Blog of Geen - Soulcaster

I had Soulcaster sitting on my Xbox's hard drive for the better part of this month, downloaded on command by Penny-Arcade's Tycho and then quickly forgotten about. When I awoke this morning I had intended on giving Perfect Dark a try to see if it's new polish was enough to have me spend $10 but instead was reunited with this game's existence. An hour and thirty minutes later, I'm 240 Microsoft Points lighter and have conquered Soulcaster's Normal mode.

I don't want to do a formal review, but I'll do a casual one; Soulcaster is a lot of fun. Graphically it caught my attention with it's 8-bit aesthetics which, if done right, is always a treat to me. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from it's play mechanics when I started playing, but it's basically an action game that thinks it's a Tower Defense game. You are able to summon one of three units, up to a total of five of any combo once you buy all the upgrades in-game, who then fight off enemies for you. You also have other little touches like being able to use scrolls that destroy everything around you (Kind of like the bombs in Mutant Storm) and making sure that your character, a wizard who can run around the board to place the other units, doesn't get killed in the process. Unlike a lot of XNA games I've come across, the control is extremely tight with no hint of floaty-ness anywhere. The music is also pretty catchy with it's late 1980's gaming chiptune style.

So, that's that. I enjoyed it! I enjoyed this more than I enjoyed the demo for Pixeljunk Monster or Final Fantasy Crystal Defenders, which are really the closet games I can think to compare this to. I look forward to seeing what the developer behind this, MagicalTimeBean, does next. Give the demo a go?