While it’s easy to sometimes overlook, games can also give us pause to sit and reflect on things.

Whether it’s a stray line of dialogue or a particular scene. A piece of music. There are moments that really touch us and often they come at you at the most surprising times.

For Kulebra, though, this game is full of those moments. This kind-hearted puzzler doesn’t just tax your brain like a classic point and click adventure, it really gets you to reflect on what’s important in life and why.

And on the surface, you wouldn’t really expect that. It looks a lot like a Paper Mario inspired platformer with dashes of Animal Crossing and even, if you remember it, Cosmic Spacehead. With a full inventory system, it also pays homage to vintage adventure games like Broken Sword and Grim Fandango – another game this shares a lot of DNA with – often requiring the player to combine items or examine them more thoroughly.

Oh, and you play a dead and decayed Snake with glowing eyes. So it seems.

But in the midst of all of that, you’re also helping families with personal dramas. Standing in so they can come to terms with their problems and find ways to ease their suffering and pass on.

See Kulebra is a game set in ‘Limbo’ as its title suggests, which essentially sees the player wake up in a world where the dead are roaming and somehow it becomes your job to help them ‘pass on’.

One early example sees Kulebra visit a flower shop, run by a mother and daughter, and in the process of just buying plants for some reason, you’re also helping them pack up shop and open a bigger business elsewhere. At least, so it first appears.

To buy the plants, you’ll pick up ‘pearls’ on your journey which can be found by rummaging in hidden areas, pushing objects aside and even rolling into things. Yep, as a snake you’ll get to do a lot of rolling around to get places faster and this actually becomes quite an important mechanic for you as you try to solve ‘Limbos’ puzzles.

Pearls can be hidden in vases dangling precariously on rooftops, or boxes on shelves, and by rolling into them, you can knock them down and pick them up. How convenient.

But as you mentioned, you’ll also receive ‘gifts’ from other characters or find important items in backroom areas. Areas you might be trespassing into or stumble upon by unexpected means.

The game also sports a day and night cycle where certain things only happen at particular times of day and certain events are determined by where you are and when. You can sit on benches to pass the time but the interesting thing is that characters in each scenario forget what happened the day before, essentially living in a perpetual groundhog day. This also goes to certain items they provide you which you can only temporarily borrow for the day.

However, you can perform certain actions that leave a permanent sear on their soul and essentially mean they remember you because of that. Likely this is something significant that’s important to them, like a kindness you’ve shown them or an action performed on a friend or enemy.

It’s a very special game that I don’t want to talk about too much about for fear of spoilers but this is a game you absolutely must play. And you can even find it on Xbox Game Pass, to make that playing decision all the easier.

Verdict

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo is a kind-hearted, warm and fulfilling adventure with a lovely papercraft aesthetic, stunning sound and a really enjoyable gameplay loop with a clean UI and satisfying puzzles and storytelling. The words are simply beautiful and the messaging around it really stuck with me long after it ended. 2025’s truly surprise treasure.