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We first reported on Fantasy Network, a new Metroidvania from developer Raven Travel Studios and publisher IMGN.PRO, a few weeks ago. The game is out now on Steam, and we’ve played through the first couple of hours. Fantasy Network feels like a mix between a traditional Metroidvania, with exploration and a sprawling map, and an action platformer, with tricky jumping sections and lots of enemies to fight.
The game’s story centers around a fictional island where the president has stepped down, and it’s up to Lyn to win all the tournaments to gain office whilst simultaneously saving her mother from aliens that kidnapped her. The whole world, story, and NPC interaction have a very Saturday morning cartoon feel with nobody taking anything particularly seriously. Fantasy Network has a lot going on, from the main world to explore, towns to investigate, competitions to win, and a whole social network to deal with on the game’s phone system.
Most of your time on Fantasy Network will be spent exploring the various overworld levels, each with a different theme from jungle to snow peaks. These worlds are filled with lots of platforming action and enemies to defeat, as well as secrets and items to uncover. We enjoyed most of the worlds, but due to Lyn having a small jump, it was quite tough navigating the platforms, and we felt occasionally the hit detection for the combat was a little off. Although neither of these things was a major issues and, most of the action platforming sections play well.
Another big part of the game is exploring towns where there are lots of characters to add to your social network to have discussions about films, music, and all kinds of other topics that are uncovered the more you explore. Although the social networking aspect of Fantasy Network is interesting, it doesn’t go particularly deep and at times became a chore going through messages and conversations that didn’t always have a major bearing on the game as a whole.
The game is broken up with mini-games that come in two varieties. The main ones are the five competitions that must be conquered to become president. They vary from arcade racing to rhythm games and need to be played several times to become champion. Most of the games are fun and work well and can be challenging at times. The other kind of mini game are arcade cabinents that have basic retro-style games that are fairly easy to win but go a long way to break up a game that already has a lot of variety.
Overall, Fantasy Network has a lot to do and lots of different gameplay mechanics. We found that it was worth trying to collect as many coins as possible at the start and get some of the early upgrades, as this made traversing the action levels much easier. The graphics are colorful, and some of the levels and towns feel like they could belong in a game costing twice as much. There was an odd aspect to the controls with B being jump instead of A, and you can’t change the layout.
Hopefully the developer might add a control scheme layout option and tighten up the combat, as there is a really good adventure underneath the few small issues it has. Fans of Metroidvania games as well as platforming action will find a lot to like about this one, although we weren’t too sure about the social media portion of the game, but at the very least it’s trying something different. Fantasy Network is out now on Steam, priced at $14.99.
