When you are faced with one of these enemies, the Soulbit action wheel will pop up at the bottom of the screen and offer up to five different actions that you can use to defend yourself. Dominators are part human, part tech, and each have a glossy purple futuristic bug look, my favourite being the EvilHand which seems to be a cross between a hand and the evil eye.

You as protagonist Yakumo race around the grid based world map randomly encountering enemies called Dominators and battling them using the game’s Soulbit system. The world visually has an ominous feel, with its dreary view of silhouetted skyscrapers, rain puddles, dead bodies and abandoned buildings, you know that some crazy stuff has occurred. Instead, the game acts as if the player already knows what has occurred and is aware of the protagonist’s goal but really its lack of narrative left me confused. This wouldn’t have mattered as much if its Steam page didn’t talk up the game’s lore so much that I was excited to experience and explore its setting. It goes step by step into the basic mechanics of Soulbits but does a terrible job at setting up its world. Within minutes, the game throws you into its pixelated world with a tutorial that does an okay job of showing you how its deckbuilding Soulbit fighting system works. I’m a sucker for turn-based combat and the game’s trailer emanated Persona 5 gameplay, but in a world that, as devs Ginolabo state, shows the “consequences of technology (on) humanity.” So with all these elements combined, I was pretty stoked to get my hands on SOULVARS. It received glowing reviews as gamers were captivated by its unique deckbuilding system and old-school pixel art JRPG vibes. Last year SOULVARS was released as a mobile game to Japanese audiences and was automatically a hit.

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