"A DS masterpiece"

It's been four years since the DS was released in 2004, and since then we've seen a variety of clever concepts that really take advantage of the touch screen, such as Kirby: Canvas Curse, Trauma Center: Under the Knife and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. And now in 2008, we have Soul Bubbles; a game that I believe is the most enjoyable on the console so far.

How Soul Bubbles works

To explain the gameplay, I must first explain the basic story. When animals die, their spirits must be guided to the afterlife (called "Serenity") by Spirit Herders. Without the Spirit Herders, the spirits would be forever trapped in limbo. You play as the apprentice to an ancient Spirit Herder known as the Master, and it becomes your task to guide spirits to Serenity. Each level of Soul Bubbles is a 2D maze, with seven spirits contained at one end of the maze and the Gateway Cube (which leads to Serenity) at the other end. The spirits must be sealed inside a bubble and blown (with the STYLUS, not the microphone) to the Gateway Cube to complete the maze and progress. If the bubble bursts, the apprentice has a few seconds to trap the spirits in another bubble or else they will die. If the apprentice can get at least one spirit to the Gateway Cube, he can progress to the next mazes. If all seven spirits die, the maze must be restarted.

The mazes are not the sort that you can get lost in, but a series of obstacles that must be overcome. Of course, there are multiple paths you can take, as well as some secret areas, but the mazes are generally designed to lead you towards the goal. While all the action takes place on the bottom screen, the top screen features a map to show you the layout of the maze and the locations of your bubbles. When you start a maze, both the area and map are entirely covered in darkness and cannot be interacted with (obviously to stop you from learning all its secrets before you begin playing). A bubble containing spirits will diminish the darkness and reveal the surrounding area both in-game and on the map, allowing you to see which directions are available for you to take.

Several collectibles are also hidden in each maze. Trails of star dust are placed to direct you to the goal, and collecting it also increases the area of the maze that is revealed by the presence of the spirits. But there are also rings of star dust hidden off the beaten path, and sometimes they are blocked off from the spirits completely, in which case you can create new bubbles to collect them. Also in each maze are three calabash, which are special nuts that the Master requires you to collect before you can access the final mazes. The calabash can only be collected by bubbles containing spirits, so a calabash hidden in a blocked-off area still requires you to find the hidden entrance. All in all, the collectibles will encourage you to explore every inch of a maze, and if you manage to complete a maze with every spirit, calabash and star dust, you'll be awarded an S-rank for that maze (it doesn't do anything, but it's a nice incentive).

Now to explain the control scheme. Blowing the bubble is achieved by sliding the stylus across the bubble in the direction you want the bubble to move. The farther you slide the stylus, the stronger the breath. If you hold down the stylus too long, the apprentice runs out of breath and stops. The apprentice very quickly recovers breath in the short periods that he is not blowing the bubble. Other stylus abilities are made available by holding down different directions on the D-pad (or if you are left-handed, you can use the A, B, X, Y buttons). The Up button allows you to create bubbles by drawing circles on the screen. The Left button allows you to deflate bubbles by touching them with the stylus. The Right button allows you to cut bubbles and other objects by swiping with the stylus, and it can also be used to combine bubbles that are touching. The Down button allows you to move around the map with the stylus and jump to any particular spot in a maze by simply tapping its' location. In my experience with Soul Bubbles, the controls work flawlessly. Even the mechanic to draw bubbles is incredibly generous with the shapes you can make, allowing for ovals to be drawn as well as circles. One minor problem that sometimes occurs is when two bubbles are close together, the camera might focus on a bubble you don't want to blow, but this doesn't occur too often and it is the only issue I have found.

Why Soul Bubbles is fun

For such a simple premise, Soul Bubbles surprised me with the sheer amount of variety of puzzles, traps and obstacles to be found in each of the game's forty mazes. Rarely are challenges ever repeated in the same way; there's always some twist to keep the player entertained. Create big bubbles to push switches, create small bubbles to fit through narrow passages, fill bubbles with water to douse fires, shoot seeds at passing enemies, deflate puffer fish to remove their spikes, cut loose vines and chameleon tongues that latch onto your bubble. These are only basic examples of the things you can do in Soul Bubbles, and there are some more prominent and interesting features that I will explain further on in this review.

As well as diversity in the gameplay, there is also a good deal of diversity in the game's presentation. The mazes in Soul Bubbles are separated into eight worlds, with the first seven worlds each based upon a different tribal culture related to shamanism. Taking examples from cultures all over the world, such as the Celts, the Africans and the Native Americans, the designs of the mazes change to reflect the landscapes where those tribes originate and the symbols of their religions. A stone slab in the Celtic world becomes a tribal mask in the African world and a lion statue in the Asian world. The music is also stylised to fit the tribal settings, growing louder when the bubbles are above ground and diminishing in caves. Overall, it creates a great sense of atmosphere and makes the worlds all the more charming to explore.

The developers revealed in an interview that Soul Bubbles had been in the works for four years (more or less since the DS was released) in order to push the hardware to its maximum capacity. And from what I've seen of this game, I believe them. Not only are the sprites superbly detailed and the animation seamless (there isn't a hint of slow down), but the game shows some astonishing physical properties that I wouldn't have thought possible on the DS. Whenever a bubble is blown or hits a wall, it morphs to reflect the pressure exerted upon it. If you force a bubble through a thin passage, the bubble stretches in order to fit through. And the bubble appropriately resists your breath as you try to blow it through conflicting winds or tight passages, which makes it feel like a real bubble (albeit without the easy ability to pop it). And what's even more interesting is that anything the bubble contains, like water or gas, will also move around inside the bubble to reflect movement and pressure, which certainly shows attention to detail.

And to further add to the cleverness of the bubble mechanics, there are features in later worlds that change the bubble physics. At certain points in a maze, you get access to heavy gases that weigh bubbles down and light gases that act like helium. You can either use the weight of these bubbles to open new passages, or you can combine the gases to make a special explosive gas that's prone to bursting the bubble under pressure. And then there's the Inuit world, in which the cold temperature freezes your bubble, giving it weight but also bounciness that you can use to speed it up and catapult it into the air like a pinball. I find the frozen bubble to be just as fun to play with as the normal bubble, if not more fun.

And to cap off this review, let's talk about the difficulty and replay value. Soul Bubbles is not a difficult game by any means; all that the challenges require for the most part is exploration and a little common sense. But then again, Soul Bubbles isn't a walk in the park either. Because the challenges are unique to Soul Bubbles, you'll find yourself having to think about what you're doing throughout the game. Soul Bubbles is not a long game; each maze takes about ten to twenty minutes on a first playthrough depending on whether you go looking for the collectibles. Replay value is reasonably good though, as you can go back for all the collectibles, S-ranks, and also earn gold clocks by completing the mazes in fast times (in other words, time attacks). The unlockables mostly consist of artwork, but you can also earn a couple of bonus levels that replace the normal graphics (including the bubbles) with a Japanese painting style.

To conclude, Soul Bubbles is a game that has every aspect of gameplay and presentation down near-perfect, and is absolutely worth buying if you own a DS. The sheer variety in the game is enough to get me wanting more, perhaps a DS or Wiiware sequel. But even without the prospect of sequels, Soul Bubbles has more than enough to entertain.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 06/23/08

Game Release: Soul Bubbles (EU, 06/13/08)