Underneath my yellow skin

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Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo–my official review

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I finished Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo (Galla), and I have never fallen off a game so hard after loving it so much. In yesterday’s post, I talked about how much I was hating the end of the game. I quit after doing three of four statues, and I was dreading going back in. I only had one last statue to do, yes, but I had a hunch the bullshit was not over. Spoiler: I was not wrong.

I could not find out how to get to the fourth statue for the life of me. I looked it up online, but nobody had a guide to the last chapter*. I kept going around in circles, getting more and more frustrated, until I decided to try to go to a seemingly empty corner. Nope. It had something in it, snomething that was not intuitive, and I was finally able to finish the fourth statue. That meant I could progress and fnish the game, right? Well, sort of.

What it did was call down the big baddie, who was the assistant to one of the other Bright Souls (which is what I, a dead snake was. I seemed to be the only dead animal who was a bright soul, but that is neither here nor there), and he started chasing me around. I had to go back to all the statues again. I was so exasperated that by this time, I was seriously considering just stopping. I didn’t care about the story any longer, and I certainly did not want to revisit the statues with the big baddie and the two screaming pink ladies (I knew there were two of them) chasing me.

Plus, they would set things on fire–but I could go through that. However, there were things that were already on fire–and I  could not go through that. They looked the same to me, which meant memorizing which the baddies set and which they didn’t. As I was trying to get away from them. In the dark.

You can tell how much fun I was having, probably, by my tone of voice. (None. That was the amount of fun I was having. Absolutely none.)

When I finally did it, the baddie’s mentor (the Bright Soul who had been guiding me in the last chapter) came to help me, and then there was a really misguided conversation/fight between the baddie and the mentor, a counterintuitive and puzzling (as in, why is this in the game?) fight, and then–credits? Oh, I forgot. Right before the credit, the snarky bird who had been negging/insulting me all game had to get in one more barb. There’s a story reason for it, but it felt unnecessarily negative.


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Kulebra and the and the Souls of Limbo–A Quick Look, part two

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Let’s talk more about Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo (Galla). I wrote about it yesterday and how I was in love with the game. I also mentioned a few bugs/things that annoyed me about the game. I want to start with the latter so I can end up strong/positive. By the way, I’m in the last chapter, and I’ve put in nearly 15 hours. I think this could be done easily in 10-12 hours, but I’m slow. Plus, I’ve had to backtrack more tahn I care to admit.

I ran into a few bugs, and one of them is not allowing me to go to certain areas after I left them. For example, the first area. I had left something undone because I could not figure it out, and when I tried to get back in, I could not return. That really bothered me because the thing I left undone seemed like it would be an important part of the game.

Hours later, I tried to go back, and I was able to do it. So either the bug unbugged, or I didn’t approach it in the right way the first time. This is one of my frustrations with the game–the jank and the bugs. I can’t get too mad at it beacuse it’sa small team, but it does exercise my patience now and again.

I just tried the last big, ah, fight? Not really. Stealth section? Not exactly. Puzzle? That’s closer to it, but also not quite. It’s all of that together, and it’s annoying as fuck. Oh my god. It’s sapped all my interest in the game, really. I had to go into this ruin and then there was one or two of the pink ghosts (who are in agony) suddenly appearing and flying at me if they see me. They drain me to darkness so quickly, and they can corner me in a blink. I know it’s my reflexes and my lack of spatial direction, but I hate it so much. I have cursed as much as when I’m fighting a From boss because this is not why I’m playing the game.

I implore indie devs not to put combat in their games just because they feel they need it. I know that I’m just shouting into the abyss, but gameplay done badly is not a boon. And, yeah, I get that my issues make these matters worse for me than for most people, but I have a hard time believing that anyone was like, “I really like those pink screaming ladies who can appear out of the blue and block me from leaving the area, thus draining my light in seconds!”

It’s gotten so bad, I’ve taken to micro-saving after every bit of progress. It’s not hard in the traditional sense, especially since getting caught and maxing out your darkness just means you go to your last save and start again. You can see why I’m micro-saving, right?


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Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo–A Quick Look

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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.


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