t too bad either, while the sound effects for voices have a retro sound to them too.
The Verdict
6Souls is a fun platformer with some decent level and boss designs. It doesn’t redefine the genre, but it wasn’t meant to. It’s clearly a homage to the 2D era of platformers and that’s always a win in my book.