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Soft Body Coming to Vita and PS4 this Summer | PSNStores

Soft Body Coming to Vita and PS4 this Summer

Posted by on January 9th, 2015 | 4 Comments | Tags:

If the recent single-digit thermometer readings aren’t enough to make you pine for summer, I’m glad to report that Soft Body is announced to release during the sunny season! Soft Body isn’t quite like anything I have ever played, so I’ll just let the website’s description do its thing:

Soft Body is an action-puzzle game set in a meditative, musical world where players control two similar characters at the same time. This challenging mechanic provides the unique experience of learning how to split one’s mind like simultaneously singing and playing an instrument.

That’s a good way of putting it! Really, though, the most important thing you need to know about Soft Body is that it plays mesmerizingly well. I got my hands on it back at NYU’s Game Center Incubator Showcase and loved every minute of it. It consistently drew a crowd over the course of the show; its simplistic graphical style and musical offerings proving to be a winning combination. The game turns on the fact that you play with two analogue sticks, each controlling one of two bodies – soft or ghost. The soft body can paint walls while the ghost body can push a ball across a track. In later levels, both objectives (the ball and the walls) need to be fulfilled to progress. One of the slogans of the game is that it’s a ‘bullet heaven’ affair; a twist on the incredibly difficult shmup sub-genre ‘bullet hell.’ It’s a refreshing twist on a genre that I’m not sure sees enough innovation. Can you think of any games besides for Ikaruga that really shake shmups up? I’m thinking Velocity would fall in that category, along with Dreamcast’s Twinkle Star Sprites.

Soft Body comes from Zeke Virant, a recent NYU Game Center MFA graduate. If you frequent PSNStores, you might remember a PSM Game Jam at IndieCade East a couple of years ago. Virant was on the team that created Crumble, a puzzle game about holding on to your shape. It’s pretty exciting that Indie Fund announced they’re backing the game, as this will be Virant’s first full-fledged, big league, console release. Congrats!

For more info on the game, check the official Soft Body website.
Zeke is also publishing a series of design posts about the game, aptly titled “The Design of Soft Body”.