4/10

Overall, it feels as a VERY cheap rip-off of Lost Ember (https://store.steampowered.com/app/563840/LOST_EMBER/).

Also, this should have been an early access or something. It just has TOO many problems to be called a complete game, in all areas:

* Game design.
- While the game blurb says it's relaxing, the very start is done so as to instill a sense of urgency. Rush, run, or you'll ... what? Fail? Miss something? Notice the lack of anything else about this game and its poor graphics?
- Too little information, gameplay is absolutely counterintuitive. At the start, you see a few rocks with glowing "runes". No interaction, no explanation, nothing. They are JUST THERE [TM].
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2168764452
- Next, you are supposed to jump off a very high cliff. And if you didn't read the game's store description, you would not even have an idea it is supposedly safe to do.
- Then, you encounter two almost identical (other than their color) spheres. First one, blue, you are told you will just grab and carry around for no reason, just in case you might find a use for it later. Again, it's not some usable object, it's a damn sphere of light. How do you carry it? Where do you carry it? Why do you carry it? Why can't you choose not to carry it? No explanations. It also is almost (again, just the color) identical to the first and only "life energy" (name mentioned SINGNIFICANTLY later) sphere you collect in droves. Then, a little bit (and several orange spheres you collect) later, you encounter a green sphere that on interaction just buzzes. Nothing. You can't pick it up. Why? Because you just can't? Because you carry a blue one in your *$$ already and it's not spacious enough to fit two? Why can't you drop (or not pick up -- again) the blue and pick the green then? Why? What? Huh? NO INFO. At all.
- Still a bit later, you encounter a scene where you can help some spirits. Unlike at the beginning, where you get a load of voiceover ("Where am I? What is this place? Wow, I am a wolf! Wait, a wolf?") giving you some sense of it being unusual and recognition and non-recognition, there is NO reaction at all. You are just told in a pop-up you can help them. Now who the beep are they and why other than game design should I, especially since when you come to the dais where you can do it, you are told, "WARNING! You will use up you LIFE ENERGY if you do!" Oh wow. (Also, yes, that's a first it mentions WHAT those spheres you've been collecting all the way to here are.)
- Oh, and helping them requires you to use up EVERY SINGLE point of that "life energy" you could collect on the way. If you missed even a single one (very easy to do), you can't. Go back to square one and search for the missing piece. (And yes, there IS a piece you can't return to.)

* Graphics. On max settings, you have all of the following mixed together, often on same screen: detailed textures + bare low-poly objects + blurry 2D sprites + godawful clipping. The hell?

* UI. Two major issues.
- One stems from the abovementioned lack of textures on many objects and 2d sprites. You can't gauge size of many objects, and therefore, distance to them. Especially when it's objects above the surface or platforms you are supposed to jump to.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2168764291
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2168764374
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2168766267
- Second is game mechanics notifications TOO OFTEN popping up simultaneously with some voice events, causing you to miss one or the other. Moreover, when subtitles are on, they pop us simultaneously with these mechanics notifications and either overlap (when mechanics notification pops up at the bottom of the screen) or you need to be a chameleon to read them (when mechanics notification pops up on top, while subs are on the bottom). Both also vanish too quickly to notice them.
- Minor one, translation/subtitles. With English voiceover AND English subs, they often don't match, especially when someone speaks French as part of the phrase. Worse, the these French snippets are not translated consistently. In the span of 10 seconds, you get "ma chérie" translated as "dear", then "oui" left as "oui" instead of translated as "yes", and, cherry on top (pun intended), "ma chérie" again translated as "Cherie" (yes, capitalized). Was it a machine translation w/o anyone proofing? The Hell?

Summary: UGH. Some of the games in the genre are beautiful enough to ignore their shortcomings and just enjoy. Not this one.

... And yes, I likely spent more time to type in this review than I could make myself endure ("play") this monstrosity. Because it is THAT BAD.

Paws and Soul immediately managed to catch my interest with its theme: A mystery game about the reincarnation of a wolf. Although it's pretty clear that the wolf used to have another past life, I was still interested in how the story would turn out. After all, there is nothing more satisfying than a mystery that gets revealed. Another thing I noticed about this game is the presentation of it with colorful areas and environments which I was excited to check out. However, after playing through Paws and Soul, I was left disappointed and even during my playthrough I couldn't wait until the credits finally rolled as I just wanted to be done with it. You see, this game has a great premise but sadly, the execution isn't well-done.

