To get this out of the way first, I’ve been playing Young Souls on Switch and it’s not an enormously brilliant port. This was once a timed Stadia exclusive, I gather, and while it’s entirely playable on Switch, the loading can be quite lengthy and the frame rate can be sort of jittery, which adds an element of imprecision during combat. I am not an expert in this stuff. I suspect you can tell.
Young Souls
- Publisher: The Arcade Crew, DotEmu
- Developer: 1p2p
- Platform: Played on Switch
- Availability: Out today on PC, Xbox, PlayStation 4 and Switch, already out on Stadia
As I said, though, it’s entirely playable, and I’ve been playing it, and it’s been excellent fun. This is a nice modern take on the sort of Turtles-style scrolling beat-’em-up. By modern I mean it has XP and leveling and gear and a hub and all that jazz. But it’s also just a good time in a lovely world. Young Souls has charm. (And a profanity filter mode, thankfully, which makes up for the bizarre choice to include swearing in a game that kids will clearly love.)
This is a two-player co-op game at heart, but you can play it perfectly well as a single-player, skipping back and forth between the main characters, who are twins, with a jab of the Tag button. So far – I’m only an hour or so in – levels tend to offer a bit of busywork and plot development and then a trip into a dungeon, followed by a boss.
Combat includes shields and rolls which need to be timed just so, and then plenty of hacking and slashing. Enemies tend to warp in all around you in numbers, so it’s often about crowd control. Luckily, alongside your main weapons there are throwable objects which offer a pleasantly painful sense of connection.