Phantom Abyss
I'm a sucker for First Person Platformers of which the most well known would be Mirror's Edge. Phantom Abyss gives you a similar rush as you leap through its ancient temples filled with spikes, blades, deadly drops and hostile guardians. Here's the description on Game Pass to give you an idea of what this game is about:
Phantom Abyss is a massive asynchronous multiplayer game that casts players into procedurally-generated temples and tasks them with retrieving the sacred relics hidden within deadly chambers. Intrepid adventurers will 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. 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...
The cleverest players 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. Once the legendary relic at the bottom of each temple is found, the temple goes away forever and becomes the priceless trophy of the skilled adventurer.
The one thing that, quite literally, elevates the movement in this game is your trusty whip. This is mostly used as a grappling hook enabling you to pull yourself across and up large gaps. If you miss your jump you still have a chance of saving yourself with a quick flick of the whip. You are able to unlock new and different whips that each come with their own pros and cons.
One whip will give you and extra heart of health but makes you susceptible to damage when you stand in water. Another will grant you half a heart of health at the start of each level but also means that archer statues fire their darts more quickly. There's always a trade off.
One of the features I'd like to commend is the asynchronous multiplayer. During your run through a temple you will be accompanied by the phantoms of other players who have previously attempted that self-same run, some successful, many not. Despite the fact that these are playbacks of previous attempts, it really feels like you are running along with live players at that very moment. What adds to this feeling is that the phantoms can affect the world around you, they open treasure chests, flick switches and affect traps (which becomes a ghostly blue and no longer pose a danger to you) in what feels like real time. In actual fact it's just that the previous player interacted with that object, or died on that trap earlier in the run than you did. We had some fun-and-games with an elevator switch causing the platform go up and down as each player activated it, but had also been affected by the player or players before them, it felt like a tussle in real time.
The previous-run phantoms leave behind essence where they died during their run. This essence can be collected for either renown points in Adventure mode or to fill up additional health hearts in the more challenging Classic mode, where you always begin with a single heart of health.
In the early stages of a temple there are a lot of phantoms, and therefore a lot of essence to collect to aid you in your run. But as you go deeper into more challenging areas, the phantoms become fewer in number. It begins to feel lonelier, more dangerous. You are a real Indiana Jones, pioneering into the unknown.
Phantom Abyss is available via Game Pass (PC and Console) and if you'd like to buy it I'd recommend getting it on Steam where it is better priced.
