"Lost Soul: The Shining Light of Chinese Single-Player Games Born in the Wrong Era"
Text | Guofu, Liu Shiwu
The game sold less than 50,000 copies in its first week, and the total number of reviews on Steam so far is only about a thousand. Even when the producer personally live - streamed to promote the game, the sales remained sluggish... "Heart - wrenching" is probably the most accurate word to describe the current situation of Lost Soul.
In 2016, Yang Bing released the trailer for Lost Soul, which he had developed alone for two years. This trailer amazed the entire gaming market and successfully sparked everyone's fantasies about "Chinese AAA games". It's believed that at that time, like everyone else, Yang Bing harbored the ideal of helping domestic single - player games rise.
Therefore, regardless of whether the initial development of the game was just to enrich his portfolio and assist in job - hunting, Yang Bing ultimately chose to accept the olive branch extended by Sony and joined the "China Star" program. With Sony's introduction, he secured development funds. The following year, he registered a company and assembled a team, and Lost Soul was officially launched as a team product.
However, no one expected that it would take nine years to complete the game. Logically speaking, even today, in the domestic large - scale single - player game market, "getting the game out is more important than anything else". Moreover, Lost Soul encountered various ups and downs along the way, and it was already difficult to persevere. Ideally, the successful launch of the game itself should have been an encouraging feat.
Unfortunately, the times have changed.
As time has passed, Black Myth: Wukong has fulfilled Chinese players' "dream of AAA single - player games" and inspired a new generation of developers to follow suit. As the initial hope of many, Lost Soul seems to have appeared rather late and seems to be falling behind the market.
Lost Soul
Lost Soul: Obvious Advantages and Disadvantages
Players who have completed Lost Soul generally agree that this product "has insufficiently long strong points and overly short weak points", and the experience is more similar to that of early domestic single - player games.
As a high - speed action game (ACT), the combat design of Lost Soul is actually quite qualified and even has some highlights. On the one hand, just looking at the skill tree in the early stage, I anticipated that the combat in the mid - to - late game would be extremely cool. Many flashy combos don't require high operation proficiency from players, and the various linkages and action derivations between weapons are particularly obvious and easy to imagine.
On the other hand, the game's combat system also offers sufficient depth and a progressive learning experience. Lost Soul features four types of weapons with different characteristics: a long sword, a greatsword, dual pistols, and a scythe, which are unlocked one by one as the game's story progresses. Each time a new weapon is unlocked, the richness and experience of the player's combat will be elevated to a new level. In this situation, players will unconsciously think about how to perform more stylish operations.
Combo demonstration by Bilibili UP "Empty Can Boy QVQ"
Taking aerial combos as an example, the game equips each weapon with its own unique aerial combo characteristics. After obtaining a new weapon, players can use the greatsword to deliver a high - damage finishing move upon landing after an aerial combo. The dual pistols can provide a seamless second aerial lift after landing, and the scythe can refresh the aerial combo skills. Players can switch between weapons to continuously combo monsters in the air until they are defeated.
Of course, players who don't like to explore can also simply stick to their favorite weapons and use the same combo throughout the game, which is also perfectly fine. In terms of the combat system, the design of Lost Soul is still quite mature to this day.
Unfortunately, Lost Soul fails to perfect many detailed designs related to combat. For example, the combat sound effects give an obvious sense of plastic, which unconsciously reduces the overall quality and gaming experience of the combat. Similarly, the visual feedback of weapons, energy - powered pursuits, etc., is also lacking. Their on - screen performance is quite unnoticeable, and players have to memorize the order and nodes by rote.
Even in a relatively good environment, the UI of the weapon wheel is not very noticeable
More importantly, the overall rhythm of Lost Soul severely disrupts the combat flow. After a brief battle at the beginning of the prologue, there is a long period of story - pushing or platforming, instead of presenting the most exciting parts of the game to players. For example, the official combat gameplay is not introduced until about half an hour later.
The same goes for the subsequent rhythm. After players quickly defeat the monsters and start to feel the excitement, they will immediately fall into a slow - paced cycle of map - running and puzzle - solving.
Moreover, in the mid - to - late game, the contributions of these elements to the combat system are quite limited. Most of the time, the rewards for puzzle - solving are either consumables or skill points. The consumables have a very low presence; if not deliberately used, they will basically just sit in the inventory until the end of the game. And skill points also become rather useless in the mid - to - late game. For instance, I had more than 20 skill points but didn't bother to spend them. As a result, many people, including me, simply gave up exploration after figuring out the pattern and just rushed through the map to advance the story, which actually improved the gaming experience significantly.
A large number of skill points
This naturally leads to the root cause of many of Lost Soul's shortcomings: Its content design concept is too old - fashioned and does not fit the current market environment, and the quality and detailed design of the game itself are not good enough to make players willing to overlook this issue.
The most obvious aspect is the visual presentation of the art design. The art style of Lost Soul is somewhat similar to that of the Final Fantasy series and also features many designs of Korean - style beautiful characters. However, compared with Final Fantasy 16 or Sword Star, which emphasizes Korean aesthetics, its aesthetic sense seems to be stuck in the previous era. On this basis, the less - refined spectacles, scenery, and characters are filled with a sense of old - fashioned cheapness or what people often call the "online game art style".
