Developer: Summitsphere

Publisher: Summitsphere

Played on: PC

Release Date: December 3, 2024

Played with: Dualshock 4

Paid: $0 (Key provided for review)

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The first thing you need to know about Antonblast is that superlatives can’t properly capture how truly bonkers it is.  From its neon graffiti by way of Courage the Cowardly Dog aesthetics to its blasting rock-infused rhythms to the fact that the game has a damn button that does nothing but make your character scream, this is pretty much the definition of firing on all cylinders insanity.  I lost count of the number of times I could barely process what was happening on-screen – where I was just pressing buttons and not dying and calling that good.  My first play session lasted for about an hour, and it simultaneously barely felt that long and had me needing a break afterwards just to stop my retinas from frying.  If you want calm, collected, cultured commentary, look elsewhere, but if you want a game that hits the gas from moment one (even the opening titles got me hyped every time) and never lets up, Antonblast is your game.

As one might hope, the story is fittingly buck-wild.  See, Satan (who in this depiction has a surprisingly bodacious behind) desperately wants to be the reddest being on (and/or in) the planet, and when it turns out that his magic mirror deems Dynamite Anton to be redder, he becomes enraged.  He sends his minions out to steal all of Anton’s stuff (basically just a television and a lifetime supply of beet juice), with the goal of luring Anton to his lair so he can suck the crimson right out of him.  The plan works, and Anton (or Annie if you choose to swap characters like I did) sets out on a quest to hell and back in the name of retrieving all their belongings.

It’s a pretty typical threadbare narrative for a platformer, but it’s told via some kooky cutscenes that really bring the characters to life in hilarious fashion.  On each level’s loading screen, Satan mocks and taunts you, keeping the central conflict focused, and it all ends in an explosive climax that feels ripped right out of one of the cartoons I used to watch in a sugar-fuelled daze while my parents looked on in disappointment.  In a game as action-packed as Antonblast, it says something that I would have been happy for that action to be broken up more frequently by story beats, just so I could see the characters bounce off each other more.

The big hook in Antonblast is that you play through each stage (with the exception of boss fights) both ways.  You run through, largely going from left to right as is the norm for a 2D platformer, all until you hit a switch that triggers Happy Hour.  Then, a timer starts counting down and you have to dash all the way back to the start before it runs out, often with new paths unlocking in the process.  The trick is that there are no more checkpoints available on the runback, so you have to do it all on one life, or else you respawn back at the Happy Hour switch and have to try again.  Depending on the level, this can be exhilarating at best and frustrating at worst.  When you nail the route back with time to spare, the feeling is intoxicating.  However, some of the escape paths you navigate are trickier than others, and there’s nothing worse than spending several minutes frantically scrambling back through a level, only to have one screw-up at the very end set you back to the start.  

In fact, this holds true for Antonblast’s checkpointing system in general; while they’re usually pretty forgiving, the times they’re not are super noticeable.  One massive gauntlet runback that lasted several minutes had me getting stuck and running out of time enough that I wondered if I’d ever manage to clear it, and I struggle to imagine how anyone would do it while also getting all the level’s tricky-to-reach collectibles.  Meanwhile, a tough boss fight kept sending me back to the start when I died on the final phase, which was especially aggravating as I had already aced the first two phases multiple times, making them feel more like an exercise in tedium than an exciting challenge.

I mentioned that Antonblast is a platformer, and it is by and large, feeling like a sort of halfway house between the speed-driven antics of Sonic titles and a Mario game’s slightly more considered pace.  In addition to standard running and jumping, you’ve got a divebomb-like ground pound, a slide, a roll, a dash attack called a Clutch Boost, and an aerial maneuver known as the Hammer Vault.  The latter simultaneously acts like an attack and lets you bounce off the ground, giving you more height than a regular jump.  All these moves are managed via a simple two-button control scheme, which is unfortunately where one of the game’s key problems emerge.  Pressing the attack button while on the ground will trigger the Clutch Boost, whereas pressing it in the air will activate Hammer Vault, which is fine on the face of it until you remember this is a fast-paced platformer where speed is often of the essence.  Countless times I’d try to trigger Clutch Boost when landing from a jump, only to press the button juuust before touching the ground and instead start bouncing around in Hammer Vault mode, simultaneously grinding my momentum to a halt.  The kicker is that Hammer Vault bounces can chain together, so my instinct to press the button again when I didn’t get the desired outcome simply led to me bouncing over and over.

