An Emotional Adventure Through Papercraft Limbo
Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo sees you, a snake with burning blue eyes, stuck in a stunning papercraft world. Trapped souls are struggling to move on and it’s your job as a bright soul to help.
Limbo as a world is brilliantly established – with curses, mystery, and adventure. From the get-go, it’s just begging to be explored. And you’ll want to, with secrets, collectables, stories and characters filling five chapters to the brim with personality and love from the developers at Galla Games.
Everything about this game starts slow and relaxing – beautiful art and set pieces lulling you into a false sense of security. Then, it starts to get crazy.
Music and Audio To Warm The Soul
Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo’s audio is always on point. Whether it’s atmosphere or sound effects, it fits the scene beautifully, hitting home some emotional beats. Relaxing strums and hums from synthesisers and guitars sooth the atmosphere. Nostalgic beeps and boops play during character dialogue, very reminiscent of games like Animal Crossing and Celeste.
Sometimes referred to as ‘bark text,’ this style may seem like a small addition at first but its impact is undeniable. The feel of the game is warped around it, being present through chill times, heroic times, sad times, it’s always there. Fortunately ‘Bark text’ was a great choice here, being tried and tested on many games with a similar feel–oddly relaxing even when tackling heavy themes.
Visuals and Environments That Make The Soul Grow Fonder
While audio will warm the soul, it is at its best when paired with Kulebra’s visuals. Whether it’s a beautiful sunset evening matched with a string harmony, or a papercraft character falling over with a tailor-made sound effect, they go hand-in-hand like a lost soul in Limbo.
Although don’t let that trick you into thinking the visuals can’t stand on their own – striking and symbolic scenery is abundant. For example a reoccurring scene that features a black crow on a black tree, stark against a white background, shifting slightly in a phantom breeze.
The core of Kulebra’s stunning visuals lie within its papercraft aesthetic. It is always interesting to see how developers tackle niche art styles like this, and here it is no different. Galla succeeds by really leaning into the aesthetic akin to how Paper Mario handles it; everything is either made of cardboard, paper, or paper mesh, to the extent where aspects such as cross hatching remain visible. One example that I adored was the water. Using individual streams of bright blue and white paper moving at different speeds, they portray a current that looks spectacular.
The character designs also look straight out of a scrapbook, all featured in 2D with a white paper outline. These designs are crazily good; some humanoid, some animal, some a mix of the two. My favourite was the owner of a motel: a very tired looking humanoid duck, only a sagging beak, droopy eyes and messy midnight-blue hair visible beneath a baggy night gown. Brilliant.
A day, dusk, and night cycle is present in Limbo, adding variety to the already endearing atmosphere. Day is how the game world is presented at first, then dusk hits – Limbo becomes coated in a warm orange glow as the sun can be seen setting in the distance. Then comes night– shops close, characters retire inside (able to be overheard as silhouettes in windows), and soul stars fill the sky. Not just beautiful, but providing actual implications on the world and gameplay.
Limbo
The day and night cycle doesn’t just serve the visuals and the gameplay, but also the narrative. Limbo’s world building revolves around a mechanic called ‘the curse of Limbo.’ This curse causes most characters to forget the previous day upon waking up, forcing them to confront the reason that their soul can’t move on. The only two exceptions to this rule are bright souls and soul marks.
Bright souls, such as Kulebra, are souls that naturally want to help others – able to serve this purpose through the rare ability to consistently remember the previous day. Soul marks allow characters to remember specific actions or emotions they experienced the previous day if it had a large impact on them, leaving a soul mark. With these unique and interesting additions, Limbo feels alive despite the ironic abundance of dead people.
Gameplay wise, the ‘curse of Limbo’ can lead to a lot of repeated dialogue until you start leaving soul marks. Usually this would be frustrating, but because of how well the system is implemented, first as a narrative beat and then in the gameplay, it prevents it from feeling annoying.
Functions and Quality of Life
The best function that Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo implements is the notebook. With many, many characters and lines of dialogue to keep track of, the implementation of a notebook that keeps a record of all the important stuff works nicely. It displays character entries, new tasks, and a third section I’ll touch more on later.
Now, when this menu first popped up on my screen I must admit I was sceptical, as what often happens is games go way too overboard with similar functions. They will add lines of backstory, hints, and descriptions that you never experience in the game, leading to egregious examples of a narrative that’s telling and not showing.
Thankfully, Galla once again handles this well, with character entries only containing small amounts of text depicting what your encounter with the character was like, no new information.
A system that supports the notebook is the yellow dialogue system – every line of important dialogue is highlighted in yellow and added to the notebook. Some may find this system a bit hand-holdy but it really allows the writers to broaden their ideas of what a plot point can be.
