Antipole is an indie game from Saturine Games that first started off as a simple game for an indie competition and after it got positive reception, the guys decided the flesh out the game a little bit. Apparently, this game was inspired by classics like Mega Man(a game I really like) and Super Metroid(another game I really like), so what we have here is a side-scroller where you get to shoot stuff. Also, you get to control gravity.

The Epic Story

You’re a guy and you shoot robots. The end!

The Game’s Uniqueness

The hat already makes this guy 20% cooler

If it’s one thing you can at least expect in most indie games is that they tend to be different than what is mainstream with bigger releases. Whether it be a new and innovative experience or even just a throw back to the olden times when dinosaurs existed and games were about simplicity, you can kind of expect that from games like this.

With Antipole, it feels more like a throw back, where it’s a side-scroller with platforming involved and some classic 2-D shoot em ups. Heck, they even have a colorful main character with a cool jacket, cool tie, and a cool hat.

The thing that this game really has going for it is the ability to manipulate gravity. You get to walk on the ceiling and kind of go from there. Now, by this time, you’re probably thinking of VVVVVV, because in that game, you kind of got to do the same thing, but it’s actually pretty different. While in VVVVVV you got to switch between walking on the floor and the ceiling and most of the challenges in the game were based on that, here you can only walk on the ceiling for a short amount of time. Not only that, but you can also take enemies and certain objects up as well.

Just make sure not to land on your face

The game bases it’s puzzles and gameplay around the fact that you can do this. And it all becomes really fun because of…..

Clever Level Design

Antipole gets really clever on how you can manipulate gravity. You’ll spend most of the time using it to reach certain heights, extend your jump a little further, and do some cool tricks in order to get these collectible coins. And you kind of need them if you want to do challenges.

Then, it’ll kind of throw in a couple of twists in order to kind of throw you off guard. There are these certain robots that will invert the gravity for you, so it kind of reverses the way you get to control gravity. There are also times where there’s these pools of acids where if you use your gravity manipulator, you’ll take the pool of acid up with you, which means you kind of have to be extra careful.

My bet is saying this guy isn't going to make it.

There’s even some cool boss fights that take advantage of the gravity feature. While most of the time you’ll use it to dodge most of the attacks that are thrown at you, there’s this one boss fight where you have to bring the bombs it throws at you back up to the enemy so it can blow itself up.

This is all helped with tight controls, with everything being an easy to control. It kind of has that complexity added to its simplicity. With its simple features, the game will just have you jumping around and using your gravity to get you where you need to be while adding more challenges to keep it interesting and not so simple. With that the game gets better as it goes along, and I could honestly say that I was having a lot of fun with it until…….

It Ends…..

Just like that. This game takes less than an hour to beat. I’m seriously not joking. Yeah, you could go back to improve on your time to beat levels and even do the challenges, but that’s not exactly a great selling point and I kind of breezed through the challenges as well.

I was seriously shocked at how short it was. I mean, the game gets better as it goes along. Around the time I was thinking about how awesome this game was getting, that’s when it decided to end, and I just had to sit there and think “That’s it?”

And that’s kind of it!

This game is actually really, really fun.

Antipole is actually really, really fun. Its strengths lies in its simplicity and challenges. I mean, it’s a really short game, but it’s a well made short game. The thing is, it’s length kind of makes it hard to recommend. With it coming at five dollars, it is really cheap, but even if you look through something like Steam’s store, you’ll be able to find something around the same price with more content.

But, in the end, with what little there is to be had here, I can’t deny that I really did enjoy what this game had to provide. If you have an extra five dollars lying around and you feel like you need to spend it right away, there are worse things you can get besides this game. Just be warned, you’re probably going to beat it around less than an hour.

7.0 out of 10

Why so high? The game is tight and a lot of fun with interesting features and challenges
Why so low? It’s really, really, really short