Phantom Abyss is the new whip-slinging, ghost-racing first-person-platforming, asynchronously multiplayer roguelite capturing people’s attention right now, offering a compelling blend of Indiana Jones style temple running and Spider-Man-esque slingshot parkour.
With a whip more grappling hook than lion taming implement in hand, Phantom Abyss challenges you to navigate a dangerous temple filled with ever more challenging traps — boulders, saw-blades, spike pits and so on — as you search for and (possibly) acquire a golden idol.
Demolition Man
As you careen through each tile-based, procedurally generated temple, you learn the layouts, the secrets and the tricks you need to get further — it’s the sort of knowledge-based progression great roguelites have made their bread and butter. And when you die, you drop your whip and any keys you’ve acquired; a sacrifice to the ancient gods that may once have been worshipped at the temple.
But there’s a twist. A literal ghost in the machine. You’re accompanied on your journey by the ghosts of those who attempted to run this temple. As you start a level, the blue outlined phantoms of other players join you, running the labyrinth alongside you. And better still, their impact haunts the halls of the temple long after they are gone. They open the chests you see around the level. They set off the traps, triggering spikes and dissolving tricked floors.
With 20 phantoms in a level, there’s a degree of chaos at play that can be difficult to manage. And there’s another element in the mix there, too, a psychological factor that is at the core of what Phantom Abyss is all about.
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Originally, Phantom Abyss was called “Will it be you?”, a title that still lingers in the name of the developers behind this unbelievably compelling platformer – Team WIBY.
“That was the core premise from the start,” explains Ben Marrinan, the Creative Director on Phantom Abyss. “That’s what it was all about, you know, one person beating many. I think there are definitely Battle Royale influences in the game, although it’s definitely not a Battle Royale. But that whole premise of being the one person that did it while all these other people failed is super cool to me.”
That’s the other twist in this parkour game’s formula — when you succeed at acquiring the idol, that temple is banished from existence. Only one person can complete a run, and Phantom Abyss asks a simple question: will it be you?
While the superficial inspiration might be fairly apparent — the whip, the doomed temple, the golden idol all point to Indiana Jones and other pulp adventure stories like it — this one and done mechanic leads to the game’s deeper inspiration.
“The most important thing [for us] is focusing on how players feel, and what players are thinking [as they play],” Marrinan explains. “And that’s kind of always been our approach when designing this game. We haven’t tried to copy other games or even fit into a genre, all that was important to us was how players feel and how a player is going to react to something.
“A game that I used as inspiration for this was an old Flash game, I can’t remember the name of it, but it was a 2D platformer where you would jump from one rooftop to another, and you only got one shot. And if you didn’t make the jump, you died. And it was totally an easy jump, and you knew that you could do it, but that pressure of knowing you only have one chance to do it psyched you out.”
The old game in question — One Single Life, we confirmed later — dared you to back yourself, and it had a great impact as a result. But in Phantom Abyss, with ghost runners flinging themselves around the same temple as you, the pressure mounts even further.
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Spirits in the Material World
Since the first ghost racer appeared in F-Zero, gamers have been conditioned to see the translucent form as a threat, a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down. With nobody sitting next to them, the hollow form of the ghost racer exists to show them what might have been — if only they were a little better at racing. The ghosts of Phantom Abyss add a sense of pressure in the exact same way.
“It’s really quite amazing how much the ghosts can influence your play,” Marrinan says. “Even if they’re not doing much they still impact the world. They’ll activate traps and things like that. But to a much greater extent, we’ve found players try to play exactly like the other phantoms around them.
“It was quite a funny experience during development. Whenever we would share the game with people… as the devs, we play the game all the time so we play quite fast. And so then other people would play and say, ‘no, this game’s too hard, way too hard, I just keep dying.’ Then we started giving [those same] people builds with no ghosts at all and they had a much easier time of it. It was fascinating to playtest. And I’ve seen the same stuff now that Phantom Abyss is out.”
But there’s a trick in Phantom Abyss, a mental leap every player needs to make to find success in it. A truth the game tells you constantly, but can still be hard to fully comprehend. The fact of the matter is, the phantoms in Phantom Abyss — they want you to win.
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When you die in Phantom Abyss, you drop your special whip and any keys you’ve acquired. That’s the price of failure. Your ghost lingers in the temple, joining the others who tried and failed before you.
But when you succeed, every phantom in that temple is released. Their whip and any keys they acquired are returned to them. Your success is their success.
“Normally when you’re playing a game with other people, you’re competing against each other, and you’re trying to get [to the end] first and win,” Ben Marrinan tells me. “It’s trained into people, the idea that if there’s other people here, I have to beat them, when really you’re actually working with all these people.
“Or more, all these people are there to help you, not hinder you. They’ll go into hidden passages that you might easily miss, set off traps you might not see. Show you all the secrets they’ve found. It’s quite a mind shift. And I think everyone has a moment where it’s like, ‘oh, hang on a second, I don’t need to be racing these people.’ And I think that’s a pretty cool moment for people that I didn’t anticipate. But I think it’s a great feeling with the game kind of clicking for you as you start to play.”
When you first start successfully completing temples, it’s a good feeling — one similar to winning a Chicken Dinner or Victory Royale. There’s that knowledge that you’ve done what others couldn’t, that you’re better than those who came before you.
But when you experience that mind shift, that attitude adjustment, the victories get even sweeter. Your triumph is a little bit more heroic, because you know that your win had an impact far beyond simply acquiring the idol and maybe upgrading your whip.
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Secret Journey
That heroic feeling has translated into a community of players that seems happier to collaborate with others.
“One thing about our community is that normally in games, communities can be quite hot, as people are competing against one another,” Marrinan says. “But I’ve found the community we have with this game is just the nicest bunch of people. I think it’s because the game is very cooperative, and everyone’s trying to help each other all the time. It’s been incredible to see.”
Something the community has already come together around is the secret language buried within Phantom Abyss’ temples, an alphabet players are already deciphering.
“There’s a secret language that we added in the game where different symbols mean different things,” Marrinan explains, telling us about the code. “And it’s all very subtle in the game right now. We kind of expected a fraction of a percent of people to notice it and investigate it all. But we’ve been blown away by the response of the community, our discord is extremely active about this secret language — people have already figured out the entire thing, which blows my mind. The community is awesome.”
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Phantom Abyss is out now in Early Access but there’s still a lot more yet to come for the game. There are three zones at the moment — the ruins, caverns and inferno — but more are on the way. More ways for players to upgrade their whip’s reach and speed are coming, as are more specialty whips in general. The immediate focus, however, comes directly from player feedback.
“Right now our focus is on getting a lot more difficulty in the game for the players who want that and a lot more variety in the game for players who want that,” Marrinan says. “The data is all over the place there. Some people die a lot in the first area, finding that pretty challenging, and other people smash through those first three areas pretty easily. And there’s everything in between, right?
“We’re definitely focusing on making content for everyone, for the people that die a lot in early stages, we’re making that a much more enjoyable experience, while at the same time delivering the challenge the other people are really craving. I think some people are begging for punishment, and we’re going to give it to them.”
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Joab Gilroy is an Australian freelancer that specialises in competitive online games. You can tweet at him here.
