A few hours in the making Antonblasta new side-scrolling action-platformer inspired by Game Boy Advance-era Wario Land and Crash Bandicoot games, I wondered if I knew what I was really doing. Sure, I’d defeated some of the game’s tough bosses and blasted through a handful of challenging levels, but I still felt like I was barely hanging on.
Despite the visual assault of Antonblastand my performance when I played it, I loved it. It was like playing Warioland 4 while riding a roller coaster and having a bit of a buzz. Then at certain points the frenetic mechanics of the game started to click – in those moments I felt like I was starting to speak the game’s foreign language Antonblast.
This is a game with features a special “Scream” buttonfinally. (Seriously, you just hold it down to make the main character scream loudly and endlessly.)
Barely controlled chaos is its beating heart Antonblastin which almost everything is solved by hitting it with a huge hammer or shooting through it like the Tasmanian Devil. As Dyanamite Anton (or his equally drunk colleague Dynamite Annie), I’m sent into 2D levels moving in all directions, jumping and crashing through exploding crates, and into the flow of boisterous and crashing things. There are moments of serious, hardcore platforming, where I have to try to avoid poisonous lakes and pools populated with electric eel-like machines. But mostly I just speed up like a tornado and blow everything to pieces.
At some point in each level I find explosion machines, press the piston and new sections open up. Some of those explosion machines trigger the level’s finale, in which Antonblast yells at me, “IT’S HAPPY HOUR!” and it’s time to race back to the start of the level to exit it. Apparently the instruction for Anton is to return to his home base, and in these levels-but-in-reverse moments, everything becomes even more manic.
The reason Dynamite Anton does all this is because Satan himself stole Anton’s drink (which Anton in turn stole from someone else). The goal is to reclaim those sweet spirits and leave destruction in Anton’s wake.
Despite thick layers of chaos, Antonblast is about platforming precision, paying attention to the game environments to find secrets and hidden routes, and perfecting your runs. This is evident in the game’s first boss fight against a professional wrestler. From the moment you enter that fight, you are forced to react, read the wrestler’s moves and replay until you figure out the dance. Lots of it Antonblast It can be frustrating at first, but once you learn the language, the frustration gives way to fun.
While Antonblast It may play like the Wario Land games of old, but it has its own distinctive visual style, drawing on graffiti and in-your-face video games and cartoons from the 90s. It’s a hugely kinetic game, both in the way it plays as well as in the style of it. Sometimes the visual chaos can become overwhelming; Antonblast‘s fabric suffers at a lot of style.
Summitsphere’s developers are keeping the noisy action out of the picture Antonblast consistently fresh across the 12 levels, thanks to a variety of movement mechanics, enemies and bosses. With plenty of hidden collectibles to find and multiple ways to replay each stage (there are time trial and combo-focused run options) there’s a surprising amount of depth to the game.
Antonblast is available on Windows PC via Steam (and plays great on a Steam Deck), and it just got a slightly delayed release on the Nintendo Switch. Any fan of Wario Land of Pizza Tower should probably check it out.
Antonblast was released on December 3 on Windows PC and December 13 on Nintendo Switch. The game was reviewed on PC using a download code from Summitsphere. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. Additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.