Neon psyche adventures ahoy.
Phantom Trigger is an Action Adventure game with RPG elements made by Bread Team, Victor Solodilov, Denis Novikov and published by tinyBuild. Though they describe it as a “Hardcore Neon Slasher”. Which I guess is apropos.
The story… well, it’s a little hard to follow. In general, it seems to be about a terminally ill man traveling through his own psyche. I say that due to the fact that I didn’t get terribly far in the game. What presentation I did experience wasn’t exactly concrete, either. But my reasons for playing only so much of the game relate to later points, so it’s less than optimal to go over them here. Suffice to say, you seem to be left to make many of the connections, or at least as far as I played.
Normally, I’d move on to gameplay, but I feel the need to start with controls. The controls are tight. As a mater of fact, they may be too tight. Often times, it became difficult for me to actually pull off combos, much less use one of the abilities in time. The frame window in which button presses register seems slightly unpredictable. I personally can’t be certain as to why this was, though, so I’m wary of letting it bleed the score too much, if at all. But it did contribute to a fair amount of frustration.
As far as gameplay goes, well, you can kill everything. Not just enemies, either; the NPC’s are fair game, and that seems to be a quick way to get a bad ending, judging from some of the achievements. Now, whether you can actually do that is a matter of your patience. And at least part of that is due to the fact that enemies aren’t really affected by your attacks as you are by theirs.
Some of the first enemies introduced are the most pernicious. The walking guys aren’t too bad, overall, but soon enough, you run into the little purple hopping blobs. And they are the worst. While they’re jumping, they’re invincible. they’re only able to be hit when they land on the ground. That only happens after an area of effect attack surrounding them, and you have a very short window to hit them before they hop again.
They’re initially not too bad, if difficult to hit without getting hit yourself, since the area of their attacks is just slightly larger than your weapon reach. Things get really bad when you get stuck in blocked off areas requiring you to defeat all the enemies it tosses at you to move on. Dealing with them there really highlights how much harder they are to deal with than all of the other enemies. And they led to more deaths than I’d care to admit.
You’re given three weapons and an ability, which you have to explore over the course of the first level. The one you technically start with is the teleport/dash. It lets you travel a mid-range distance quickly; I found it was prone to not let me use it when I really needed it, like after attacking one of the blobs. You also pretty much start with a whip move, which brings enemies closer, as well as interact with certain objects.
Aiming it is oddly difficult, and sometimes it seems to do damage whenever it feels like it. I pretty much only used it to single out enemies so that I could solo them. Before you enter the first stage, you get a blade from the tree. It sometimes seems to have unpredictable range, though that might be due to the tightness of the controls forcing me to stop short. Finally, mid-way through the level, you get the knuckles. They’re slow, but they deal the most damage and seem to have a decent hitbox. Most of the light RPG elements relate to them; The more you use them, the more weapon experience you get. When your weapons are at the right level, you get access to a combo ability.
The graphics are nice. The bright, neon palette brings to mind other recent games, like Hyper Light Drifter. Things are nicely animated on the whole. I’d feel safe in saying the way the game looks is one of its best draws.
The other would be the soundtrack. The synth music is well paired with the visuals overall; very 80’s. There’s also something incredibly satisfying about the weapon sound effects, though that may be just me.
Overall, Phantom Trigger is a decent game that I simply couldn’t afford to bash my head against any more. It has a few problems that probably need fixing, but after that it would be a solid buy if you really like hard games. You also have the option of getting it on the Switch; I have no idea if that version is any better or worse than the PC version, though.
Pros:
+ Bright, colorful neon graphics
+ Good sound design
Cons:
– Murky plot points
– Slightly wonky hitboxes
– Somewhat odd frames for combos/dash canceling to escape
Final Score:
3.5/5
*We were provided a copy of this game on PC for review*
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