Close to Narrative Perfection
Intriguing and stylized. Intricately crafted in both dialogue and plot. Weaved together in a way that compliments the gameplay perfectly. I cannot understate that Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo lives and dies by its narrative. There is no game here worth playing without these stories attached. Galla clearly knew this, making sure to create amazing stories that fill a world of death with so much life and charm. Characters and what they hold dear is the real substance. Something is tethering them to this plane, and that something is always interesting to figure out, pick apart, and then piece back together again.
It quickly becomes clear that Galla are trying to put a lot of emotion into their stories. Heart-wrenching dialogue features characters breaking down and lashing out. There were multiple occasions where a story would require me to ‘take a moment,’ upon hearing the (often depressing) reason a soul is stuck here. Sometimes it’s family issues, sometimes a lack of closure, sometimes a selfish desire…the list goes on.
Although these get you thinking about heavy subjects, they still manage to stay personal to the characters; a difficult balance that’s often misjudged in modern media. Nice slapstick humour is also paced regularly enough to combat the sombre themes, often appearing in the form of a bird mailman that will visit most mornings.
Another aspect that modern media is known for getting wrong is trying to convey a real world message. For example Kulebra has some themes that tackle gender and suicide. All of these references to the real world are handled perfectly, never placed as the centre of attention to avoid feeling unnatural, forced, or preachy.
Some Narrative and Gameplay Issues
When the gameplay and how it interacts with the narrative starts to get stale is around the fourth chapter. After the previous chapter ends with a monstrous climax setting up the final arc, chapter 4 appears tacked on. Firstly, it reuses the exact same area as chapter 3, feeling disappointingly cheap from the start. Secondly, the writing of both the characters and the plot is not nearly as subtle or clever as the previous instalments, leading to predictable reveals and an unimpactful climax. Being the penultimate chapter it sadly takes the wind out of the sails leading up to the finale, and ultimately feels like filler.
Further issues stem from the side content which picks up towards the latter half of the game. This exceptionally easy busy-work holds none of the depth present in the mainline stories. At worst these feel uninspired and uninteresting and at best they just pad out the run time.
Boss Fight Questionnaires
Every main-line story told in Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo culminates in a climactic boss fight questionnaire. The basic structure of these ‘fights’ consists of a time limit and multiple, multiple choice questions. The time limit takes the form of a darkness metre, 0-100%; get a question wrong and it goes up, get one right and it goes down, 100% means you lose and have to start over. Sometimes your opponent will also try to trick you with fake answers.
Now as far as ‘boss fights’ go, this premise may seem a little less exciting to those used to more generic examples – and if this system stood alone I would agree. But it’s when all the aspects previously mentioned come together that it really starts to make sense.
As a character loses it, they and the world around them transform. Darkness takes control as the music and visuals mutate – and it goes insane. From wild west rock to electric wrestling themes, the music goes hard: introducing drums, trumpets, and snares that turn the mellow task of a questionnaire into a tense environment in which the threat of the darkness metre is ever present.
When you succeed, everything is toned down again, but even more than before. The music stops, the room returns to normal and you are left with a stunning visual and a character left broken and ashamed, yet healed and fulfilled. These moments are as heart-breaking as they are sweet, but I found the aftermath to be even more powerful.
The Aftermath Of A Story
With Kulebra using multiple, loosely connected stories, each one has to end for the next to begin. Once the boss fight is over, and the healed soul moves on, their homes, towns and environments die along with them.
These became my favourite moments from the game and where the stories hit the hardest. You interact with the souls daily, hear their deepest regrets and issues, solve it in the best way you can and then, they are just gone. Their houses sag and collapse, lights turn off, dust fills the air and all colour drains from the papercraft picture.
Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo purposefully keep these areas open, allowing you to walk through places once filled with stories and life, that are now just a distant reminder of who was. I can’t stress enough how incredible the writing and environmental storytelling is in these moments. They even use these scenes to subtly relate to themes of grief, with one of the characters suggesting that ‘although it may be sad to see them go, what’s left behind is a reminder that those who once resided here have now moved on, leaving their worries behind.’
In a world with so much going for it in its visuals, stories, bustling plazas, and crazy characters, it was amazing to see that even when all of that was stripped away, what remained was just as impactful – beautifully handled.
A Scenic Dive Into the Dark Depths of Lost Souls
There are many secrets and mysteries to uncover in Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo, and Galla don’t hold back when questioning the player about these. Boss fights, puzzles, or even existential questions are posed to both Kulebra and the player throughout: Why go to all this effort? Why are you trying to help these souls? Why are you even here? It’s up to you to answer these questions both in the game and out.
I recommend you do so by experiencing this fun (if slightly flawed) adventure with a close to perfect narrative and visuals that will make you stop and stare. Good luck in Limbo.
Important Links
Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo Slithers onto Xbox, Game Pass, PC, Switch – https://www.thexboxhub.com/kulebra-and-the-souls-of-limbo-slithers-onto-xbox-game-pass-pc-switch/
Download Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo (on Game Pass) – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/kulebra-and-the-souls-of-limbo/9pft2mjkjhwx
