Oddworld: Soulstorm is a modern re-imagining of the 1998 title Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus. It serves as a direct sequel to Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty. The player controls Abe, a reluctant hero who inadvertently sparked an uprising and now must lead his fellow Mudokons in their fight for freedom against the Magog Cartel and the planet’s ruling power.

Oddworld: Soulstorm is set on the fictional planet Oddworld and a continent called Mudos. Mudos is inhabited by various sapient races and plenty of merely sentient ones. The Glukkons run the continent's industry and use the Mudokons as expendable slave labor. Soulstorm picks up directly after the events of New 'n' Tasty. Abe has just saved 300 fellow Mudokons from a conspiracy to use his species' own meat to save Rupture Farms' dwindling profits. While he and his followers expected to live out their lives in peaceful freedom, his status as the leader of the first successful uprising has triggered a series of events intended to free his whole species from the chemically bound shackles they are chained to.