Soulless

Game jam theme: "A world without..."

I went with "a world without souls". The game takes place on an old abandoned colony world. Only the robots that were left behind remain. The game plays with the sci-fi concepts of life, sentience, and whether a complex machine can be seen to have a soul. There are also data pads sprinkled throughout the game that add additional context and backstory to what happened to lead the colony to its current state and add to the narrative and theme.

Soulless won Best Audio Design in the Synty Game Jam - April 2025.

Gameplay

This is a narrative driven first-person shooter + puzzle game. About half puzzles and half combat. The puzzles are all laser redirection puzzles similar to those found in the game Portal 2, but without portals. 

Current known issues & workarounds 

• It is possible to get permanently stuck in the first puzzle room if the laser redirection cubes or the player moves into another room while the doors are closing. Don't do that. You will need to restart the game if you do.
• The player cannot die. I left player death until last and didn't have enough time to implement it. This will be added in an upcoming patch.

Credits:

• All code by TylerDevious in Unreal Engine 5.5. No third-party plugins or tools.
  
• All music by TylerDevious. Soulless Original Soundtrack on Bandcamp (free).
• Sound design by TylerDevious. Edited in Audacity. Sourced from Soundly and Zapsplat.
• Voice acting by TylerDevious. Recorded in Audacity & edited in FL Studio.
• Level Design: Started with the Demo_Explorer map from Polygon Sci-Fi Worlds by Synty as a base and heavily modified and built upon it for my needs. 
• Synty asset packs used:
  • Sci-Fi City
  • Sci-Fi Cyber City
  • Sci-Fi Space
  • Sci-Fi Worlds
  • Sci-Fi Soldier HUD
  • Mech Pack
• Animation asset packs used:
  • Robot Police pack by RamsterZ
    
  • Zombie Movement pack by ByteSumPi LTD