Soft Body

If you love games that sound amazing and feel good to play, this is probably your game of the year. It's a bullet hell like no other; a game where you don't shoot your enemies but try to get close enough to touch them without getting shot. And you do it by controlling two snakes at once, one with each hand. Getting good at Soft Body is like a form of meditation. As you start to get better at it, you stop focusing on controlling one snake at a time, and you wind up controlling both simultaneously, not looking at either one. Then the game starts to throw challenges at you where you need to be moving and dodging and attacking with both of them at once. This is a bigger game than people sometimes realize - Hard Mode isn't just a difficulty tweak, it's a whole new set of levels and mechanics. Disclosure - I contributed testing and feedback in an unpaid capacity.

[b][i]Soft Body[/i] is a hidden gem, as far as I'm concerned.[/b] I'm not sure why this title didn't get more attention as of this point (9/16). While the asking price seems steep, there is a ton of top-quality gameplay and fun to be had here. [i]Essentially, this is a wonderful mashup of the puzzle and bullet hell genres.[/i] While it works best with a controller, a keyboard is great too (no need for that mouse). [b]The trailer doesn't do it justice. I had to play this to get that 'aha' moment of how smooth it is.[/b] The levels are very well designed, and the mechanic works really well. There are several different puzzle mechanisms that are revealed to you over time. [b]Pros:[/b] +Wonderful fresh mechanic that comes out of mixing puzzle elements with bullet hell +Controller or keyboard works great (no need for mouse) +Learning curve ramps up at a very doable rate; I haven't rage quit, yet the puzzles are still quite rewarding to complete +Music and atmosphere are really cool +New Game+ features +Definately addicting! [b]Cons:[/b] -This is just my experience and I'm not sure if it is real or not, but it seems to play slightly slower on my gaming rig compared with my laptop, but to be honest, I'm ok with that ;) I'm hooked. [b]This is totally worth full price if you are a fan of bullet hell and puzzle games.[/b] Not only does it do something fresh, but it does it [i]really[/i] well.

Really enjoying this game so far. About 30-minutes in, 14 levels finished. I lost count of how many times I died. On one level, I died almost-constantly, because I was having trouble keeping track of my "Ghost" while avoiding a bullet with the other hand. Not sure how to describe the game, other than a "action-puzzle". Been looking forward to it for months, and it's been worth the wait.

* for optimal use of this review, read in the voice of J.K. Simmons ; this is not specific to this review, it makes all the reviews better * Soft Body is an amazing fast-restarting bullet-dodging block-painting world-changing mind-bending shape-popping piece of the smoothest velvet gameplay that's legally available out there at the moment! It'll make you hear colours, touch sounds and see silky worms do things you would have never thought possible. I'll start with the disclosure: I did the French localisation for this game, and provided a bit of feedback and a few bug reports on the way. Didn't get money for it, in case it matters. In order to get a good feel for how to name things, especially when literal translations didn't fit, I played through [u]all of the levels[/u], finished some of them quite easily, died a few times in a few more, spent a couple of hours on a couple of difficult ones, and had to give up on the toughest ones because it was 3am and I needed sleep. The whole experience was [b]thoroughly enjoyable[/b]. I have played a few fast-restart games, and some other slower ones where you die a lot too, and I usually get super frustrated after a while. Play the same level twenty thousand times without making it past the bloody chainsaw or something, that'll make anybody want to gouge their own eyes out with their controller. [b]Not Soft Body![/b] I kept on restarting. Over and over again. Dying in the most stupid ways time and time again. And I enjoyed [b]all of it[/b]. I'm sure you will too! And there's a good chance that learning to control your two snakes [b]at the same time[/b] [i]independently[/i] is good training for a whole bunch of stuff, like attention distribution, hand decoordination, multitasking, team-working, leadership, etc. Oh, and the music's [i]out of this world[/i]. Literally. There was a tear in the fabric of space-time, and it came through along with the [b]tight controls[/b]. Can't prove me wrong, might as well believe it. By the way, if you want to play it on Linux, you can! Maybe! I could, anyway. Works fine through Wine, but you may have to add an xinput dll file if Wine doesn't find your controller by itself. Also, I want it on record that I was the first person in the world to draw a P***$ with that line thingy between the chapters. Are we allowed to say P***$ on Steam? Anyway, this game's great, go get it!

