Stray Souls
Release Date: October 25, 2023
Adventure, TPP, survival horror, indie games, action adventure, singleplayer
OpenCritic
An action adventure game with survival horror elements, inspired by Silent Hill. Stray Souls is a TPP game telling the story of Daniel - a teenager targeted by a mysterious cult in the town of Aspen Falls.
Stray Souls is a survival horror action adventure game - it was inspired by iconic works of horror, its soundtrack composed by Peter Wicher (Visage) and Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill series, The Medium). It's the debut game of Jukai, an indie Polish studio founded in 2022.
Plot
The game's protagonist is Daniel, an unremarkable teenager who, on his eighteenth birthday, receives inheritance from his grandmother, making him the heir to a manor in Aspen Falls.
Though it initially seems like a dream, it soon turns out to be a nightmare. Daniel soon learns the city is cursed and home to a mysterious cult.
Mechanics
Stray Souls is a third-person game, mostly focusing on exploring the town of Aspen Falls and its surroundings. Our main objective is to learn about Daniel's past. We'll get to make important decisions that shape his personality.
Players will visit various locations (a forest, dark streets, the aforementioned manor), examine numerous items and figure out how to use them. Stray Souls features many puzzles requiring manipulating objects (setting gears, clocks, etc.).
Combat is a large part of the game - Aspen Falls is home to many nightmarish creatures. Daniel will need to fight against undead, multi-armed monsters or massive beasts. Though he's not defenseless and can wield firearms, oftentimes the best solution is to avoid combat. We can sneak past some enemies, but sometimes our only option is to run away. Due to limited resources, we must be mindful of each encounter.
Many elements of the game are random, making Stray Souls a different experience every playthrough. These elements include different item and monster spawns, changing weather and unexpected supernatural events.
Technical aspects
The game runs on the Unreal Engine 5. It uses MetaHuman technology, ensuring photorealistic facial expressions.
Videos and Screens
[1:34] Stray Souls trailer #1
NoobFeed: 50 / 100 by Andres Aviles
Stray Souls is a constant reminder that game development is tough to tackle, and what hopes to scare on the wrong hands may end up being terribly dull. It is a failed attempt at a great horror game that, with a little more polish and time in the oven, would have truly shined. As it stands, it's just a below-average experience with a few good jumpscares.
FandomWire: 3 / 10 by Daniel Boyd
There aren’t many times when this job feels like work, but playing through Stray Souls was one of them. And before you complain with the retort that this is only a $30 game made by a small team, one just has to take a look at something like The Invincible to see how it should be done properly.
IGN: 4 / 10
Despite a genuinely unsettling introductory chapter, Stray Souls is an ambitious but unsatisfying horror game that never quite gets going. Its characters are shallow and uninteresting, and while the sights and sounds of its world can be impressive, the mystery that unravels within it is told mostly through boring exposition dumps and left unsatisfyingly dangling. With poor optimization, zero polish, and some of the dullest bosses I've ever had the displeasure of fighting, Stray Souls is its own worst enemy, destroying its own subtlety with inelegant scares and tedious combat.
Stray Souls Summary
Platforms:
PC Windows
PlayStation 4
Xbox One
PlayStation 5
Xbox Series X/S
Developer: Jukai Studio
Publisher: Versus Evil
Age restrictions: 18+
Stray Souls System Requirements
PC / Windows
Minimum: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5 GHz / AMD FX-8350 4.0 GHz, 8 GB RAM, graphic card 4 GB GeForce GTX 660 / Radeon R9 380 or better, 40 GB HDD, Windows 10
Recommended: Intel Core i5-8400 2.8 GHz / AMD Ryzen 5 1600 3.2 GHz, 16 GB RAM, graphic card 6 GB GeForce GTX 1060 / 8 GB Radeon RX 590 or better, 40 GB HDD, Windows 10