Video Game / Titan Souls

Titan Souls is an Action-Adventure Boss Game, developed by Acid Nerve, published by Devolver Digital, and released on April 14th, 2015 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Play Station Vita. Its gameplay is a mixture of The Legend of Zelda and Shadow of the Colossus. The player controls a lone adventurer armed with a bow and a single arrow that has to be retrieved after every shot. The goal of the game is to kill 19 Titans who require only one hit to kill; however, finding their weak spot is extremely hard.

The game uses a pixel art style with 3D elements for some of the titans. It plays as a top-down action-adventure with very simple controls: there is one button to shoot (or pull the arrow back to the player after shooting) and another button for rolling/running.

Despite its name, the game has nothing to do with the Souls series.

Titan Souls provides examples of:

• Attack Its Weak Point: Shoot any of the titans in their weak spot and they're killed in one hit. The trouble is finding the opportunity to hit.
• Beating A Dead Player: When the protagonist gets killed in combat, the boss will continue moving and attacking his corpse. This can lead into amusing behavior like Gol-Iath continuing to pound the protagonist into the ground as it fades to black.
• Blank White Void: Where you fight the True Final Boss. Inverted in Hard Mode, where the color palettes of nearly everything involved is inverted, making it a Blank Black Void.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Weak points are often highlighted in pink.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: After death, the player character instantly re-spawns at the last checkpoint with no penalties whatsoever (apart from having to spend a few seconds walking back to the boss, as well as an increasing death counter).
• Eye Beams:
  • Eyecube fires optic blasts from its eye. The beams are powerful enough to launch it in the air when it shoots the ground.
  • Gol-Set can fire lasers from both of its eyes.
  • Truth starts firing lasers from its eye in the final phase of its fight.
• Final Death Mode: On Iron Mode, your save file is erased upon death.
• Giant Hands of Doom: Both Gol-Iath and Gol-Set will try to crush you with their hands.
• Go for the Eye: Eyes are a recurring motif in the game, and the tutorial uses them to demonstrate targets you can hit. Many Titans have Eyes as their weak spots. The same goes for Truth.
• He Who Fights Monsters:
  • Knight Elhanan is said to be a legendary titan slayer, yet, by the time you meet him, he's a titan himself.
  • The ending from defeating the True Final Boss implies that the protagonist becomes the next Truth.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Several titans can only be hurt by turning one of their attacks against them, though you still have to hit them yourself afterward.
  • This is turned around on you during the final boss battle. If you miss, the boss can suck in your arrow and fire it back at you. If you try to pull it back, you will also suck in his arrow (which still kills you).
• History Repeats: It's implied the protagonist is not the first to go Titan-hunting. The Elder implies that, if the protagonist becomes the next Truth, he too will be sought out and defeated in a quest for power.
• An Ice Person: Stratus and Yeti.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Gol-Iath is the first boss you encounter that takes the form of a stone giant.
  • Knight Elhanan, accredited in some translations of the Bible with killing Goliath, is referred to as 'Legendary Titan Slayer'.
  • Gol-Qayin and Gol-Hevel - the original Hebrew names of Cain and Abel - which gives a very strong hint how one was murdered and the other disgraced.
  • Avarice is encountered in a room full of treasure.
• No Plot? No Problem!: You're introduced to the world without so much of a word as to why the protagonist is after the Titans. Discovering the Elder sheds a little light on the world's background, but everything else is inferred.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Besides the player, the bosses themselves are these, but only if they're hit in the weak spot.
• Opening the Sandbox: After defeating Sludgeheart, Brainfreeze, Eyecube and Gol-Iath, the door that leads to the rest of the world is unlocked, and you access a larger and more varied environment.
• Optional Boss:
  • If you look hard enough, you'll find an additional titan called "The Elder". Not only is he the only titan who actually talks, he provides a bit of backstory in the game and is the only character in the game who actually has dialogue at all. However, he doesn't actually fight you.