Let me start by saying I had high expectations of Paws and Soul, although I already lowered them after finishing Paws and Soul: First Step, which contains the first part of the full game and works as a demo, by the way. I highly recommend playing through the demo beforehand before deciding whether to pick it up. To be honest, I feel like First Step gives a good impression overall of how the game, although I don't feel like I have any more insight into the plot after finishing Paws and Soul.

However, the save files sadly don't carry over, and thus, I had to replay everything from the demo once again in the full version of the game.


As aforementioned, Paws and Soul is about a wolf that wakes up in a mysterious forest. However, despite not being able to recall any prior memories at all, he is still determined to discover the world and along with that, find his true self. You see, the pieces of his memories are slowly coming back as he is traveling through the unfamiliar area and although the connection isn't exactly clear in the beginning, the happenings start to make sense the more he pries into the past.


At some point, it felt like a chore to go through the game. Whilst I was quite interested in the connections in the story at first, I rather felt like it just threw in random events which started to become quite dull very soon. A lot of drama isn't missing here and I found myself going through a lot of problems of several characters I didn't even know how they were related at all. The good thing here is that Paws and Soul tells two different stories, although one of them is entirely optional. However, the reveal of the connection between the two stories was disappointing and felt out of nowhere.

Besides the dramatic moments, Paws and Soul implements emotional scenes too, although I, unfortunately, couldn't warm up to the characters. This means that I wasn't surprised by the twist and turns at the end of the story and even the sad parts didn't affect me. That said, the end didn't feel satisfying to me as well and way too sudden so it slightly made the impression the writer didn't exactly know how to end the story and just went for the worst-case scenario for a dramatic ending. This could have worked out if the player was attached enough to the characters, which didn't happen for me.


I honestly don't mind walking simulators and I enjoy them very much, however, I felt like Paws and Soul was a little bit too simple when it comes to the gameplay. All the player does is follow a path and collect spheres while occurring one or another cutscene once in a while. As aforementioned, one of the two stories is entirely optional and only appears when the player manages to find shrines which are sometimes hidden as well. With the spheres the player collected, they can help the character with their problems and find out how the event ends.

The problem here is that Paws and Soul doesn't really bother explaining anything to its player and thus, I didn't know what the spheres I collected and various stones with symbols even were, that are available throughout the environment, which doesn't have any purpose besides looking pretty. Anyway, when I occurred a shrine it turns out the spheres I collected were related to the life energy of the wolf, and sometimes finding a large amount is necessary. But luckily, these stories are optional so even if I didn't find enough spheres or every shrine, I could still go on with the main plot. In addition to that, there is a summary of the happenings in the credits.


So, when exploring the environment I quickly noticed beautiful butterflies flying around. You see, they each have a purpose and give the player special abilities such as jumping higher or finding secret paths. The butterflies are easy to recognize as well, thanks to their different colors. Something I didn't quite like was that the secret paths were sometimes quite hard to find and due to the time limit, I had to go back to the butterfly once again to look for a way to go on.


Throughout the game, there are puzzles available, although a lot of these are, once again, entirely optional. Most of the time, their purpose is to collect more spheres for the shrines. I found the puzzles were quite simple as it only requires simple tasks such as activating all gems as quickly as possible or find every stone hidden in the area. I was a bit disappointed as they're too easy and most of them are not required to complete at all, so it didn't feel challenging at all which is the purpose of puzzles. Some of them are hidden as well, by the way.


While I found the voice-over was alright, I was slightly annoyed at the execution. During a cutscene, the player can still move and thus, I often felt too impatient and ended up continue walking. The problem here was when I happened to activate another cutscene both of them would overlap and play at the same time. It was extremely hard to pay attention to two different happenings that play out at the same time and it was impossible to pause or cancel one of them. In addition to that, I often noticed that the text and voices didn't match each other, so I often got confused when the characters were talking about someone else but the text referred to themselves.


