Mirrored Souls Review

Mirrored Souls is a 2D “single-player co-op” puzzle platformer developed by The Bricks Studio and published by Short N Sweet. The game was part of the SP Pro Game Jam 2021, which it won, and has now been refined and improved for a full release. So let’s see if it comes together or falls apart.

You play as both Daru (left screen) and Ravi (right screen), two souls intertwined across dimensions. That means if you move Ravi one way, Daru moves in the other. Your goal is to get both of them to the exit. It sounds simple in concept, and it is, but the later levels get fiendishly difficult. What may seem like a simple level can really make you lean back and stare at the screen for a while, puzzling out how to solve it when the only difference between Ravi and Daru's worlds is a single platform.

The art style is wonderful, with a painterly feeling that makes you think of good children’s books. The colours are vibrant and help differentiate between the two planes. That being said, some puzzle elements can get a little lost in the background, which can make you miss an important part of the solution. It rarely happened, though, so it’s not that much of an issue.

The puzzles themselves are pretty interesting. Apart from the whole gimmick of controlling two characters, you’ll encounter combinations of block pushing, button pressing, and actual mirrors that are needed to ensure both characters make it to the end together. There are some pretty cool outside-the-box solutions that took a bit to figure out. The majority were fun, but there were a few bad ones that felt more like banging my head against a brick wall than carefully connecting the dots. My most disliked level was in the second chapter: “Dropdown.” In contrast to the methodical platforming most of the game had, it trades it for a speedrun level where you have to get one character to the end before the other falls to their doom. It was frustrating, and it didn’t exactly build off what previous levels have taught. It’s an interesting concept but probably not an appropriate one.

I ran into nothing wrong on a technical level. No glitches, no stutters, or anything that would overtly impact the game. The publisher has a very accurate name, as the whole story can be completed in only a couple of hours. However, it can take much longer as I found myself struggling to solve some levels. Actually, I still have a bunch of levels unsolved, I just turned on level skip for this review because I am dumber than most bricks.

Mirrored Souls uses its main gimmick effectively, with fun and difficult puzzles to mull over that can be very rewarding to solve. However, I think a few levels are flawed on a conceptual level, and it can be difficult to figure out what is and isn’t possible. I had a good time, but be prepared to rack your brain for a while and reflect on what the solution may be.

Mirrored Souls will release today, on the 23rd of August 2023 on PC via Steam.