The Soul Box

Linear sci-fi novel with a self-contained story, distinct presentation, and little gameplay aside from a few small puzzles. This is all about telling a story with minimal gameplay elements. It involves clones, religion, oppressive society, and all the other elements of a Sci-Fi utopian world. The text is delivered unusually. Instead of displaying the current text, fresh text appears from the bottom, pushing the previous text box upward. This allows you to read and examine every text box thus far, and you can even travel back to the beginning using the mouse wheel for speedier scrolling. The presentation is unique, with the name of the current location, some stats that move up and down, and a news feed at the bottom of the screen, but you will still need to click the mouse button to see the next paragraph or sentence, just like in any other visual novel. Art and characters are fine, and some characters provide a brief description when you hover your mouse over them. There are a few more distinct visual components, such as decisions that don’t really do anything and e-mails you receive here and there. The only thing that requires some work are a couple of puzzles in which you rotate or move something. Clues to the solution are presented in bold writing before the puzzle, so if you get stuck and do not know what to do, you can scroll back. However, it’s all very simple because you can move something around until it clicks into place.

[B][I][u]Warning: A short scene with transphobia behaviour acted towards a character[/u][spoiler](who's in disguise)[/spoiler][/i][/b] [I]What's the point of researching the secret to immortality if your belief is that you believe you will get one by default if you're a good enough Samaritan person? Would that be you questioning your faith?[/i] It's about time I talk about an Ikuku game after playing all 5 of them so far. They are enjoyable, but it can be hard to encrypt what the main point of the story is all about. Some may require a replay or for you to play their other games to fully fledged what their meaning, as some are interconnected, some more than others. And they are set in the same universe, just in a different timeline. They also contain Easter eggs that you may recognise if you played the other games, like in this one, funny enough, it advertises those couple of games. For one, The Soul Box is self-explanatory and can be played as a stand-alone game. It takes place in the far future, where there are hyper-speed trains, voice renegotiation AI that follow you around, supporting your everyday activity like making calls and arranging appointments at your command. There are even Android and clones, who have more rights than any living being against discrimination. The plot of Soul Box is a story of 2 guys, one of them a clone and the other one the original, but a very wealthy fella. One day, they both inherited a mysterious box from their deceased uncle, who, rumour had it, the box held the key to immortality. The whole story is focused on the guys trying to crack the code to open the box by talking and blackmailing other people who have connections to their uncle to gain any information about the box, one of them being a radical feminist who opposed the church for their involvement in oppressing minorities throughout the centuries. While this is the main plotline, there's also a sideplot where characters discuss things about the said oppression of females, referring to many historical events as well as other subjects relating to immortality, religion, patriarchy, human progression and sexual liberty. The whole journey has been an interesting read-through, but it does get too philosophical at times, and I'm not a very architecture person when it comes to history. I'm not gonna lie, some information flies right over my head a couple of times, but I believe I got the gist of it, I just wish sometimes I had a brain for it in the first place as I'm not well vice in poem and historial literature. I started reviewing this particular game first because it was easy for me to deconstruct, even if I still don't fully understand the whole contents, I welcome the challenge of evaluating this work. It's like reading the newspaper, a comic book and even a visual novel. Reading it once won't be enough to fully understand it. So it's no surprise there, but it's more apparent with this game that I have to revisit it. Maybe with time and experience, I will have a better understanding of the developer's intent for the game. I do plan to review some of the other Ikuku games and talk more about the games themselves, other than using them as a piggyback, like I did here. Whether or not this review has been useful in helping you consider your options to try this or any of the other Ikuku that may be of interest. No matter what decision you've made, I applaud you for reading this of me trying to stitch my mind together. [i]P.S. It may help to play through all other Ikuku games in release order, but feel free to play this one on it's own but I do recommend before playing the The Soul Box free DLC, The Quixotes Of Tomorrow to play For Ever Melancholia beforehand as there's many refer to that game and things get confusing if you haven't already, but I don't want to spoil the surprise for your entertainment.[/i]

An exceptionally crafted game, rich with profoundly relevant reflections on society and human nature. I believe this story will earn the recognition it deserves in the years to come. It's among the finest visual novel experiences I've had.