  • Exclusive to Hard Mode is Black Vinethesis, a stronger version of Vinethesis with more tentacles to hit you with. You have to go out of your way and follow a certain set of directions to reach it.
• Physical God: The Elder and Truth. The latter created the former, who created humanity.
• Playing with Fire: Mol-Qayin, located in the molten region of the world map, attacks by lobbing explosive rocks and igniting it with a spray of lava. Rol-Qayin, also located in the same region, rolls around its cramped arena leaving burning trails in its wake.
• Puzzle Boss: Many if not most of the titans are like this, since they can be killed instantly if you can expose their weakness without dying.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Every boss dies in one hit to their weak point (though many require one or two other shots to expose it). You also die in one hit. The focus is on dodging attacks and maneuvering to a situation where you can score that one shot.
• Rush Boss: Due to the Rocket-Tag Gameplay, boss fights rarely last very long, and some have achievements for beating them in only a few seconds.
• Scenery Porn: Despite the pixel graphics, the entire world is rendered in lush detail, from the overgrown and collapsing ruins to the lush forests and a frozen mountaintop. Nearly every screen has at least one feature you won't see anywhere else.
• Segmented Serpent: Onyxia is a serpent whose body is made of interconnected rocks.
• Shock and Awe: Onyxia fires bursts of electricity that can be deadly in its aquatic arena. Elhanan imbues his giant arrow with lightning to assault you, as does The Soul.
• Shout-Out: Truth shares a name and many aesthetics with a similar being from Fullmetal Alchemist (though its design is more in line with the one from the first anime adaptation).
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: The game is mostly 2D, but some of the titans and a few effects are in 3D.
• Summon to Hand: Holding down the shoot button after you've fired the arrow draws it back towards the protagonist. With enough momentum, the arrow can kill bosses this way — perfect for when the enemy's weak point is on the back.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: For the most part, Titan Souls is a colorful fantasy game where none of the monsters are too scary. Then you fight the True Final Boss. After defeating The Soul and entering the gate it was guarding, you wind up in an empty white void. Truth, a giant unblinking eye inside of two eye-covered wheels, then appears. When you damage it, the wheels move to the edges of the screen and become gates that fire black orbs with eyes and biting mouths at you, occasionally firing Truth at you. Once you hit Truth again, it briefly recoils before sprouting tentacles and beginning to chase you. While all of this is happening, the adventurous music of the rest of the game is replaced with atonal noise that wouldn't be out of place in a horror game.
• Threshold Guardians: Gol-Iath and its parts serve as the defense of The First Gate, and are simpler bosses to help the player grasp the mechanics. Gol-Set, Guardian of The Eternal Gate, is your final obstacle before you confront the final boss. Gol-Hevel and Gol-Qayin are implied to be these for The Second Gate before Hevel was murdered and Qayin disgraced.
• True Final Boss: Truth, found by killing all the titans as well as the normal final boss.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: One of the few actions the player character can take.
• Vague Age: The player character. The◊ official◊ art◊ makes him seem pretty young, but this may be a case of Older Than They Look.
• Wasted Song: Every titan has its own theme, ranging from 1-3 minutes long. The game's nature ensures that every titan can be killed quickly if you know how, and some can be killed in seconds. Most pronounced is Rol-Qayin, whose theme is three minutes long even though you can kill it before it finishes its first attack.
• Wingdinglish: Every titan has a title that pops up in an alphabet called "Titanese" (except for Knight Elhanan and The Soul, whose titles are in plain English), which is just a transliteration of English; if you know a titan's official name, you can start extrapolating a translation from there. Of course, beating the True Final Boss unlocks a game mode where all Titanese is translated for you.
• Zero-Effort Boss: The Elder may be big and imposing, forcing you to actually pull a Colossus Climb to reach his weakpoint, but he literally makes no effort to stop you. He doesn't move (that is, if he even can), only gives you some exposition, and straight up allows you to kill him.

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