Phantom Trigger Demo

Most video games don’t bother too much with the background story, because unless the lore is rich enough to be worth a book of its own there’s no need for complex intros. Hence, players usually just jump straight into the action and take it from there, trying to make sense of the world and the characters as they go along, which is not as difficult as it sounds most of the time.

Phantom Trigger is a top-down action game with roguelike and RPG elements, in which combat is the most important activity. The gameplay revolves around combos and weapon upgrades, which means that you have to give your fingers a workout and always be on the prowl for better weapons as you cruise through the story. The enemies are quite the headache, and it takes a bit of concentration to defeat them.

The story starts with Stan - the main character - living a pretty normal life with his wife. Naturally, something weird happens and he is transported to a different world, which also happens to be crawling with creatures that want to kill him. Hence, Stan must make his way through this cursed world and even jump from one dimension to the other over the course of his journey.

As mentioned before, the combat system is all about combos, which are not easy to accomplish, at least not at first. Your character can even use traps and spells, so there are many possible combinations once you begin a fight. Thankfully, the controls are very polished and responsive, so the only one to blame for a failed combo is yourself, especially if you are new to the genre.

As far as the game world is concerned, the colorful environments may look rather simple at first, but in truth they are very nicely designed, and they usually contain many interesting landscapes too. The top-down perspective makes it easy to explore without getting lost, although the maze-like levels can still prove to be tricky sometimes.

In the end, Phantom Trigger does not impress in terms of original ideas or the story as a whole, but then again this is merely a demo at this point, so things might change in this regard. It’s obvious that the developers have put a lot of soul into the game, however, so you should definitely keep on eye on the project as it evolves.