18 months ago, Team WIBY released its latest project in Early Access. The multiplayer title known as Phantom Abyss caught the attention of numerous fans as its addictive, fluid temple and platform exploration gameplay was just right when it came to delivering Indiana Jones-style excitement. Since then, more than a year and a half have passed and the developer has continued to improve and expand the game until it is finally ready to abandon its Early Access status and hit the market as a “full” title.
What does this really mean for Phantom Abyss, you ask? Well, it simply means more mechanics, more difficult and complex traps, a greater variety of levels, additional skills and modifiers that can be applied, and even more game modes that challenge the way this title is fundamentally played. But despite all this, the core of Phantom Abyss remains. The idea of rushing into a deadly, hostile temple to avoid enemies, surviving and avoiding traps, and running to a relic at the end of the temple and claiming it, all before another asynchronous player gets it, retains still its simple brilliance.
Whether you’re sliding under spiked poles, jumping over bottomless pits, using the whip to soar to enormous heights, or simply sprinting to avoid traps or enemies that can mean instant death, the core structure of Phantom Abyss is largely the same what it does. 18 months. However, this is in no way a criticism, as Team WIBY knew exactly what they wanted this game to be from the start and have since continued to strengthen it with more ways to play, additional challenges and tougher performance, which is not to say that the game is from went badly at the beginning.
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So what has really changed? Basically, the main differences between the Early Access version and 1.0 lie in how the Phantom Abyss whips work and the gameplay experience. Now it’s not as rudimentary as Temple Run. What I mean is that loading the game isn’t just about running for your life until you reach the final goal, no, now you first have to select a specific game mode that you want to play. The choice of game mode determines what kind of whip you have to use, what kind of challenges you have to overcome, how many ghost players there will be and most importantly what kind of rewards you will receive if you succeed and make it to the end of the game Levels to get to the relic. There are also additional adjustments to the whips that make using them less frustrating, as well as new ways to obtain skins for your tools.
Basically, don’t expect to find a remastered or entirely new Phantom Abyss experience with this 1.0 update, because that’s not the point. Instead, it is simply an update and minor improvement of various aspects and parts of the overall framework that constitutes what Team WIBY originally created. If you’ve never played Phantom Abyss before, now is the perfect time to give it a try. And even if you haven’t played it since EA started releasing it, there’s a reason to come back to it. But if you’ve played this game regularly over the last 18 months, you’ll probably be a little disappointed that version 1.0’s debut didn’t have a little more spice, so to speak.
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