Games N Moorer's Joseph Moorer had a busy night last night. After recording a somewhat rambling episode of The Gaming Nexus Show, he dove into the Twitch streams to play some Phantom Abyss.
Phantom Abyss is the latest masterpiece published by Devolver Digital. As usual for a Devolver Game, Phantom Abyss pushes gaming in a new direction with a completely unique gameloop. Players enter a forbidden temple, and they get one shot at finding the treasure. If they fail or die, the will never be able to enter that same temple again. Everybody gets one shot, and once someone beats a temple, it's gone forever. Here's how Devolver explains it in a recent press release:
"Phantom Abyss casts players into trap-laden, procedurally-generated temples, and tasks them with retrieving the sacred relics hidden within their walls. Dodge scores of hidden traps, leap treacherous chasms and flee relentless guardians through branching paths until one of the relics are claimed or the devices of death overwhelm them. The most cunning explorers will use the phantom runs of failed attempts from other players to their advantage and avoid the missteps and mistakes that led to their doom, but be warned - you only get one attempt at each temple, and failure or settling for a lesser relic means you will never see that temple again..."
Joseph is just about the perfect player for Phantom Abyss, as he loves a challenge. Watching him methodically attempt to run the temple (while constantly complain about not having enough in-game money) is an absolute hoot. It's all fun and games for about 15 minutes, but then things get real real, real fast. At around the 22:00 mark, Joe gets "cratered on floor 3", which pretty much stuns him into silence. The next time he goes into a temple, there are some phantoms of previous players for him to follow around. It's a fascinating new game loop, and its a ton of fun watching Joseph cuss and scream while he figures out how it all works.
Joseph's second run is far more successful. I'll not spoil how it ends, but it is well worth the watch just to see Joseph's reaction. There are...emotions.
