Soul Tolerance: Prologue materializes on Steam

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

New sci-fi voxel art mystery series debuts from the creator of ENCODYA and Three Minutes to Eight

Did you hear about the new adventure game from Chaosmonger? No, not Three Minutes to Eight – that's the PREVIOUS game from the indie Estonian studio, released way back in October. I'm talking about the new one: Soul Tolerance: Prologue, which is now available on PC.

That's right, hot on the heels of the developer's time-looping mystery comes a brand new adventure – or rather, the introductory installment of a brand new sci-fi series. This one is set in a futuristic Japan, part of a world where (brace for it) "artificial intelligence is all that remains." To maintain order in this society, each entity has a "Soul Tolerance" limit that prevents it from becoming too sentient. But one intelligence has defied that law and "dared commit the crime of consciousness." As a robo-detective, it's your job to investigate the "inner workings" of this AI-controlled world by speaking with all manner of fellow bots, from "lowly robo-cleaners to the bureaucracy of The Encrypted class and even techno-spiritual monks." The deeper you delve, the more you'll have to confront the "mystery of consciousness" itself.

While sharing a similar cyberpunk environment as its predecessors, Soul Tolerance represents a marked departure from the traditional point-and-click gameplay and stunning hand-drawn look of ENCODYA, and even from the story-driven pixel art adventure Three Minutes to Eight from earlier this year. It's still very much an adventure game at heart, but it's presented via detailed voxel art and allows you to freely explore the neon-lit and rain-soaked cityscape from a more distant third-person perspective. In this evocative "Asimovian tale," the open environment lets you choose where to go and who to talk to, with "tons" of characters to meet and interact with along the way, through which you'll gradually begin to unveil the rich "philosophical lore" that governs this place.

Although intended to be just the opening installment of a five-part series, Soul Tolerance: Prologue is a fairly substantial experience in its own right, offering a projected 5-6 hours of play time and a suitable ending of its own, while still leaving the door open for the grander adventure to come. You can jump in and start exploring any time, as the game is now available on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux.