Review | Astilbra - What Is A Video Game But A Miserable Pile Of Secrets?
Astlibra revision has been in development for almost 15 years, according to developer Keizo..
This is, ultimately, not the bearing I initially thought I was going to land on when I started playing the DLC spinoff of the game, a sidescrolling action roguelike with the charmingly bespoke title of Astlibra Gaiden -The Cave of Phantom Mist-. I am hinging on typing that out every single time we say Astblira Gaiden -The Cave of Phantom Mist- because it fills my heart with joy when video games choose themselves wholeheartedly: that is the jist of my review. I’m going to go to bat for myself next, in the opening paragraph, and say Astlibra Gaiden -The Cave of Phantom Mist- should be an instant buy.
We’ve lost the plot a little bit in the world. Politically, things look very bad: and not only that, but a lot of people every year get together and get stuck in the trenches about what an ‘indie’ game means, or independent, or if there’s another, hidden and third term we should use. If indie games have gotten too big, if there are too many of them.
Any movement that starts out in capitalism usually is subsumed by capitalism, and that looks like the charming press our independent darlings usually afford themselves: especially the ones that have producers, production studios, and can afford to send a primary of their developers to GDC every year. There’s still the realm of the hobbyist, though, tucked away. Sometimes they choose ITCH.IO as their storefront, just as often they work in the realm of fangames and release to websites like Metroid Construction. These solo developers are freaks of the highest order, and not the kind of people you want to look in the eye on the train.
They make good art, though. Sometimes intense stuff: I love playing these finicky little survival horror games crafted in the DOOM engine that try to push things to the breaking point, a lone developer waging a war against software in their heart. Keizo’s interviews I’ve read remind me of another stranger I’ve met: Studio Pixel head and creator of Cave Story, Daisuke Amamiya. In both of these games, I can see each other, games in love with the process as much as the craft.
Looking at Astlibra Gaiden -The Cave of Phantom Mist- with your own eyeballs is a shock to the senses. A thrown-together aesthetic of photorealism and manga-style art, with strange 3D rendered objects littered throughout and smashed in particle effects. It is a little bit of those janky, shimmering remakes of Ys I & II that were released on Windows 98, making me wonder if where Amamiya’s love was for the 8bit and 16bit era, Keizo wasn’t the type of person to be swapping discs on Falcom dungeon crawlers on a home computer.
It’s worth taking a shot on Astlibra -The Cave of Phantom Mist- for that reason alone, especially if money is tight and the other, latest, larger Japanese dungeon crawler is just out of your reach. What’s the draw? Two-plane combat that focuses on positioning and the use of complicated magical spells, rather than attempts to ape character action games. All of that, cruft and craft is essentially beside the point to where all of the charm comes from: this is Keizo’s singular vision for the game they wanted to make.
Is Astlibra Gaiden -The Cave of Phantom Mist- the kind of game that will have you running back and forth to town, barely struggling to stay alive? Yes. Will it throw challenges at you with no explanation? Also, yes.
ASTLIBRA GAIDEN -THE CAVE OF PHANTOM MIST- is 4 out of 5 COPIES OF BARKLEY: SHUT UP AND JAM GAIDEN.
