Great Things about Phantasia

Phantasia is an awesome game and I am truly excited to publish it here at GarageGames! This game has me hooked -- it was love at first sight, and I'm still enjoying it today. When I play games at home on my own time after work, this is one of the games I play. I love it! What follows is a list of the many great things that Phantasia does right. Hopefully you will read this list then check the game out to see for yourself.

Great things about Phantasia, in no order:

It has fantastic music. It is perfectly paced, catchy, and never gets old. I can't remember last hearing piano music as the track for a game - just awesome.

It has great sound effects. Most memorable of all are the elves' cries for help and cries of glee when freed. When you free a ton of elves at once, they all cry out in glee almost at the same time, and that sound of multiple cheers is delightful and never gets old.

It has fantastic art. The art strikes the right balance of detail and whimsy. The art has warmth and character. The particle effects are bountiful and top-notch. Everything is animated and responsive. There is much attention to detail and many nice extra touches not noticed at first glance. I am still finding places where there was fine attention to detail (the behavior of the bubbles on the main menu; the animated wispy clouds passing over the castle on the level map). The art does not look like canned "casual game" art and has a defined character.

The menus and UI are simple. The main menu, which is your first impression of the game, is animated and interesting.

The controls are simple. No RTFM required.

The gameplay is simple. A 10 year old could play. It appeals to all ages and people.

The gameplay strikes a balance between originality and precedent. It's similar to a few well-known games (so you can relate), but it's not a variation of them (it is its own unique game).

There is a nice story no more involved than it needs to be to engage and interest players. It is humorous and tounge-in-cheek cute.

The game starts easy and progresses in difficulty nicely. Player progress is visually reinforced with a map shown between levels.

The game makes you smile and feel good.

There is thought put into level design (it is not random).

The game opens by introducing new challenges and variations with each new level, and they feel natural and not contrived.

The game does at least one thing for every event, and sometimes multiple things. For example, when you pop a bubble, the bubble doesn't just disappear, it leaves a particle effect. As another example, when introducing a level, the game shows you a map, the game board appears, then the bubbles on the left are introduced with a particle effect one by one, and finally the elf cranks the bubbles down and then you start. Both the map and the individual bubble introduction are extra things done for the event of a new level. There are tons of these in the game.

The game has character more than the sum of any one part. Sometimes a dog, monkey, or little creature appear poking out of a corner of the screen for no reason. There are some grammer mistakes and interesting use of words, as the author is foreign. The music, art, and story of the game reminds me of something Russian or German, in any case more Old World and European or Eastern European. With games this small in scope and with such small tight teams, the character of the game's author(s) really shows through. It is exciting to see games as a form of personal expression. That is one of the awesome things about the indie game scene. This game expresses the character of its author.

And finally, the best thing about Phantasia is that it's GarageGames at both ends of the process. Upfront, Phantasia was made using a GarageGames engine (TGB), making it platform portable and rock-solid to support. On the tail end, Phantasia is being published through the GarageGames label, and flat out we understand and care more about indie developers than any other publisher. We provided the tools, a great game was made, and now we're proud to publish the final product.

Phantasia rocks, both as a game and as a development case study. Congrats to Pavel and his team at 300AD for developing such an awesome game. Made in 5 weeks with TGB, it's really a testament to the power of a small, well designed, tightly focused game with character and charm.

Awesome job, guys!