Soul Injector Commando Review

God Found a List of Billionaires on Her iPad

Soul Injector Commando opens with a premise so blunt it loops back around to being funny: the world is falling apart because a small class of billionaires has hoarded everything worth having, and God — bored, lonely, browsing a new iPad in heaven — has found a list of every one of them online. She assembles you, a hybrid creature stitched together from six long-dead humans, into the Soul Injector Commando, and sends you down into a sprawling underground bunker to jam souls back into the wealthy hiding at the bottom of it. It's a first-person shooter built entirely around that one joke, and reviewers consistently describe it as landing exactly as hard as it's aiming to. One player puts the appeal plainly: "if you like psychedelic boomer-types and don't like billionaires then this game might be for you," while another simply calls the setup "very bold to alienate an audience by making billionaires the enemies of the game," before noting, tongue in cheek, that the game will "only appeal to 99.999999% of us."

The game comes from Jeremy Couillard, a developer whose prior work leans toward surreal walking simulators — reviewers repeatedly reference an earlier title, Lavender Island, as the thing that got them following his output — and Soul Injector Commando is described by longtime fans as his first real swing at a straightforward shooter. Several are explicit that it doesn't abandon what made his other games distinctive: the wacky story, the unmistakable art style, and character designs carried over from his back catalog are all present, just wrapped around actual combat encounters this time instead of exploration alone.

Sliding, Shooting, and Injecting Souls Into Wall Street

Mechanically, this is a linear, level-based FPS: you descend deeper into the billionaire bunker across a handful of stages, picking up different weapons and upgrades as you go, sliding around environments, and eliminating enemies who are modeled — face, name, and all — on real, identifiable billionaires. Reviewers specifically call out that touch as one of the funniest and most cutting design choices in the game: as you "SOUL" an enemy, their actual face and name appear on a feed, and more than one player admits to pausing mid-run just to look up who they'd just dealt with. Between combat sections, a small cast of side characters carries the fully-acted dialogue that reviewers say gives the game its texture — God complaining about her loneliness, a bickering couple, a strange inventor handing out new toys to experiment with, and a "secret society of weird little freaks" players can stumble across while exploring.

Reviewers draw comparisons to Cruelty Squad more than any other reference point, both as a stylistic touchstone and as a measuring stick for the surreal-shooter subgenre it's clearly building on, though several are careful to note that Soul Injector Commando charts its own course rather than simply imitating it. One reviewer with the game's designer credited elsewhere describes it as "really interesting mechanically," adding that "you'd expect it to be yet another overtly themed boomer shooter but it strays pretty far from that," while another compares the pacing and feel more to MDK than to any modern retro-shooter revival. Multiple players highlight secret contraptions and hidden areas tucked throughout the levels as genuinely worth exploring for, on top of the moment-to-moment shooting.

Short, Linear, and Occasionally Too Close to Its Influences

The most substantive criticism in the review pool comes from a player who went in expecting a spiritual successor to Cruelty Squad and came away disappointed, calling the finished game a "try-hard" and "ham-fisted" version of what inspired it, and describing the political messaging as cringier and less nuanced than the games it's borrowing tone from. That review stands out as the sharpest dissent in an otherwise enthusiastic pool, and it's a useful counterweight: for players who want their satire subtler or their shooters less overtly reference-heavy, the game's directness could easily read as heavy-handed rather than clever.

Even among the positive reviews, a recurring, gentler version of the same complaint shows up: at least one longtime fan of the developer's other work says the narrative here feels "a bit underwhelming" compared to a previous game's more seamless commentary, describing this outing's writing and voice-acting delivery as less subtle than what came before, while still praising the visuals as a genuine spectacle worth the price on their own. Reviewers are also consistent that the game is short and fairly linear — nobody claims this is a lengthy adventure, and it's generally framed as a tight, focused experience rather than a sprawling campaign, with variety coming more from shooter encounters and gimmick sections than from raw scale.

A Cult Curiosity for the Right Player

What's striking about the review pool is how much of it is written by players who already knew Couillard's other games and came in with specific expectations — and how consistently those expectations were met or exceeded rather than disappointed. One reviewer calls it simply "the single greatest game in all of human history" after finishing only the tutorial, which is clearly more enthusiasm than sober critique, but the broader sentiment across the pool, even from more measured voices, lands solidly positive: distinctive visuals, a game that doesn't take itself too seriously while still having something specific to say, and combat that surprises players who came in braced for a generic boomer shooter. At $14.99 (discounted to $11.99 at launch), reviewers frame it as an easy recommendation for anyone already drawn to its aesthetic or premise, with the caveat that the satire is blunt enough that it will either land for you immediately or not at all — there isn't much middle ground on offer, and the one clearly negative review in the pool makes that split visible rather than hypothetical.

Verdict

Soul Injector Commando commits fully to its premise — you are God's chosen hybrid creature, sent to jam souls into billionaires hiding in a bunker — and builds a genuinely inventive, visually distinctive FPS around a joke that could have easily worn out its welcome in the first level. It mostly avoids that trap by staying short, varied within its runtime, and packed with the kind of hidden detail and surreal worldbuilding that fans of the developer's earlier work clearly show up expecting. The satire is blunt rather than subtle, and at least one reviewer found its Cruelty Squad influences worn a little too openly on its sleeve, but for a player willing to meet the game's tone where it is, this is a confident, funny, and unusually specific shooter that knows exactly what it wants to say and doesn't waste much time saying it.

Pros:

• Fully committed, distinctive satirical premise that carries the whole game
• Genuinely inventive combat that surprises players expecting a generic shooter
• Strong, surreal art direction and fully-acted dialogue give it real personality
• Hidden secrets and contraptions reward exploring beyond the critical path
• Enemies modeled on real, identifiable billionaires is a sharp, memorable touch

Cons:

• At least one reviewer found the satire heavy-handed next to its clear influences
• Narrative subtlety reportedly falls short of the developer's previous games
• Short, linear campaign structure with limited overall scale
• Humor and tone are blunt enough that they won't land for every player
• Review pool is still small this early, making the reception harder to fully gauge