Ten years ago, this might not have been a big problem, but after the emergence of large - scale domestic single - player games like Black Myth: Wukong, Shadow Blade Zero, and End of Ming Dynasty: Feather of Abyss, Lost Soul inevitably seems a bit lacking. After all, the help that Unreal Engine 5 has brought to the visual content of these games cannot be ignored.
To put it simply, Lost Soul follows the old development logic and fails to create enough novel and unique highlights, resulting in a rather mediocre final product. It has neither extremely bad pain points nor unique charm to arouse players' interest. This is the most helpless aspect of Lost Soul, and many inevitable optimization issues have become the last straw that breaks the camel's back.
Overall, the design of weapon DIY appearance might be the only highlight in it
Complete but Mediocre
Perhaps due to the overly long development cycle, Yang Bing initially did not have sufficient ability and experience to handle a project of such a large scale.
The entire team had too many ideas but lacked experience in implementation. As a result, they spent several years exploring, feeling their way forward. It wasn't until 2021 that they had a clear project framework and design direction and entered the full - scale production stage. As Yang Bing himself said, during the project transformation process, they had no concept of the industrial pipeline, which ultimately led to a lot of wasted early work.
In addition, for a long time, they also relied on the support of relevant colleagues from Sony China in terms of employee management at the company level, including attendance, task quality, work progress, etc.
In this context, Lost Soul has become a very complete work.
For an entrepreneur who entered the market almost from scratch, it was indeed not easy for Yang Bing to achieve this level and maintain his original intention for ten years until the successful launch of Lost Soul. Everyone has witnessed his change in state: from a high - spirited college student to his current haggard and hardcore appearance.
Comparison of Yang Bing before and after
However, the market is cruel, especially the domestic single - player game market. Nowadays, for developers to truly make money, it's probably not just about hard work, passion, and perseverance. They also need sufficient investment costs and differentiated advantages.
Take Black Myth: Wukong, the "first college - student - developed game" carrying the hope of AAA games. It relies not only on the Journey to the West IP but also on a quality performance that surpasses most single - player products in the domestic and international markets. What it represents is the market experience accumulated by Youke over the years and miraculous project management capabilities.
As for End of Ming Dynasty: Feather of Abyss, which has gained high popularity later, although it is inseparable from the enthusiasm of the developers at Lingze Technology for soul - like games, its final implementation still depends on non - negligible production refinement and a precise direction.
On the other hand, Lost Soul probably verifies a cruel fact: The domestic single - player game market has a more obvious head - effect.
Of course, Lost Soul is a solid 2A - level product, and it's indeed unfair to directly compare it with AAA games, as the investment costs and project positioning of the two are not on the same level. However, there are only a few well - known products in the domestic single - player game market, and there are even fewer large - scale games. Although these comparisons are unreasonable, they are quite realistic.
Lost Soul
Interestingly, when certain products have a sufficiently unique performance, they can also spark unique charm in the domestic market. The cost - effectiveness of the development team's revenue will far exceed that of making large - scale single - player games. For example, shadow - based games like The Invisible Guardian, Oh No! I'm Surrounded by Beauties, The Gold - Digger Game, or Torchlight City, Unlimited Mech, Sultan's Game, Fireworks, etc. Even Phantom Abyss launched by foreign developers is in a similar situation. As long as a certain aspect is well - done, domestic products naturally have the potential and possibility to enter the top - earning ranks.
The situation faced by Lost Soul is not much different from the dilemma of Gu Jian Qi Tan 3 a few years ago. Both are in an awkward position. In terms of investment and return, these two products cost more than most games, but their actual performance is not enough to reach the "breakout AAA" level.
Even though Gu Jian Qi Tan 3 transcended the entire series with its theme of "inheritance", it still had to carry on with a heavy burden. The core creative staff even left one after another. It wasn't until recently that news of a new Gu Jian game finally emerged - seven years have passed in between. In comparison, Lost Soul may face more regrets after its release.
The China Star Program Continues
After the game was launched, several colleagues from "36Kr Games" conducted in - depth playtests. One of the colleagues half - jokingly said, "If Lost Soul were sold for 128 yuan or even 98 yuan, it might really become a hit." Indeed, the initial price of the Steam standard version is 268 yuan, on par with 3A games like Black Myth: Wukong, Elden Ring, and End of Ming Dynasty: Feather of Abyss, which has already discouraged many players who don't pursue the 3A experience.
In fact, whether ten years ago or now, there has not been a huge change in the domestic single - player game market. The difficulties that existed ten years ago may still exist now and in the future. It's just that those who were obsessed with the single - player game market back then finally had the conditions to fulfill their dreams one by one, and Lost Soul is one of them. The improvement of technical capabilities and the development abilities of practitioners has also provided more possibilities for single - player games to break out.
Sony proposed the China Star program in 2017, precisely because it recognized this point.
