Souldiers retro pixel metroidvania

Souldiers is yet another pixel art metroidvania, but don't let that fool you into overlooking this exceptionally well crafted little indie.

Developed by Spanish indie studio Retro Forge and published by Dear Villagers; Souldiers has you, once again, exploring a mystical land in a 2D side scrolling, pixel art metroidvania.

There's something almost perfect about the approach to the art style in Souldiers.

It's exactly how you think you remember the old 16bit games you used to play (until you go back and play them). It cleverly uses a slightly modern color palette in conjunction with beautiful pixel design and regular particle effects.

It gives it the old skool/new skool feel, the same as way as Octopath did.

Gameplay wise it's the same as every other metroidvania.

Explore the map, fight things, level up, get access to be abilities that allow you to access new areas, new adversaries and new abilities.

It does however execute this very well.

Combat is responsive and challenging, they're are puzzles to solve and some very well designed/frustrating platforming (depending on your proclivity and ability).

You can play through as either a warrior (scout), archer or mage, which changes up how you approach encounters.

As you progress and level up, you unlock class specific combat skills from a skill tree. Scout felt most 'souls' like with it's timed parries, counters and dodge rolls

The game is touted as "souls like" but there are difficulty settings.

Difficult is hard as hell and story is a cakewalk, so you should be able to find your sweet spot to enjoy what is a gorgeous, well constructed  (if unoriginal) retro feast.

Souldiers is out now on PC, Xbox, Playstation and Switch.

I reviewed it on PC via Steam.