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Reviewed On: PC
Also Available On: Nintendo Switch (Releasing December 13th, 2024)
Price: $19.99 USD
Developer: Summitsphere
Publisher: Summitsphere
Release Date: December 3rd, 2024
Please Note: A review code was provided for this review but does not influence the opinions stated here in any way.
I absolutely have loved platformer games since I started gaming over 24 years ago. I have loved both the 2D ones and also the 3D ones, but have recently found myself preferring 3D platformers for some reason. Well, a 2D platformer adventure title known as Antonblast came out earlier this week and I got to play it thanks to a review code! This was created by the team at Summitsphere and there was a lot of great detail and love that was put in the game. Over 1000 reviews on Steam already and is currently sitting at an Overwhelming Positive rating. That is very impressive for one less than one week on the market! This title was originally a Kickstarter project and had I known about it back then, I think I would have supported it like I have done with other indies many times before. What are my thoughts on this game? Well you are going to have to read on in order to find out!
The plot of the game is pretty simple. Satan has a magic mirror that he asks who the reddest person in the world is. The mirror shows that Dynamite Anton is that person, and Satan was not happy with this. So, in order to get some sort of revenge, he orders his underlings to steal one of the most precious things of Anton’s and that is his Spirits (drinks). You are playing as Anton and you must get them back by battling through a total of 12 crazy worlds, plus a few bosses and mini bosses mixed in there. Apparently, there is also another set of plot points when you play as Annie, a friend of Anton’s, but I never got to experience these as I didn’t play the game with her. Unfortunately, I wasn’t super wowed by the overall plot points that were shown or talked about in the game; however, everything else pretty much shines through those holes that were in the story.
While the story may not be the best in my opinion, the gameplay is actually really well built. There are many parts of the game that is terrific from its characters, to its platforming, to its overall structure in how you play the game. In most of the levels, there are sections where you have to run, jump, dash, use the environment around you, and make use of special abilities to find and activate a total of 4 different detonators. During this time, you can explore as long as you want to find hidden collectables, currency, and objects that are in the level. Once you activate the final detonator, you have begun happy hour. Happy hour is a change of pace in the game where it is on a destructive timer. Your goal is to run back to the entrance of the level and leave the world to go back to the hub area. Usually this requires either an entirely different path than you saw before, or a slight variation of the original path you already played. If the clock reaches zero before you reach the exit, you instantly die and have to re-start at either the beginning of the happy hour, or in the rare occurrence a checkpoint during the happy hour.
Besides these main levels, there are mini bosses and bigger bosses to contend with. These are a mixture of putting your platforming and skills to the test in different ways, and they are all fun to play; even when they are testing your patience sometimes. Even though I loved my time with it for the 6 hours I played, I am not sure how much more I can get into the title than what I have already played. I found a few of the collectables scattered throughout the title, but nothing had me wanting to keep going more than just the basic ending. Sometimes, I really want to do more in games than just the main content, but I end up not liking the game as much if I push myself to do everything I possibly can in it. That is the case here where if I end up going back to the same levels repeatedly, I might not like the game as much as I do now.
To make the gameplay less difficult, there are a mixture of different things to help the player out. One of these is checkpoints, which are pretty common for the most part (minus happy hour which normally don’t have any). If you die or run out of time, you return to the latest checkpoint with the amount of currency you had once you got there. I will admit I died quite a few times in the game, but I am not ashamed of that. The second thing to help the player is the large amount of heart points scattered in the levels and bonus drops during boss fights on occasion. The final thing is the shop where you spend coins gained in the levels for different things. Some of those include extra collectables, additional time for the happy hour extra temporary hit points, or extra permanent hit points. Honestly, there are parts of the game that are harder than others, but there definitely ways to make it easier.
The art and visuals in the game are absolutely stunning. The colors are very vibrant and they pop out of the screen. I will admit that looking at the game for too long, it slightly hurt my eyes with the color schemes and how everything was blasting on the screen at once sometimes, which is why I needed to play the game in smaller increments than I normally would for a game this size. The designs of the characters and enemies were all terrific with them having an edgier vibe to it, which is in my book a great part of the entire package. The enemy variety is a tad bit lacking when it comes to the end of the game when they reuse a lot of them from earlier parts of the title. The background areas and levels are diverse from the calming sauna area, to the pinball world, to the different bosses. The performance of the game was solid all around on my 3050ti gaming laptop where I didn’t feel dips or framerate problems in any way so I was happy with that in the title.
The music and audio design in the game was very solid and I really enjoyed what was there. The music works for each of the unique levels, the hub world, and the bosses in the game. There are mixtures of punk sounds to rock to calmer vibes. Nothing for the music is all that revolutionary and I don’t think I will really remember any of the music tracks that were in the game, but I never expected that for this indie game. Audio design in the game is solid from the enemies around me, the environments, locations, Anton’s movements, and everything else in-between. I will say that the voice acting in the game is probably my favorite part of the audio as it is edgier to the tones that are used from the Devil and Anton, to the side characters like the shop keeper being a bit more calmer and less edgy.
There were only a couple of slight bugs and issues on my PC but they weren’t all that terrible or game breaking. The game did unfortunately crash on me once in the hub area, which didn’t affect any level progression thankfully. At first, I didn’t see a need for the item shop but after a while in the game there were some reasons to purchase upgrades such as extra health points or extra time in levels for happy hour sections that get trickier in later parts of the game. When I was playing before the official release of the game, there were no achievements on Steam. Thankfully, I waited until after the release of the game and thanks to an update, there are Steam achievements. Overall, in terms of negatives for the game besides the plot being slightly weaker and the one crash; there isn’t a huge amount of them.
There is a lot of fun to be had with Antonblast, but it definitely isn’t perfect. Unfortunately the story wasn’t memorable in any way, but the gameplay is pretty fun and has more to it than just a simplistic platformer. Bosses were superb, the pinball level was terrific, and a few more sections of the game were terrific in the game, with it being a good experience as a whole. The art and music in the game are overall great in the game and it was a pleasure to listen and look at throughout my six hours in the title. Antonblast is a great mixture of old school platforming, a fast pace speedrun, tight controls, and so much more. Summitsphere did a great job with the game as a whole and I definitely recommend it for people who are 2D platformer and adventure side scroller fans!
Review Score: 8/10
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