These days I was looking at the games available on Playstation Plus for January and Titan Souls got my attention, mainly because of its art direction that is really similar to what I want to do in some of my games (Zelda Souls for example). So I thought that it would be a good inspiration for me to play this game!

I downloaded it and it came as a surprise, it is almost exactly the game I would like to do as an indie game dev! So I decided to kind of write an analysis in it, I think it would be better done with a video but I don’t know how to record screen and voice on PSVita.

PS: This “analysis” are my first impressions on the game (about the first 10 minutes).

Titan Souls: The First 10 Minutes

Main Menu

It is really simple, just the options Start Game and Options, in the options menu you can change sound volume (music and sfx), change game language and a timer, I don’t know what is this timer, maybe I should look for it later. After that, let’s play the game!

In the Start Game option I have 4 slots and the option to erase any save file. Let’s Play!

New Game

The game starts with an animation and it immediately gives you control of your character, no introductions, no tutorials, no short stories.

Messing with Buttons: The first thing I did was to press all the buttons, I can move my character on the directionals and on the left analog, the right analog moves the camera, one thing that is interesting about that camera is that you have kind of a “circular” vision, it’s like your camera goes a certain distance from your character, this forms a circle.

You have two actions on the game, dodging and attacking. For the dodge you can use Left Button, X and Circle. For the Attack you can use Right Button, square and triangle. What is really interesting here is that I can access dodge and attack by the two upper buttons on the PSVita, this is really convenient because my fingers will be on them all them time, that’s just how someone holds the console.

Art: As I said I really liked the art direction, I liked the colors and the pixel art, what I liked the most was the dodge animation, I was really worried about having to do a dodge animation for Zelda Souls and I was thinking on alternatives to the dodge, but after seeing this I believe that is possible to do a dodge animation in pixel art!

User Interface: There is no User Interface, but I don’t think this game needs one, does it?

Gameplay: (after I wrote everything, I just realized, the game is called Titan SOULS, so it probably isn’t a coincidence that I felt a similar experience comparing to the Souls games, so I just came back here and wrote it as a note)

It seems like you only have “one life”, you can only get hit once. You have just one arrow to shoot (it’s your only weapon, at least for this beggining) and when pressing the fire button again the arrow goes back to you, but you are unable to move while getting it back.

The first enemies were really big and difficult, they were more like puzzles that you have to solve through a Combat System, this feeling of being afraid of the enemy, thinking the best way to kill it and the good feeling you get after killing them really made me relate the game to the Souls’ games experience (and hey, that’s exactly the feeling I want to achieve in Zelda Souls)

Getting killed is relatively easy but loadings are fast and at least I had a checkpoint near the enemies, so I was ok with it. You have to learn your enemy movements and act carefully

Save Game: The save game register your time played, how many enemies you killed and how many times you died, it’s a simple game after all.

So, that’s it for my first impressions, I really think that recording it and making a video is better, but as I said, I don’t know how to do those things on a psvita, next time I do one of these “analysis” I will try to record it. My final opinion on this game is that it is really simple and really good, I will definitely play it more. Also, it is almost exactly the game I would do as an indie game dev, really surprising, really cool, I shall play it more to see where I can do different (maybe even better?). I recommend everyone to try Titans Souls.