Obsolete Souls

The official game cover for Obsolete Souls™.

***Obsolete Souls™*** is an indie turn based role-playing game, developed and published by Dennel Cake, LLC. It was released on September 29, 2018 for Windows/PC. *Obsolete Souls™* was created by Denzel Dauphine Weatherspoon, and co-written by Mike Sheldon. Development for *Obsolete Souls*™ started in 2011 under a different name, but was re-built from the ground up when Dauphine Weatherspoon was in high school. A large amount of music in *Obsolete Souls*™ was made by hip hop producer Reggie1. The game also had musical features from various solo artists, and bands such as "The Fight Left Inside", Dakota Potter, and DJ Doomguy.

*Obsolete Souls™* was released as a free game, and is still free to download from *www.obsoletesouls.com* to this day. The game was released alongside a 28 song soundtrack that was fully mixed and mastered by producer Reggie1. Although the game has a lot of hip hop audio, it doesn't shy away from featuring music from different genres. Obsolete Souls™ is the second game released by Dennel Cake, LLC, and it is Dennel Cake's first game to be published on a digital marketplace (published on Steam in 2020).

## Gameplay

Obsolete Souls™ has a few interesting features inside of its core gameplay. It takes a classic JRPG with an overworld that allows you to enter various shops, talk to NPCs, find collectibles, etc. The combat offers a little more than typical turn based fighting. Players are thrown into combat randomly when navigating "encounter zones", and a UI message appears in the corner of the screen to alert the player of said areas. Towards the end of each monster battle you can choose to finish off an enemy for extra experience points, or let it escape for a health boost if you've received a lot of damage in battle. “Max Crush”, a secondary move list that appears when your characters reach critically low health. There is also a third skill set called “Max Universe", and it contains skills that deal massive amounts of damage inside of combat. With a full GP (Gamia Point) gauge, and TP (Trick Point) gauge, the player can unleash a powerful move that pairs with a flashy animation for an ultimate attack.

The game includes an art gallery, sound gallery, and a small database feature that can be accessed through the pause menu, or on one of the "computers" for extra information on bits of lore in the game.

## Synopsis

This is a story about one of the first nine people to ever live, and the twelve people that make his life worth living. This man is known as one of the 9 *Zarragorians* (zair-uh-gor-ree-in). He has the power from the center of the universe, and every time he dies, he goes back to the beginning of his time. He cannot die of age, but he can be killed. This man's goal is to find a way to save the universe from the obsolete souls that plague it, so he can finally reach the afterlife rather than reliving his life over, and over again. He believes that the key to saving the universe is with the most difficult group of people he's ever met. They think otherwise... (*ObsoleteSouls.com, 2018*).

## Music

Roughly 90% of the audio in Obsolete Souls was composed by hip hop producer Reggie1. *Obsolete Souls*™ had over 100 mixed audio tracks that consisted of many artists, but not every song was included in the final version of the game. The voice acting audio was also mixed into the game by Reggie1, but the sound effects were divided between Reggie1, Denzel Dauphine Weatherspoon, and a small amount of Kadokawa's default sound effects. One of the rock songs in the game, "Irrational Fears" was on *The Fight Left Inside's* debut EP, and was requested to be in the game by Denzel Dauphine Weatherspoon. The song was left out of the Obsolete Souls Original Soundtrack, but can still be heard inside of the "Music Gallery" (also known as the Jam Room) from the in-game pause menu. The purpose of this was to lead players to support the The Fight Left Inside directly rather than just through *Obsolete Souls*™.

## Development

*Obsolete Souls*™ started out as a solo project by Denzel Dauphine Weatherspoon before Dennel Cake, LLC. was founded. The game was made in RPG Maker VX Ace. Dauphine Weatherspoon wanted to turn the focus of the project into more of a collaboration piece halfway through it's development. The game features a decent sized cast of voice actors that can be heard during battles, cut scenes, and snippets of dialogue. Aside from music, Dauphine Weatherspoon also collaborated with the animation team "Hyper Gauge" to make 2D animated cut scenes. The official character artwork, and game cover were designed by Voltaic Art's founder, Ricardo Michel. Although there were many people contributing to the development of the project, Dauphine Weatherspoon handled the game balancing, initial character designs, graphics, level design, narrative, and sprite animation. "The actual idea for Obsolete Souls was to make a video game where me and my buddies just go on a weird rpg adventure. I got way too into it, and I just decided to keep running with it". - *Denzel Dauphine Weatherspoon, (2016)*

## Production Credits

### Musical Features

*Dakota James Potter, Jonathan Wentworth, Mike Sheldon, Denzel Dauphine Weatherspoon, Reggie1.*

### Programmers / Script Developers

*Big Ace 360, Casper Gaming, Denzel Dauphine Weatherspoon, Daimonius Tales Games, Diamond Platinum 3, Euphoria, Himeworks, Luna, MGC, Moby, Modern Algebra, Moghunter, Pacman, Raizen, Selchar, Theo Allen, Ventwig, Victor Sant, Yanfly, Zeus.*