Graphic-wise, Paws and Soul is beautiful which was the main reason that got me interested in the game. Sadly, I found some of the locations not as good as others, when it comes to the visuals. The caves, unfortunately, look very simple with only brown walls and small green ponds on the floor while the forest is detailed with small flowers and grass, which made it a delight for me to look at it.

I sadly occurred a lot of lags while playing Paws and Souls for some locations. It was hard for me to not get annoyed at it as the FPS drops lasted for quite a while. Most of the game worked flawlessly for me, but the sudden lags had a huge impact on my immersion nonetheless.


Paws and Soul is a beautiful walking simulator. However, that's all it is. Even with beautiful graphics, which are not even consistent, it's not worth it to go through the story and gameplay. The lags just annoyed me and the characters were neither memorable nor managed to make me feel attached to them, which ruined the story for me as well. Overall, it felt like a chore going through the plot and I feel like I don't have any more insight than before. Ultimately, even with the short playing time, I often just wanted to be done with this game so I could finally quit playing it.

Paws and Soul is obviously a copycat of Lost Ember and The First Tree. Let me say from the start, that I love these sort of games, but unfortunately the execution of this game is poorly done and the story didn't engage you at all. In fact, I was glad when the game was finally finished as I got bored and was very frustrated with the gameplay.
The main issue with me were the controls. I play with mouse and keyboard and it was VERY difficult to control the wolf. If I needed to turn around, I had to go in a big circle. It was very hard to gauge distances, so the platform areas were a nightmare. For some reason the wolf couldn't jump well when running, and that made it difficult to fulfil actions within a restricted timeframe. In areas where you had to pick up a globe on a shelf, it was a nightmare to fine tune the wolf to reach it. All this destroyed the 'relaxing' label the game has. Let me say that there was a lot of swearing my end....and that is not me!
Added to which there were no explanations as to who you are, why you were there and why were you seeing these people all the time. Dialogue by the players, were sometimes overwritten by game instructions/required actions. It takes a while before you twig that there are two stories going on simultaneously.
Your main action is following orange globes which are your life energy. You come across altars and this energy activates them. What these altars are for are never explained. Nor are the glowing glyphs in the environment.
A pet peeve of mine is that you can come to a crossroad with three paths to choose from. You choose one, but can't get back to the other two. To rub salt into the wound, when you finish the game, there is no facility to go back to any level to mop up any missing achievements. You have to play the WHOLE game all over again!
Graphics can be stunning, but the view in the distance is very bare. The underground environments are very sparse too. So it looks like 2 different artists are at work here. No creepy crawlies or other wildlife were seen other than butterflies. I honestly didn't notice the music, so it must have been very unintrusive!
Voiceovers were barely sufficient. The 'hero' (David) sounded like a dead man walking! A couple of the characters were French with heavy accents. Why they were in the story, I still don't know!!
I cannot recommend this game because of terrible controls. I also fell off the map a few times and ended up somewhere completely different! This game has a confusing story and the characters don't engage your interest. Just the usual 'entitled' mindset. There is no map, no cohesion with everything you interact with, poor camera placement and ability to gauge distances.
An interesting concept, but poorly executed. Give it a miss. I give it a rare thumbs down.

It took me around 5 hours to finish the game.
The first 3 hours I enjoyed then I started hoping for the ending to come.
The overall gameplay and environment is enjoyable enough, however there is something OFF about this game.

The environments range from being very high quality to being extremely low poly, almost blocky.
It seems almost as if the main environment was created by one person and then lower quality trees, rocks, caves etc.
were added by another. Very suspicious...

I want to give this game a positive review on the background that I think it's a first time effort for the developer or near first time at least. I am not sure on this however, but I want to be understanding if that's the case.

The game is EXTREMELY similar to "Lost Ember" & "The First Tree"
and unfortunately falls very short compared to the both of them.

However if you like these types of games, love wolves and easy gameplay, then I recommend this game.
Play it for the gameplay and NOT the story, because the story was written and executed poorly unfortunately.

I'd give it a 3/5 stars for a small team indie game.

Let me start by saying I tried to refund this. I was literally fifteen minutes over the time limit. Why did I try to refund it? Well, let me spin you a tale of my woes.

