ANTONBLAST

ANTONBLAST Baleful Belial Burglarizes Booze -Overview: ANTONBLAST is a fast-paced 2D platforming collectathon, heavily inspired by the old Wario Land games and 90's cartoons. Taking control of either the titular Anton (or his roommate Annie) you must recover your stolen alcohol from the devil, who has taken it in a sinister plan to drain and steal Anton's... Redness. You'll fly through a variety of levels, collecting your stolen goods and blasting away all sorts of foes that get in your path. Many levels feature unique gameplay mechanics, spicing up your rampage to the devil's doorstep. -The Good: -The Art Direction: ANTONBLAST is absolutely dripping with style and charm. The best way I can describe the style is LOUD; everything is in your face and demanding your attention. This creates an infectious energy that had my adrenaline pumping the whole game. The colors on display only add to this, as everything is incredibly vibrant and alive. The energetic vibe of this game is heavily held up by the animations, each squashing and stretching every aspect of a character or item in a way very reminiscent to Ed Edd n' Eddy. For a high speed platformer, this in your face style fits perfectly, and I cannot imagine the game without it. -The Characters: I was incredibly excited to talk to any character I could, as the writing on display here is wonderful. Everyone is incredibly witty and entertaining, and most lines got at least a chuckle out of me. My favorite of them all had to be the Devil, his cartoonish evilness and bumbling charm had me looking forward to every line that came from his mouth. Luckily for me, he'll appear at the start of every level to let out a little quip or joke, causing him to feel very present throughout the entire game. Anton and Annie are a close second however, as their animations are oozing with characterization and charm. If this game got one thing right, it's making you attached to the characters. -The Bad: -The Camera: I will forever be baffled by the decision to have such a zoomed in camera in a speedy platformer. It is incredibly irritating, and you'll be running headfirst into obstacles you're given no time to react to. Giving the player such little information as to what they are approaching confuses me to no end, as it disincentivizes speedy platforming in favor of a slow and methodical approach. -The Level Design: This game sacrifices clever level design for art direction, and it can be felt almost immediately. This game has an issue with what I like to call "Gotcha Design". Gotcha Design is when hazards or enemies are placed as a "Gotcha", something that's designed to surprise and punish you once, and then be incredibly easy to avoid once you know it's coming. This mainly manifests in the form of damaging hazards that come from offscreen faster than you react, leading to nigh unavoidable damage if you didn't already know it's there. Looking past this issue, the rest of the design is not much better. Many secrets are designed in a way where if you mess up getting to them, you're locked out of obtaining them unless you reset the whole level. This completely killed my drive to obtain the collectables, as it felt like the game wasn't respecting my time. -The Boss Fights: At the very best, these can be described as passable. Each "fight" feels incredibly drawn out and boring, which stinks because the art design is gorgeous. I loved seeing each new boss, but dreaded fighting them as they all felt incredibly half-baked, even the final boss. The health bars are simply egregious, and only exist to pad out the runtime of the game. -The... Confused? -The Movement System: I really, really wanted to like the movement, but I felt like I was fighting my controller the entire time. I heavily dislike the absence of an air dash, you're only allowed to build up speed on the ground. This absence leads to an inability to change your momentum quickly, so the movement feels incredibly sluggish. The only time you'll ever feel fast are the occasional "hold one direction and spam the dash button" stretches of level, which appear rather frequently. The downward slam move is one of the biggest contributors to this feeling of sluggishness. Every time you use it, all of your horizontal momentum is killed upon impacting the floor for about a second. I can see the bones of a great movement system under this, as when it works, it feels amazing! The issue though, is that it does not work very often. -Closing Remarks: I want to like ANTONBLAST so badly. It's oozing charm and effort, and I can tell that a ton of love was put into making this project a reality. I certainly did have fun at times, but it was really rough deciding how I felt about it. I wish Steam had a mixed review option for games like these, because there are so many small irritations that heavily impacted my experience. The clunky movement, poor level design, and drawn out boss fights are major problems, and I can't overlook them. A movement platformer should not feel this irritating to play. I think in the end I still recommend picking ANTONBLAST up, but please wait for a discount.