Young Souls is a 2022 Hack and Slash Action RPG from 1P2P, published by the Arcade Crew.
Troubled twin youths Jenn and Tristan live a dull life in a small town with their Absent-Minded Professor guardian. But that all changes one day when the Professor is kidnapped by the gobbons that dwell beneath the earth.
No relation to Dark Souls.
Young Souls contains examples of:
- Action RPG: Like Dragon's Crown, it's an action RPG with Beat 'em Up combat.
- Adjustable Censorship: There's a "language filter" option to blank out the frequent profanities.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The transition animations for fast-traveling can all be fast-forwarded, along with the scene that plays when the twins go to sleep and level up. The scene for activating portals can also be fast-forwarded.
- The Moon Gate's computer lets you warp to individual points in the underground levels, and will indicate which zone has unlockable chests and doors. When you finally get the keys that unlock them, this lets you easily backtrack to get your treasure instead of struggling to remember where you saw each chest or locked door.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Dinkoy and Tetcha spend much of their screen time insulting each other as a result of their conflicting research fields. However, when he finds out that the twins killed Tetcha, he at first goes into denial over her being dead before swearing vengeance. When he confronts the twins the second time around, he's incensed that they never bothered to remember Tetcha's name.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: Gobbons explode into swirling purple smoke, undead gobbons explode into bones and dark energy, and ghost gobbons burst into wisps.
- Delinquents: Downplayed. Jenn and Tristan have this reputation around town and according to other students of their school, they do drugs and are running a gang. However, this accusation is baseless; they don't run a gang and they certainly never do drugs either, and they don't actively cause trouble around town, they're simply good kids who are just grumpy and foul-mouthed. Having a Morality Pet, that is their Professor who raised them, ensures that they don't stray far away.
- Distressed Dude: The plot is kicked off by the Professor's kidnapping.
- Drill Tank: The Drillers are a combination of this and a Spider Tank.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": All kings who sit on the Throne of Stone have their old name erased and are known from then on as "Dwarvengobben."
- Fanservice Extra: The buxom "Provocative Customer" who can be found in various stores. The pawn shop owner and gym instructor could also count.
- Final-Exam Boss: Shinjo attacks by taking the form of prior minor bosses and enemies, requiring the player to use their knowledge of their attack patterns in order to evade or parry his attacks.
- Gratuitous French: The gobbon soldiers are called "Soldats" despite coming from a non-human culture. The devs being French probably has something to do with that.
- Heal Thyself: When a twin tags out, they regain health depending on how much damage they did while they were active.
- Heroic Sacrifice: When the Driller shows up earlier than expected, the just-rescued Professor is forced to set off the bombs before he can get away from them.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: Fighting the Gobbon Driller is next to impossible. Being an actual war machine made for combat, the twin's current weapons (being swords or similar melee weapons) can only deal minimal amounts of damage to it (for reference, it possess double the hit points compared to the Final Boss).
- In Medias Res: The game starts out at the end as the Gobbons escape from the underground and attack the town, then switches to "A few weeks earlier", to show how this happened.
- Jumped at the Call: The twins, upon discovering their home ransacked, the Professor missing, and the mysterious portal in their basement with weapons lying before it, immediately take up arms and start fighting. Both regard the prospect of fighting the entire Gobbon army to be awesome, and turn down any suggestion that they leave the war to somebody else.
- Mirror Boss: Before the proper boss fight with Shinjo, he'll warm the twins up with a couple of shadow-clones.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Ghost enemies (which are fortunately only encountered in one area) require a Cursed weapon to hurt them, which unfortunately turns the twins into this. And yes, you do have to use them in a boss fight.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Gobbons look like traditional goblins, but act more like dwarves. They're also Not Always Evil, which turns out to be a plot point.
- Parental Substitute: The Professor is one for the twins after their parents died. They finally start calling him "Dad" right before he gets killed.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: Jenn and Tristan have the exact same abilities and base stats, and can use the same gear.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Mayor Waldon is already briefed on the Gobbon Kingdom underneath his town by the Professor, provides sanctuary for Gobbon refugees in the town's limits, and offers his full support to the twins and the local power grid to charge the portal... albeit requesting they find Runes of Power to do so, since the small town can't provide enough power on its own to get them to the deepest parts of the underground.
- Red-Headed Hero: Jenn and Tristan both have poofy red hair.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Both of the twins, to the point that this is a very rare example of a game being rated M just for language. No gore, no nudity, the heroes are just a couple of potty-mouths.
- Suddenly Voiced: Shinjo speaks lines that are intelligible to the player a grand total of once, which is during his Breaking Speech to the twins preceding his battle with them.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: In the overworld, you can have the twins get run over by passing cars for no reason other than for amusement. They, surprisingly, take a small amount of damage from being struck by a moving vehicle.
- Villainous Friendship: For as much bickering as they do Dwarvegobben and his generals seem to be a legitimately close group. Tetcha's death sends the remaining members on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, and every general afterwards calls out the twins for killing them.
- Virtual Paper Doll: There's two forms of currency in the game; gobbon gold, which is used to buy equipment, potions, etc., and human money, which is used to buy clothes which are simply aesthetic.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Dwarvegobben wants to lead the Gobbons back up into the surface world they were driven from... and massacre the descendants of the humans who forced them down into the dark. The Mayor, meanwhile, wants to prevent this by destroying the entire Gobbon kingdom.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: Jenn and Tristan are troubled whenever they kill a Gobbon general, but not over the hundreds of mooks and dozens of non-story-important bosses they've slaughtered.