I need to talk about a game called Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo (Galla), which I’ve been playing compulsively since I got it. I played the demo a while ago, absolutely loved it, and then kind of forgot it existed. I was reminded when I saw it had been released in mid-May. Don’t know how I came across it, oh! I know. It’s because it’s free on Game Pass. I was going to get it there, but then I thought two things. One, I had played the demo on Steam and maybe the game would allow me to continue from where I left off if I bought it there (it didn’t). And two, I loved the game so much, I wanted to give the devs money.
I’ve done that before, by the way. Played a game on Game Pass and then bought it on Steam to give the devs money. This time, I decided to buy it on Steam and play it there. I loved it so much, I even declined to buy a bundle (of two. I had the other game and it would give me a three dollar discount on this game) so I could give them more money. I mean, it was twenty bucks full price, so it wasn’t as if it were breaking the bank.
I started from the beginning, and I had to smile because it’s so charming. Yes, it explore a serious subject–souls stuck in limbo because they can’t let go of pain, anger, grief, etc., and move on. You play as a dead snake who gets the nickname of Kulebra. He rolls around (literally. That’s the one thing you can do–make him roll. Oh, and bump into things, but that’s by using the same button) and tries to help souls who are stuck in place.
By the way, this is apparently my new favorite genre–cozy games that deal with death and has your character helping the NPCs to the other side. Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games) was one and Cozy Grove (Spry Fox) was another. I also love, love, love Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall) which has some serious themes as well. (To pan out to a broader genre). I played the game three times through, and I saw so many new things on each subsequent playthrough.
One example I always give is how you find notes that tell you things about the characters around you. In one case, you learn about the strike that your father had a hand in. If you don’t do much exploring, you just get the basics–that there was a strike. If you talk to your father, you learn that he was heavily involved. If you talk to another character whom I completely missed on my first playthrough (and there is a lot you can do with this character), then you get a whole nother chunk of information about the strike. It’s so well-done, and I really loved the story of the game. (I did not like the meta-story, but that’s not what this post is about.)
Back to this game. Every day is a loop. Characters forget what happneed the day before. There are certain events that they will remember from day to day, and the game will tell you when that happens.
I love the art style. It’s very colorful, rich, and vibrant. The devs are two brothers from the Dominican Republic (who immigrated to the States when they were young) and their team, and the game draws deeply on lore from that area as well as other Latin American countries, and Mexico. The art style is reminiscent of Spiritfarer, though the color palette is very different.
The demo covered the first chapter, and it was a reall ystrong one. I missed something fairly important, though, in playing it this time, and I don’t think I can go back to do it. This is something that is a bit irritating–it’s too easy to miss things in this game. The currency is pearls, and you have to find them around the world. You have to smack things to make them fall, and then you have to pick them up. Because of my lack of depth perception, I often miss them.
By the way, we need to talk about the gameplay. This is something I complain about in many small team indie games. The ‘combat’ is shit. Wait. let me clarify that. There are bosses in this game, and that is really cool. Each boss was one of the NPCs who gave into their rage, anger, pain, despair, and let their evil side come out. I love that they get mythical names and take on vivid and very different appearances. And when you fight them, you have to answer questions about the NPCs/items in the area. All the answers can be found in your journal, but at least in the demo, you weren’t given enough time to look. For every wrong answer, you inched more towwards the darkness. Then, when you get the darkness down to a certain ppoint, you press A (I think?) to shoot out a beam of light that ‘enlightens’ the boss.
That’s fine. It’s the other stuff that accompnaies the boss fight that enrages me. There are sneak sections that are just painful. In part because they’re in the dark, and I can’t see already. In another part because of my aforementioned depth perception issues, especially in not-quite-3D. And, again, there are a lot of sections in the dark, which means I can’t see.
To be fair, there’s an option to quit, which I’ve never taken. If that means you don’t have to do the fiddly bits of the fight, maybe I would choose it. But I really wish that games that aren’t about combat wouldn’t suddenly through combat into it. This game does not need it, and I have cursed heatedly whenever I encounter a stealth section.
Also, I encountered a weird bug. As I was playing, I wanted to look something up so I tabbed out of the game. It immediately put the game on the other monitor and made it so I could not use my controller. I could not find a way to move it or make it so I could use the controller again. In the end, I minimized the window to move it over and then unplugged my controller before replugging it in, and that made it work again.
I have more to say, but I need to sleep. I will pick this up tomorrow. I am close to the end of the game and finally cleaned up something that had been bugging me for the last several hours.