I did a little bit of [strike]snooping[/strike] research and found out that most people who leave positive reviews here and write that they feel like [i]"mental ninjas for controlling two snakes at a time"[/i] or whatever haven't actually completed the gamemode where they are supposed to do that. They say it's incredibly fun, spend 30 more minutes playing, fail completely and then never launch Soft Body again. Why? Because this is the most challenging, but also the most [i]tedious[/i] game I have ever laid my hands on. The developer asks you to literally change how your brain works in order to learn to control two things at the same time while dodging millions of projectiles – a daunting task that can take dozens of hours spent in agony and frustration – and what does he offer in return? Nothing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There is no music whatsoever, only lacklustre sound effects – so much for the [i]musical world[/i] promised on the Store Page. There are neither screenshots nor any artwork in the Community Hub, as you won't find anything even a tiny bit meaningful or interesting to look at while playing. And when you finally manage to beat Hard Game, you'll get your much-desired reward – a simple level you need to complete, now at glorious 5 frames per second. Yes, the FPS drops in Soft Body happen all the time – FPS drops in a top-down "snake" kind of game. Never thought I'd live to see it, but here we are. So, people launch Soft Body, maybe complete Soft Game and a couple of Hard Game levels. In good spirits and full of bravado, our mental ninjas leave reviews and write that they feel like "LITERAL GODS" now – yes, it [i]is[/i] a quote. They come back a bit later to try more levels and quickly realise how immense the challenge actually is and how much time they will need to invest to overcome it. Seeing that there is virtually no substance, nothing to keep them engaged, nothing to motivate them to press forward, they quickly give up – and that's the end of the story. Don't get me wrong, I love challenging games – I climbed Bennett Foddy's mountain 50 times, for goodness' sake – but a game cannot be [i]just[/i] a test of skills. If I give you a shovel and order to dig a giant hole in the ground for no reason, you will barely approach the task with enthusiasm. However, if we both know there's a pot of gold waiting for you somewhere below, if we play nice music and maybe have a deeply personal conversation along the way, then this hole-digging business suddenly won't seem so off-putting anymore. This is [i]Soft Body[/i] and [i]Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy[/i] – both games were made by a single developer with an incredible challenge in mind, but only one of them did it right.

Guide to literally cleaving your brain into two.

its like patting your head and rubbing your stomach but also at the same time using your feet to pat your stomach and rub your head

What right does this game have to call itself "meditative?" I certainly don't feel relaxed. I feel like my mind is strangling itself with a wire. The learning curve is not so much steep as it is endless. I have been playing for only about three hours and I feel like a two-year-old desperately fighting against his own undeveloped motor skills. My thumbs hurt. My hands hurt. Anyway, you should buy this game.

Quick Score: 5/5 Notes: Severely underrated game. All aspects of the game are extremely polished and to my knowledge the gameplay itself is 1 of a kind. Difficulty gets decently high but never insane, and if you so desire there are assist options to help. My only issue with the game is that I had a crashing issue upon beating hard mode which wouldn't let me progress to hard+, requiring me to manually wipe my save and playthrough it again. There is actually an option to instantly unlock all modes, though it said it disables "trophies" (achievements?) so i didnt want to risk it. Luckily, unlocking hard mode again only took about 20 minutes. Aside from that though I have no complaints.

두 마리의 흐물흐물한 뱀을 조종해서 스테이지 별 목표를 해결하면 되는 추상적인 게임. 게임을 시작하면 바로 할 수 있는 Soft Game 모드의 경우, 한 마리는 육체, 한 마리는 영혼 역할을 해서 육체 역할을 맡은 뱀만 애먼 총알에 맞아 죽지만 않으면 된다. (영혼의 경우, 총알을 맞으면 육체 곁으로 돌아오기 때문에 게임 오버를 당하지는 않는다.) 육체와 영혼은 서로 다른 역할을 담당하기 때문에, 한 마리만 쓰는 걸로는 스테이지를 깰 수 없다. 그래도 한쪽 구석에 뱀 한마리를 박아 놓고 다른 뱀으로 조작을 하는 꼼수는 가능해서 난이도는 그리 어렵지는 않을 것이다. (Soft Game의 경우는 약 1~2시간이면 무난하게 클리어 할 수 있다.) 게임의 연출이나 중간중간 나오는 컷씬은 무슨 말을 하는지 모를 정도로 추상적인데, 사실 게임플레이에 영향을 줄 정도는 아니라 그냥 감상하고 넘어가면 된다. 그러나 이 게임의 진정한 난이도는 Hard Game 모드부터 시작된다. 이때부터 두 뱀 모두 방해물에 닿으면 사망하기 때문에 더 이상 영혼 역할의 뱀이 죽는다고 게임이 봐주지 않고, 두 물체를 동시에 조작하는 능력이 Soft Game보다 더 강조된다. 또한, 말은 Hard Game이지만 스테이지의 구성이 Soft Game과는 완전히 다르고 새로운 요소들이 소개되기 때문에 본 게임보다 약간 어려울 거라고 생각하다가는 뒤통수를 맞게 된다. 이 때문에 도전과제 욕심이 없는 사람들도 개인적으로는 Hard Game 모드는 꼭 깨보는 걸 추천한다. Soft Game과 Hard Game 말고도 스테이지 구성은 같지만 난이도를 올리는 요소가 들어간 Soft Game+와 Hard Game+ 모드도 있으니, 만약 이 게임을 100% 달성할 것이라면 가격 대비 분량이 꽤 많을 것이다. 특히 도전과제 100%를 달성하려면 Hard Game+ 모드를 모두 클리어해야 하기 때문에 행운을 빈다. 결론적으로, 게임이 말하고자 하는 스토리 같은 건 이해할 수 없지만 게임플레이와 미니멀한 비주얼, 그리고 가격 대비 분량의 적절성 때문에 추천한다. 다만 2개의 캐릭터를 동시에 조작하는 컨트롤이 중요해서 이 조작이 익숙하지 않으면 게임이 매우 힘들어질 수 있다는 점은 감안해야 한다. 여담) 게임은 이 게임을 플레이하는 수단으로 패드를 추천하기는 하지만, 나는 그냥 키보드로 깼다. (애초에 방향키 빼고 추가적 조작키가 없어서 그리 불편하지는 않았다.)