Locked Souls Demo

Visual novels usually approach pretty simple concepts, such as college life, romance and maybe a few fantasy tropes that involve various beasts and elf-like creatures. However, they sometimes revolve around more serious subjects, and they can even give you something to think about if you are interested enough in the idea.

Locked Souls may seem a bit naughty at first, especially when you hear the premise of the story, but things get pretty serious and dark soon enough. Granted, the overall atmosphere is still pretty playful, but at least you get some drama to keep you on edge as well. As unorthodox as the premise might be, it’s still pretty intriguing and captivating from the first few minutes.

You play the role of Luke, a newly hired prison guard at an all-female facility. What this means is that both the other guards and the prisoners are all girls, which makes you the only male in the whole establishment. Obviously, this leads to some pretty interesting situations, but as mentioned before, the plot concerns itself with slightly more serious stuff.

Since this is not a kinetic novel that runs without any input from the player, you are allowed to make certain decisions every now and again, which technically affect how the story evolves. These choices are not particularly huge, nor do they feel very important when you make them, but it’s nice to contribute to the action every once in awhile and feel like you are actually playing a role.

Even so, most of your time is going to be spent looking at the screen and reading the dialog, so the artwork is obviously very important as well. In essence, the character design should be more or less what you expect from a visual novel, which means that it features heavy anime influences. However, that shouldn’t affect your experience with the game, even if you are not a fan of anime.

In the end, Locked Souls is not yet finished, so a lot can happen in the full game. However, even this demo is intriguing enough to get your imagination going, which is exactly what you want from a visual novel in the first place.