Lost Soul Aside - In Need Of Hype

Have you ever been in a group project where your colleagues goofed around while you ended up doing all the work? Well, one game developer took that concept to a whole other level.


Back in 2016, Yang Bing shocked the gaming industry when he unveiled Lost Soul Aside(LSA), a hack and slash RPG. Not much is known about the story except that it follows the tale of Kazer, a lone wanderer and his sword which is actually a dragon.

The trailer was well received for its gameplay style and graphics that were displayed but perhaps the most impressive aspect was the fact that the game was being developed by Yang Bing without any help. After fielding multiple offers from various companies, Sony announced that they would be funding the creation of a full version of Lost Soul Aside and saddled Yang Bing up with a small production team consisting of 10 developers.



Now the title of the article isn't entirely accurate nor is it redundant. Sony has actually been promoting the game since last year. They held playable demos of LSA during the PSX convention in December 2017 as well as another demo during the Game Developers Conference held in San Francisco back in March. Most recently, a new trailer was revealed at ChinaJoy 2018 back in August featuring a new antagonist and more gameplay.


My problem with this game is that it hasn't been promoted enough. While the first trailer released in 2016 got over 3 million views, the latest trailer only received 65,000+ views as of October 2018. Even worse, Sony did not present Lost Soul Aside during E3 and the Tokyo Game Show(TGS), two of the biggest gaming conventions of the year. In an interview held in May by Dualshockers.com, Yang Bing did say Sony may not ultimately publish LSA so that could have been part of the reason behind the game's lack of presence. Sony has a lot of upcoming games to promote so that's another factor.

Over the years, Sony has collaborated with many development studios to much success such as Guerrilla Games (Horizon: Zero Dawn) and Insomniac (Spiderman 2018). While I'm not content with how they're promoting Lost Soul Aside right now, I'm sure we will get more promotional material as 2019 draws closer. Until we know more, I will continue to be eagerly waiting for Lost Soul Aside to be released.

Lost Soul Aside is currently in development for the Playstation 4.

[All images by Yang Bing]

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