Soul Axiom Rebooted

Minimalism.

This game has less ties to the label of "puzzle" than a match 3 game. It's all running around and interacting with objects while trying to wrangle the game into putting you into the interactable state. Overall it's just buggy and bland.

So far so good. I can pick at the flaws but I'm still interested in coming back to it. There's some graphics glitches, holes in the geo, and invisible walls, plus it can be so dark I fell through a hole in the environment because I didn't see it. Then there's the fact it doesn't use the 6DOF motion of the controllers, it's really just a gamepad game that also happens to work on VR controllers. But weirdly that didn't bother me much, and just helped make it a relaxing seated experience. The rest of the package was appealing and I was into it.

Soul Axiom Rebooted is a visually striking, story-driven puzzle adventure set in a digital afterlife; its atmosphere and ideas make it unique, though the gameplay can feel slow and more about exploration than action.

[b][h1]Soul Axiom Rebooted[/h1][/b]Soul Axiom Rebooted is a simple story-driven puzzle game. The remake feels a little unnecessary, there are some nice new features but I feel VR and Switch support ultimately held them back in improving the game visually, which already looked very dated when it released 4 years prior. The game also has quite a few bugs that ultimately aren't getting fixed now. I enjoyed my time with the game but I recommend buying it on a sale. [b][h2]Gameplay[/h2][/b]If you play a lot of puzzle games you will breeze through this, puzzle design is simple, you gain powers throughout the game which you can use on objects, this is usually very surface-level and isn't often difficult. Level-design is non-linear so you are pretty free to explore and sometimes do the level in your own order. Soul Axiom has similarities to games like Talos Principle in it's Hubworld, you can play levels for each chapter in any order and there's convenient areas for checking missed collectibles or to re-watch curscenes. The Hub allows you to replay levels and each level has a shorter "corrupted" version you can unlock. Despite my enjoyment of the game, there are a lot of bugs that ruin the experience. You can get softlocked in many areas due to things not spawning in, completing a puzzle requirement too early and I even just had a level completely fail to let me continue until I verified game files. As far as I can tell these are issues that the original didn't have and this is very unlikely to ever recieve updates to fix them. [b][h2]Story[/h2][/b]I did not understand the story one bit, the animated cutscenes are cool but felt very disconnected to the cutscenes you get after a level, to the point where i started skipping them after a while. There are multiple endings that you can access easily [spoiler]and the boss fights were a nice change of pace from the rest of the game.[/spoiler] [b][h2]Achievements (64/64)[/h2][/b]Most achievements are straightforward and hub world can help with both collectibles you are missing and revisiting levels for missed achievements. The steam guides on the original game still hold up for the remake so I recommend using those for anything non-obvious. [b][h2]Music/sound[/h2][/b]Cutscenes are fully voice-acted and the music and sound design was good. [b][h2]Settings/Accessibility/Misc[/h2][/b]Tutorials and hints system to guide you to next objective. FOV slider available. VR Supported. Keyboard and mouse with rebinding and gamepad supported. 7 languages supported, but only English has full VA (Subtitles available). [b][h2]TL;DR[/h2][/b]Simple story-driven puzzle game with dated visuals. Easy puzzles. Non-linear-ish. Lots of levels. Lots of bugs. Confusing story with multiple endings. 2 types of collectibles. Fun achievements. [quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39729435-JHG-Reviews/?appid=2218750]Check out my Curator page[/url][/quote]

really good puzzle game with really impressive mechanics, i first played the Event preview demo on the wiiu and loved it, Rebooted is a worthwhile upgrade if you own the classic version.

Checking in from 2026, this was still an enjoyable puzzler. No, the graphics area not 2026 AAA visions but they completely fit within the aesthetic of the game. The puzzles are varied and require some thought. What I enjoyed was that the game does not hold your hand and point you to the puzzle. The power mechanics are introduced and once you have those basics down the game drops you into a level and says "Go." and you need to determine how to apply your powers and solves the puzzles. As the game progresses the number of powers increase and the way to work through the puzzles increase. Expect iterating through some of the puzzles as you have Ah Ha! moments. So that's what I do here. There is a plot but it was rather secondary. I know mostly what was happening but was more interested in trying the next set of puzzles. Thumbs up if you like puzzlers in the vein Qube, Light Matter, reThink, etc.