Ghost in the Machine

Let's make a retro style platformer. Move and jump. Simple, right? Let's make a list of bad ideas: What if we make it super dark and the walls are almost invisible because they are just mostly textureless black? What if you have to play it with a really restricted view like you're looking through a paper towel tube the whole time? What if half the obstacles are covered up by the foreground and half the jumps are blind and end in spike pits? What if we put really narrow spaces between spikes and then make the main character a huge prancing dude with a huge hitbox? Perfect. Put all those things in the game. Wait, wasn't this a list of bad ideas? Don't care. Print it. 1.5/10 because the prancing amused me for a few minutes.

Quick look into this one. Controls are really basic. Move and jump, that's it. Music is blaring and obnoxious, the worst kind of "retro". The platforming is really boring too. I got stuck on a level with two paths where the top path led to a section with crushers that appeared completely luck based as to whether or not you would be able to get through and gave up after like a dozen attempts. Bottom path had these barely visible bear traps scattered all over the place. That's another thing. This game's only real selling point, its aesthetic, actually works against it quite a bit. Walls are just... empty expanses of black but they have lines at the top and bottom. But it's not a good indicator that there's actually a wall. So you can accidentally run into something you couldn't see and die because of it. The game also doesn't seem to be very long, I only played a few levels and was at something like 15% complete. Nothing about this game is appealing in any way and it doesn't do anything to stand out, plus the level design just seems to be either bland or bad, as far as I've seen. Skip.

Ghost in the Machine is a minimalist precision platformer. Your enjoyment of it will entirely depend on how interested you are in its “quirks”—almost all the negative reviews seem to blast it for things that very well could be selling points (minimalist gameplay, minimalist presentation, hyperactive chiptunes). However, the biggest point of contention is that the game seems to actively work against you: the monochromatic visuals are busy and make it hard to tell what’s going on all the time (admittedly, I think they look amazing and find the challenge of them fun), and, perhaps most significantly, the character sprite does not represent its hitbox. This second part is very strange for a platformer. I would liken Ghost in the Machine to a “bullet-hell” SHUMP: a game where you “feel” your hitbox rather than see it in a sea of messy, stylish visuals. If you enjoy this or not is entirely personal preference, but it’s clearly intentional, not “laziness” as some other reviewers have said. There are also some quality-of-life problems which keep me from enjoying the game too much. The lack of a restart button sucks in a game where you’ll want to retry as soon as you mess up something smal…

Tags: Platformer Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library TLDR: Blind jumps on moving blocks. Constant reloads. Obtuse progression path to follow. Hard to visaully decipher the level with minimal neon on back assets. First of all it needs to be stated, the music in this game is good, and is very varied, and is lenghty or at least I cannot easily spot any looping points. Thats awesome. I managed to get the Xbox 360 pad working by manually mapping out the keys and I could manually enter my screen resolution which seemed to maybe work. There are also a few options to make the game look more retro by simulating CRT monitor display. The minimalistic neon outlines on black fit the night time setting platformer on a flavor level. The game attributes the outline color seemingly at random for a level and some of them work much better than others to say the least. The background is often pitch black, or only has minor accents if it has anything, considering that walls themselves are just ultra thin outlines of walls with no textures within, you will often attempt to jump through a wall and instead just fall all the way down the level. The camera is already pretty zoomed …

i thought this was a game that the steam scream icons Ghosts in the Machine was based on, i was wrong but still a fun game 8.5/10

This is a very lazy low effort 2D retro pixel platformer with a monochrome graphics theme (because retro pixel isn't scraping low enough in the barrel, apparently) originally intended for mobile but dumped onto Steams failed Greenlight programme at the last minute. The graphics are really bad and low effort as the screenshots show. The resolution is fixed and can't be changed, so the game falls far beneath minimum accepted standard for PC. The developer didn't bother testing the game on a PC made within the last decade, overscan/DPI issues mean only the top left hand corner displays, rendering the game thankfully unplayable. I certainly hope the "developer" got a pay rise at Starbucks for this.