Reviews - Phantomizer

Got this today as part of the The Sigma Royale bundle on IndieRoyale.com (paid $4.99 for a total of 7 games), it looked promising and I'm glad I wasn't mistaken, while pretty short (beat it in under 2hrs), it was a pretty awesome experience and more then worth the full asking price ($7.99).

The premise is simple, descend a tower while avoiding various traps and obstacles along the way, all of which kill you in one hit. But that, along with the gorgeous, cel-shaded art style, is all the game needs. the story (what there is of one, which is just there to help prod things along, but is nothing spectacular really) is told via graffiti in the backgrounds as you progress down the tower. There's a decent variety in terms of visuals with each stage being distinct and having it's own set of diabolical traps which get harder to get past the more you progress and there are even 2 boss fights thrown in, one thing that really amazed me was how fludly animated the game was, for an indie game, I have to say that the developers really nailed the core gameplay perfectly and what's more, you might expect lots of frustration from a game like this from dying over and over, but checkpoints are plentiful and dying doesn't carry as heavy a penalty, you just get thrown back to the last checkpoint and at the end of the stage, you get points deducted from your score based on how many deaths you suffered.

That said, a few things did bother me, like the boss fights feeling a little cheap since you can only fight back by throwing bombs and the power ups felt unneccessary and redundant, especially considering that only one of them (the middle one) was really worth having, the length might also be an issue for some, although I found it perfectly fine, especially since I was looking for something that didn't take me half a month to complete since I can't devote as much time to gaming as I used to.