GaryStu56
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2025
Antonblast, another 2D platformer heavily inspired by Wario Land 4, but with a touch of Crash Bandicoot that really makes it stick out from Wario and Pizza Tower. Also lots of Beavis and Butthead/Ren and Stimpy influences. The gist is, Satan (Basically Cow and Chicken's Red Guy and AOSTH Robotnik) is jealous that Anton is redder than him, and sends his army of moles to steal his booze and bait him into Hell.
My thoughts: This one's really rough around the edges compared to Pizza Tower, but I can tell that the dev's heart was in the right place. Antonblast just oozes with soul, from its hyper-exaggerated animation, sonic-like setpieces, kickass music, but at the end of the day, it leaves me feeling that it could've used a little more time. Especially on one aspect of its design...
DIfficulty: Never played Warioland 4, but I did play Pizza Tower. The curve was excellently handled, with no real out-of-place difficulty spikes aside from the P-Ranks. Meanwhile, Antonblast is all over the place, from level placement to certain sections within the levels themselves. It goes to show you that in the developer playthrough, Concrete Jungle was supposed to be the 2nd Stage. The first hiccup is in Cinnamon Springs. I got this one practically memorized from the demos, but for a new player, it's very, very rude. It opens up with long stretches of see-saw platforms over lava that you can easily fall into if you carelessly boost. Thing is, after the first few screens, the Springs are basically a cakewalk, aside from the castle section, which was directly ripped from an infamous Bandicoot stage. You know the one. It would've worked so much better if the opening moved more screens into the lava, or introduced the lava and seesaws individually before combining them all into one.
Next stop is the Pinball Mire. Oh god, everyone was bitching about this one in the steam reviews, and for good reason. The pinball psychics are almost incomprehensible on your first time, especially since the game NEVER tells you that you can clutch the pinball to force yourself into the sidepockets. Not even mentioning the mud, which is the only insta-kill hazard in the game, shows up only at the beginning, and will happily kill you at the end of the escape if you are not careful, forcing you to go through the pinball crap again. You wanna know why the Warioland 4 equivalent never had actual pinball? Because then you would have to do it under a time limit after you hit the escape switch, which Antonblast gleefully pulls on you. Yes. Pinball, under a time limit. It's even more strict if you are going for Time Trials. Seriously, who tf thought that was a good idea?
Mad Mall is yet another moment when the game fails to tell you what the hell is going on. The goal is to hit the 4 detonators under a time limit to beat a safecracker to the vault, but there was no tutorial blurb on launch. I'll just run by other such tidbits, sliding into kickable objects changes the trajectory, the bomb transformation can clutch in the air (Both in the same level), you can boost on grind rails, the slide can defeat enemies... I hear that the game is hard to read because the screen can get busy, but for me, getting hit and missing out on secrets because the game refuses to explain itself in infinitely more frustrating. Oh, and you don't even have to beat the goblin. The game just dumps you on a harder escape route.
Mysterious Glasshouse: The platforming gets WAY harder in this hellhouse for one reason: your hammer bounce uses the same input as the clutch boost. And no, you cannot rebind the controls. It is all too easy to go rushing off the stupid plants when you meant to bounce. The game expects you to chain together bounces and clutches like this. Not only that, this one is really, really long compared to every other level. Get used to the music; you'll be here for a while.
Hell Manor: Remember when I said that Pizza Tower had a good difficult curve? I lied. Its final level, WAR, is really the only point in the game where you can die, and it will happen very easily since it imposes a shotgun that will grind you to a screeching halt every time you use it. It's on a whole different level from the rest of the game. Meanwhile, Hell Manor is simply a test of everything that came before. If you made it this far putting up with the game's nonsense, then this is not too big of a step. Aside from that one tape room, which suddenly puts in a Crash Bandicoot bonus room, Hell Manor is mostly coherent.
Side Modes: There are some stinkers that probably weren't tested before launch. Pinball Mire Time Trials comes to mind. Glasshouse Time Trials is 10 minutes for par. Seems generous, but it has the tightest platforming of the game. It's just more time for you to screw up. Hell Manor Combo Chain sucks, and only because of that Tape room. You can go full throttle the entire level, but then this room forces you to make a bunch of precise bounces over and over again. Screw up once, and you failed the run. Yeah, the CRACKED Ranks are just like the P-Ranks in PT, except doing so for the bosses isn't nearly as easy. Most of the fights are way more complex and intense, but the last three kick it up to 11. Maulerbuster and Ring-a-Ding put so much crap on the screen, and the Final Boss is outrageously long and induldges into even more bullet hell. They were even expecting you to get hit alot in the Satan fight because they give you a health bar. At least they are not tracked for 100% completion.
What do you think?