On the other hand, there were times where triggering Hammer Vault wasn’t sensitive enough; I’d press the button in the air, and nothing would happen.  As it happens, I dealt with this while facing the final boss; on the final attack I needed to dodge to beat their current phase and hit a checkpoint in the fight, I tried to trigger Hammer Vault and it failed.  Because of this, I died and had to restart the fight, which led to a tirade on my part that had my dog staring at me worriedly.  And this is coming from someone who tends not to get particularly angry when gaming.  If you’re the type of person to break controllers in fits of rage, you may want to steer clear of Antonblast.

Additionally, a couple of the moves aren’t particularly well-tutorialized.  Your ground pound can be used to break otherwise unbreakable one-ton blocks, but only if you’re falling from a certain height, and Antonblast just expects you to figure this out, rather than explaining it when it has the chance in the tutorial level.  The same goes for the roll; you can use it to break those same one-ton blocks, and you can even jump mid-roll, but this is never clearly explained, to the point where I ended up having to find out the latter via a YouTube playthrough.

While there’s a relatively limited quantity of levels in Antonblast, there’s a lot of variety on offer to make up for it.  One minute you’re running through a reality-warping liminal space, and the next you’re literally playing pinball with your character.  Generally speaking the level design is solid and enjoyable, providing ample opportunities to build up speed and blast through tons of enemies or blitz through platforming areas.  That said, some segments fare far better than others.  I got softlocked in one puzzle room and had to reset to the last checkpoint, the pinball sections could feel a bit too unpredictable, and one level featured small, timed platforms that were a nuisance to navigate.  I mentioned before my issues with the game’s controls, and while they’re not altogether stodgy or imprecise, they nonetheless feel ill-equipped for these challenges.  

This feeling was only added to when I tried out the alternate modes that are unlocked upon beating a stage: Time Trial and Combo Chain.  Time Trial sees you racing through the level as quickly as possible to beat a par time, smashing crates along the way that briefly freeze the clock.  Meanwhile, Combo Chain wants you to keep a combo of breaking stuff and killing enemies going through the entire level.  While I can certainly appreciate that this may just be a skill issue on my part, I think these modes nonetheless require a level of precision that the controls struggle to provide.

At least the presentation is unequivocally fantastic.  Screenshots don’t really do it justice, and I encourage you to go look up a video of Antonblast in motion just to see the level of chaos it’s working with.  The visuals are crunchy as hell and it can often be a challenge to tell what’s going on, but it feeds into the anarchic spirit the game is trying to evoke, so I found it more charming than frustrating.  Meanwhile, the music is straight-up banging, and I struggle to think of a game I’ve played recently that’s gotten me so hyped off its audio alone.  The audio balancing could use a bit of work, as there were a few voice lines that were noticeably quiet, but it didn’t impact things too much.

Antonblast is a tough game to recommend, because it definitely has its problems.  At times it had me grinning from ear to ear or laughing out loud, and at others I wanted to chuck my controller across the room because the game simply wasn’t playing as tightly as I felt like it should.  It’s especially frustrating because I could easily see this review rapidly becoming outdated; I already saw someone on the game’s Steam forums talking about the devs mapping Hammer Vault to a separate button, which would likely do a lot to resolve my complaints with the controls.  However, I have to review the game as it is now, and while I do still like it, I think it’s lacking some of the spit and polish to make it a true gem.  To deviate briefly, this is a game that I expect to see some absolutely bananas speedruns for, and I honestly can’t wait.  It’s crazy kinetic, and any time I can get into a flow state and let the chaos take me, it just sings … well, screams.  I just wish that happened more frequently in my play of it; as it stands, I think I’ll be content to watch other people play Antonblast while I sit on the sidelines and hope it one day gets updated to be a true masterpiece.

7.5/10