Unbroken Soul is an action platformer all about pinpoint timing, coming to mobile this year

While at the recent Casual Connect Europe, earlier this month, I had the chance to play my way through a selection of the games which were put forward as part of the Indie Prize developer showcase. The showcase is always a great way to spot some impressive, upcoming games, and this year was no different. Chorrus Games' Unbroken Soul was being showcased, and I immediately found myself sucked in by its pacey platforming and efficient controls.

Unbroken Soul has players take on the role of a hero seeking to clear the land of evil. Sure, that's pretty standard for games, although it's not the story of the game which is compelling in this case. It's mostly the traversal mechanics and combat. Unbroken Soul uses a lot of systems which the developer honed in their previous title The Quest Arena: wall jumping, double jumps and directional ranged shots.

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It's all especially fluid feeling, and within a few minutes I was bounding over leaps of faith into wall jumps, all while firing arrows off at flying enemies. It felt fast and dynamic, something which is especially hard to convey in platformers. With that dynamic feeling comes that accidental rhythm, that zen-like feeling when things are perfectly timed. Unbroken Soul nails it.

There's some other stuff in there too, mind. You can trade in the souls of your fallen enemies to improve your character, and there's a decent variety of bosses and traps to fight and dodge.

I've managed to get this far through the article without mentioning Dead Cells, but the two are very similar in vibe and pacing. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. While some may lament the similarities, Unbroken Souls restricts and focuses players with a tight melee attack and bow and arrow pairing, while Dead Cells thrives on procedural generation and a smorgasbord of weapon variety.

• Dead Cells will release on iOS and Android later this year, read our review of it here.

Unbroken Soul was originally expected to release for iOS and Android during Q2 of this year, the release has been set back a little bit for further tweaks and balances.