I was willing to overlook some of the game's faults but then about halfway through the game I managed to accidentally, through literally no fault of my own, slip outside the invisible wall borders and couldn't get back in. I'm a veteran of Bethesda's janky ass games, and so I spent about fifteen minutes working my way back into the legit borders of the game and I went on my way. About an hour later, and several areas worth of collecting little pac man balls, I quit for the night. When I reloaded? I was BACK OUTSIDE THE FARTING BORDERS AGAIN, LOSING AN HOURS WORTH OF PROGRESS. Then, without warning, it dropped me out of the world. I now have to start all over again, as upon loading, I fall forever. This game is anything BUT relaxing.

In terms of other issues, as other people have said, the voice acting is literally some of the worst I've heard. No one talks like that outside of badly translated anime and the accents are TERRIBLE. They could have gotten better results by just calling someone in France and asking them their thoughts on reincarnation. It would have been more coherent.

The controls are the gameplay equivalent of walking across ten year old shag carpet. In a New York city flophouse. And there's a leaking sewer pipe running overhead. And it's soaked into the carpet. And you have nothing but your socks on. You know that if you move, you'll make progress away from the horror. But actually doing it makes you want to commit intentional forever sleep.

Level design isn't much better. When the scenery finally shifts to that psychedelic wonderland acid trip you see in the gallery, it feels really nice at first. And then you figure out that all those nice bright colors hide all these orbs you're collecting, you know, for the STORY. Then you have to slow down to a crawl if you want to find them all. And that's IF you don't accidentally take one of the side paths that I swear to God feel more at a home in a speedrunning game. If you're going to build a walking simulator, by St. Boogar and all the saints at the backside door of purgatory don't put shortcuts that a player can take that bypasses their ability to see the dang tootin' story. It's the ENTIRE purpose of the game.

The story itself is uh... Not good. It's literally just voice clips of them playing the "What's my connection to this weird human family" game way after that stops being interesting or intriguing. It legitimately feels like it was written for and by a four year old. It is not surprising to us that the fifteenth cutscene triggers an emotional reaction in the blatantly reincarnated wolf you are playing as, because we have this thing called concept permanence. If I have to hear that stupid wolf say "Why do I feel so connected to this BLAH BLAH BLAH", "He got angry! Why do I feel angry?", "Why do I FEEL SO SAD WHEN THE HUMAN IS SAD :c" ONE MORE TIME, I'm going to learn to build games in unity, figure out how to code the actual concept of pain, then rip the wolf model from this game, GIVE IT THE ABILITY TO SUFFER and literally build a digital hell to drop it into.

Why does the wolf and half the objects in this game look like Midna from Twilight Princess came through with a flash book of norse runes, a pile of meth, and a tattoo gun preloaded with glowing ink? Because we said so. No it doesn't have a gameplay purpose. You're an idiot for asking. Next question.

In summation, I'm going to give this game one serious award:

~ It's a masterclass in how NOT to make a game. ~

Go buy Lost Ember. Or just stick a GoPro on a dog and toss some dayglo tennis balls around while pontificating on whether or not you're someone else for five hours.

You are a wolf that running around in the forrest , collecting light balls and experiencing the story about a boy.
It is very relaxing, no enemies, no puzzles, just enjoy the amazing graphics and soudtrack.
If you want an exciting gameplay, you are not gonna get it in this game.This game is more like a walking simulator.
There are possible multiple endings depending how many secrects you found.
My gameplay : https://youtu.be/ndPlqYABfMY

While the premise of this game sounds absolutely fabulous, the execution of that premise is just bad. From the writing, through the animation all the way to voice acting. Its unbelievably amateurish.

The worst thing though, its the ending. This game is trying very hard to be another Rime, or perhaps Lost Ember. Its failing miserably.

4/10, while running as a wolf with tribal tattoos sounds good, the execution just kills it.

Some achievements in this game are broken and the developers don’t care to fix them.
Don’t buy this game if you’re an achievements hunter.

Unfortunately for me it's a game already reviewed several times. In circulation you can find an infinity equal to this title. Good graphics and music. Very classic story and no different from the others. I encountered 2 bugs: I got stuck in a stone after jumping (with butterfly) and the word "Dig" no longer disappeared, remaining in the center of the screen and forcing me to restart the game.
At the moment I don't feel I have to recommend it, it hasn't left me with positive emotions. 5/10 my rating