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Getting the best of both worlds in Fractured Soul
Fractured Soul's release status may be in question, with Endgame Studios tentatively planning to put it on the 3DS eShop in two parts, but it's worth hoping the game finds its way to players. The side-scroller takes one clever DS-friendly mechanic -- parallel worlds, one on each screen, that the player can jump between at any time -- and then cranks that to every possible extreme, to challenge and/or punish the player.The main gimmick is easy enough to understand, and the first few levels ease you into it nicely. Two side-scrolling environments exist in parallel, one on each screen, but they're slightly different from one another. There might be a bridge on the top screen where there's a gap on the bottom screen, or a wall in place on one screen that isn't on the other.%Gallery-152022%
Fractured Soul dev looking to Nintendo eShop
Back in 2011, we featured an interesting DS platformer called Fractured Soul, which was being published by the tiny Graffiti Entertainment. Then ... we didn't hear anything, and the game later showed up in remade polygonal form on 3DS as Fractured Soul 3D, with a new publisher, Ignition. That was last year.So what happened? Why are there two versions with two publishers? And ... what's happening now? I asked Grant Davies, co-founder of developer Endgame Studios, what the deal is with the dual versions of the dual-world, dual-screen action game.First, the DS game. "We sold the distribution rights for that to N3V Games," Davies said. "Basically, what happened was, toward the end of the project when they were looking to place it with distributors, the DS market kind of fell down at that point -- the 3DS was coming out. They had a bit of trouble placing it with distributors." N3V signed up with publisher Graffiti, and the game just hasn't made it to retail. N3V owns the rights, so the fate of Fractured Soul DS is now in their hands -- Endgame can't seek a new publisher or take its game back.Instead, Endgame remade it with new graphics for 3DS. And ... that publishing deal also fell through. "With the 3DS, we got involved with a publisher on that one [Ignition]," Davies said, "and they got to the point where they could no longer honor their contractual obligations to us."This time, however, Endgame still has the rights. "Now it's no publisher," Davies said, "and we have the rights, and we have a completed game, so that's why we're kind of thinking maybe eShop is the way forward." Endgame is now looking at self-publishing digitally, perhaps breaking the finished retail-sized game into two downloads for 3DS. Fracturing it, if you will.
New Fractured Soul 3D screens arrive in one piece
Fractured Soul 3D may be played across both of the Nintendo 3DS' screens simultaneously, but that doesn't mean you have to hurt yourself trying to look at all of these screenshots at the same time. Honestly, we won't tell anyone.
